Feb 2nd

It’s as early a start as I really want to get involved with. The cuckoo sounds at 4:45, and I am surprisingly lively by 5. Creeping quietly round the house, grabbing a bit of breakfast, I leave a few idiot jokes for the parents, and then sneak out of the front door. I am terrified of leaving anything behind as I would have to wake the house at 5am, as I did last time I was here.
The car is covered in ice, but it soon clears. The radio talks of snow storms further north, of ships floundering near the Scilies, yet here, though cold, things seem fine. I am wary of ice on the roads, but by the time we get to the A1 things seem ok.
It’s a trouble free journey to Stanstead, and hey presto, we are there in bags of time. Through security in no time at all of course, had it been the same yesterday we should have been in Marseille by now.
I mention we should be breakfasting by the Vieux Port, and H takes this as the cue to buy me a very tasty pain aux raisins.
My usual double scotch for dutch courage pre flight and soon we are soaring above rural Essex. The skies are clear and the south coast appears on cue, followed by the sandy start to France. We loose track of where we are, but kind of keep track by judging time. When the seat belt sign goes on and the aircraft starts to rock and roll, I wonder if it’s as a result of the Alps beneath, and my searchings from the window are rewarded by some snow capped peaks poking out from between the clouds.
The skies clear again as we approach Marseille. We fly out to sea a little over the refinery at Fos, and then swoop back over the town and into land. Ryanair play their new joke. A triumphant trumpet fanfare and the announcement that once again we have landed on time, as they do for 90% of their flights, the best record of any European airline. I joke to H that maybe she should work for them.
We wait for ever whilst two disinterested Police des Frontieres wait to check all the passports. When did they start doing this in France? Is it in response to their view of our capital as Londonistan, the terrorist haven?
We only have a couple of hours in Marseille and this eats into it. Luckily once through, we locate the bus to town quite quickly. Public transport in France is usually for nothing, but here they want a stinging 30 euros return for the 20 minutes into town.
The bus heads off bang on time, onto the wonderful french motorway network. From on high we glimpse the state of Marseille. I learned the other week that it is in fact in area the largest town in France, surpassing both Paris and Lyon, whilst lying third in terms of population. On this drive one can easily believe it.
It’s a thoroughly unlovely place, spreading at least the thirty or so kilometres to the airport and possibly beyond. It lies at the foot of what I suppose are the alpine foothills, bleached dry by near endless sunshine, and punctuated by sparse, prickly vegetation. When I look at the rocks I can’t help but think of the colour of dog turds drying in the sunshine.
All French towns sprawl, and all french towns, no matter how lovely their centres (and most of them put their British counterparts to shame) have allowed themselves to be surrounded by a universal shabbiness. Marseille has all this and much much worse.
Block upon block of featureless rectangles, in groups of five or six, punctuate the entire journey. They are all the same featureless colour as the dog turd rocks. Occasionally one tall block will rise alone in isolation, like a spare tooth in an old man’s mouth. Between all this is what were evidently once small provencal villages, with their tiled terracotta roofs, now wedged between these monstrosities for ever and lost as individual entities.
Occasionally a half destroyed building is left in a state of ruination for no apparent reason. In amongst all this are roads large and small, train lines barging just feet past the windows of the residents, dissapearing into tunnels under flats and houses. The blocks, HLMs as they are known in France are strewn from ground floor upwards with lines of washing on every balcony (every flat at least has a balcony), which only adds to the untidiness of the place.
Marseille of course has a reputation for menace and violence. Mention the place to any frenchman and he will whisper the words "le pegre" (the underworld). Passing through these mean banlieux, it is easy to understand that this reputation must be well deserved.
The road on which we are travelling has brought traffic all the way from Paris, from Lyon, over from Tolouse and Toulon and Montpellier, and as it nears the cebtre ville it sprouts tributaries to various arrondisements, proving this to be a real city and no provincial town.
Eventually we depart on one of these, ignoring the onward road to Nice and then to Rome, I suppose, and we are soon in front of the Gare St Charles.
It has changed out of all recognition from the last time we were here, now a vast glass building with the old vitorian structure which I remembered from two days after our wedding nowhere to be seen. That time we took a train to Cannes, and as it left the station I realise I no longer had my wallet with me. The wallet that contained around 4000 francs, mainly given to us in lieu of wedding gifts by our friends in Balnot following the marriage.
I remember Marseille from even further back. I must have just turned 20, maybe a few years more. I was in love, and the object of my affections had not long announced her engagement to her long term boyfriend, from whom I hoped against hope to win her. I never did, though came close. My best mate, Beany, had travelled to France to pick grapes, near Montpellier. I had the address of the farm and hoped to travel down to find him. I missed him by a day or two, and not knowing what to do I headed for the one place I had heard of..
I had been in France for two days, spoke scarcely a word of the language, and was too scared to ask for anything to eat. In Marseille I saw a restaurant menu. It seemed within my price range, and I saw the word "steak" I went in and pointed.
Apparently I had chosen a prix fixe menu. The first course was "salade verte", which in reality was a couple of lettuce leaves covered in oil. I imagined this to a be a side dish for the steak which was to come, rather than a starter in it’s on right, so pushed it to one side and waited for the steak.
The waiter kept passing me by throwing me curious glances, clearly curious as to when I was going to commence my starter. I returned his glances with my own, equally curious as to when the accompanying steak was about to arrive.
