It was Friday evening and we were jumping in the air for joy at the prospect of a mini-break to Marseille. Though not originally on the agenda, the subsequent heart-wrenching sprint across Paris to catch our train, motivated by the potential loss of hundreds of euros, was an inevitability considering I’d been the one to organise the trip.
Apparently checking out old Myspace profiles isn’t entirely worth a near-on heart attack and the mowing down of old women in metro stations (the inevitable result of being late, and therefore of my life). And the sight of three youths darting in and out of poor passers-by simply minding their own business, in zig-zag shapes that would confuse even the wisest of bears, is likely to cause more than a few judgmental stares – ones that I could only describe as quintessentially French.
Finally on the train with an impressive ten minutes to spare, we braced ourselves for a whirlwind weekend away. A thirty minute delay seemed like a blessing when we discovered the train before ours took a total of nine hours to reach the city (somehow we managed to overtake it and arrive five hours before – disinclined to attempt to understand how that occurred, I merely accepted it with a pinch of slightly malicious joy).
One jolly taxi driver later and we arrived at our hotel, head full of dreams and premature remarks on the friendliness of the Marseille people. Our arrival was surprisingly smooth and, other than a minor revelation that our two days were to be filled with gale-force winds and a fair amount of lightning, all was good in the Marseille hood.
Bright and early the next morning, we went gallivanting around the city coined ‘ville poubelle’ (‘rubbish town’). No poubelle in sight, however. And guess what? No lightning either. Maybe it was going to be the weekend we’d been dreaming of.
We hit the beach and took a dip in the water, whose splendorous colour concealed, I was aware, sub-zero temperatures that were more than likely to cause a severe case of hypothermia. Nevertheless, anyone worth their (sea-)salt was going to give it a go. Brits abroad strike 1. Roll on six hours alternating between relaxation and exhilaration at near-death-due-to-drowning/freezing experiences, and we finally took a fateful glance at our ordinarily pasty British skin. A lobster transformation had occurred. Brits abroad strike 2.
But our traffic-light redness didn’t get our spirits down, and we returned to our pad to prepare for what we were sure was to be a wild night out in ‘rubbish town’. I’m aware of the paradox, but we took mindless faith in this belief regardless.
A bottle of vodka later and we decided it was time to hit the town. But trouble hit us as equally hard as we were prepared to hit that town when our ever-so-slightly inebriated friend, suddenly fluent in Spanish, began rambling on for around 30 minutes about shoes. To my deaf-to-Spanish ears I gathered none of this and assumed she was talking about something far more a) relevant and b) exciting, but an enquiry the next day revealed the shocking truth.
An hour later and we were out of the metro and into the open air of the south and of safety, or so we believed. We were, in fact, accosted on three occasions by scary-looking passers-by on the prowl for ‘un roulé’, the essence of which was only established after we innocently asked for a synonym. They were looking for weed, and we were asking for an alternative term to express their desires. I think they gathered we didn’t have any.
Roll on half an hour and I found myself locked in a very small toilet cubicle, closing my eyes to replace the sight of my friend being sick by the highly appealing sounds accompanying it. Brits abroad strike 3. After thirty minutes in my equivalent to Orwell’s room 101, a burly French bloke began thudding on the door, and I started to have a sickening fear he was going to punch a hole through the door, through my head and into the unfortunate friend, still retching over the toilet. So I opened it. Speaking to me as if I were a naughty school-child who’d forgotten to tie my laces, he firmly told me and my friend to vacate the room. Unfortunately his choice of wording was not quite so polite. So, spouting out insults more times than my friend had spouted out the contents of her stomach, I succeeded in (justifiably) disciplining a (very rude) forty-year old man, all in French, more successfully than I’d ever disciplined my fourteen year-old students during my stint as a language assistant. Now there’s a sign of language improvement, and I’m sure my tutors will be more than proud.
All in all, ‘rubbish town’ was a lot less rubbish than it’s reputed to be, and, despite the blips, I had a great weekend away. Several near-death experiences taught me to value my life. But has the near-on heart attack encouraged me to stop being late? Well, since it’s proved excellent training for the obviously inevitable moment when I’ll have to run away from a bear (and that will involve speed, stress and a whole lot of zig-zagging.), I’m inclined to say no.
