Marseilles is too big, too chaotic, too busy, too sprawling, too hot, too dirty, too smelly, too loud, too crass, too dangerous, too foreign!
And so utterly intoxicating.
It is like Australia's mad north - crazy Darwin and the Northern Territory at their tropical maddest - made madder by French, Arab and African, mixed in a blender, concentrated in a centrifuge, nutrients added ...that has then mutated, replicated uncontrollably, overcome and devoured the scientists, and broken out of the lab!
Marseilles isn’t perfect Love Island bodies. It’s a large brown roll of well-oiled fat hanging out of a diamanté g-string.
Marseilles most certainly isn’t a delicate ceviche of octopus. It’s an octopus pulled fresh from the sea by a wizened fisherman, bashed against the rocks and gutted by hand, thrown on a red hot grill with a sprinkle of oregano and salt, roughly chopped, drizzled with olive oil and lemon juice, and eaten with burning fingers.
Marseilles is rocky Mediterranean coastline desecrated by concrete corniche and the smell of piss.
Marseilles is paired-up barely dressed adolescents weaving through heavy traffic on underpowered scooters, one driving and the other perched on the axle astride the rear wheel, the journey a series of near misses, ropey muscles glistening with sweat and tits bobbing up and down, scarcely contained in their bikini cups.
Marseilles is best approached not with an open mind but a closed one.
Arrive looking down on it and it’s peoples with a sense of snobbery, with a liking for perfectionism, with a superiority complex. If a few ugly class and racial stereotypes come to mind, all the better, let them brew. That way Marseilles can break you, perform surgery on you without anaesthesia, and you get to experience the full exhilarating, life affirming effect
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