This continued for some twenty minutes, when eventually, he came to me, spoke sympathetically but totally unintelligably, and removed the "salade". Two minutes later the steak arrived. It was lovely, but I was puzzled for another five years or so until I returned to France and learned the language, and how the system worked.
Now I know, and, knowing time was at a premium, I knew if we wanted a taster of French lunchtime hospitality, we must head straight for the Vieux Port.We found the Metro quickly and descended into the bowels of France’s second (or third, or maybe first?? city)
In that previous encounter the metro had been new and shiny as a pin, but the intervening quarter of a century had not seen it wear well. It is dark and dingy, a tiny replica of the capital’s system, with very similar trains, but with harsh orange, plastic bucket seats. Almost every window had been scored in the manner so enjoyed by the modern subway vandal worldwide. There was just a general feel of shabbiness to it.
Lugging our heavy bags with us, it was a relief to see all upwards escalators in full working order, as is not always the case in Paris. As we neared the surface, the sharp wind carried the fresh and welcoming waft of the sea into the system, and we emerged into bright cold sunlight, to finally set eyes on the Vieux Port.
No time for endless browsing of menus. I spotted a blue canopy."La Mariniere." Despatching H to get some fric from an ATM, I checked the menu, approved it and within five minutes we were sat and waiting.
It really was cold outside, a strange sensation for a place I had alwasy associated with blistering heat. No one was eating on the terrace, but this little pace was a true haven from the windy cold. No more than 8 or ten tables were squeezed into a space perhaps the size of our own kitchen, and with our bulky luggage it was not easy to pick our way through to the only two places available, sharing a table with a young .couple who were nearing the end of their own meal.
My french now considerably better than all those years ago, I felt confident in explaining to the friendly patron that we were presse and were just after a plate of oysters and a seafood cocktail. Once upon a time I would have been embarrassed to eat in a french restaurant without going through the whole three course thing, but now I realise this is totally uneccesary, and the guy was niceness itself.
I chose the cheapest wine on the menu, and as he brought it to me he extolled it’s virtues without the merest hint of sniffiness or dissapointment. He pointed out that it was the winner of a "medaille d’or" It was excellent wine he assured me, "sans blague". And it was.
The meal was lovely too, albeit brief. There was no time for dessert, but an esspresso to finish made it feel like a real end to a real french lunch.
I explained to the guy about the missed flight, and he said that our misfortune was his good luck as we’d never have met without it. You couldn’t have asked for a better hour, and the episode typified what is so wonderful about France when everything goes comme il faut.
Back to the airport trouble free, buoyed up with a pastis and half a bottle of the medal winning cotes de provence inside me. It still couldn’t make the banlieux look welcoming. The graffitti plastered on every surface made a bad job all the worse. A huge, massive monolith loomed. The centre Hospitalier. It was truly stalinist in it’s conception, like something maybe from Caucescu’s Romania. Horrrible, but it wasn’t going to spoil that happy hour.
Back to the airport, ot rather the airport annexe. It seem the budget airlines have been held at arms length from the main body and shoved into a kind of pre fabricated annexe, whish has very little suggestion of permanence.
The same two flics from the police des frontieres were waiting to re examine our passports, though as far as I could tell there were no fellow travellers making this journey from our flight to London. I felt fairly smug about this, as I now knew that this cunning routing of Marrakech via Marseille (which not only gave us time in Marseille, but saved us the UK tax for flying outside of the EU) was my own little secret.
It’s also fun to see how the Ryanair flight crews change as we change localities. Still the Irish airline, but now we have a french pilot, and possibly a mixture of Spanish and Morrocan flight crew. It all adds to the spice.
Surprisingly there is not much to see from the window for much of the journey. Down there somewhere is Barcelona, and onto Gibraltar, but it is all hidden by cloud. I doze for a while, and then awake to see a coastline beneath which I guess is my first glimpse of the continent of Africa.It is pretty bare and featurelss, but not radically different from this angle.
We fly by Cassablanca and begin our descent, catching a wonderful view of the stark Atlas mountains. Circling for an eternity, we finally touch down. There is another Ryanair fanfare, which this time leaves most of the non anglophone passengers completely bemused.
Welcome to Africa. Welcome to Morrocco.
I am sure any seasoned traveller would sniff at the suggestion that this was really Africa, more an adjunct of Arabia. But I have checked the map, and it’s all joined on, and they can’t take that away from me.
About four planes have landed simaltaneously and vomitted their passenger loads into a tiny arrival hall. There are about 15 points for "controle des passeports", each with space for two men. Only half of them are open, and none of them have more than one guy on duty. The place is heaving with people, and it takes forever to edge towards them. Some of the controlleurs are in absurdly ornate uniforms for people whose only task in life is to look at a passport, check that the accompanying form has been filled in, stamp the thing, and wave through the bearer. However it takes forever. Moreover, we don’t notice until it is too late that our queue is in fact two queues tapering into one, thus doubling our wait. Our guy is not uniformed, but clad in a sinister dark overcoat. I feel sure he’d rather be in a dark basement somewhere in Tangiers pulling out fingernails.
After an hour and a half of this we trickle out into the arrivals hall, which is filled with drivers there to pick up their charges. It doesn’t take long to find our man, proudly displaying his A4 message. "Riad Alaka"
Into another, quite magnificent, Arabe/ornate hall, and then out to our "grand Taxi", some kind of Japanese people carrier. The streets are swarming with mopeds which swerve through the cars with gay abandon. The driver is a cheery chap who speeks reasonable french (better than mine at least) and tries to explain to us the sites as we head towards out destination. We reached the walled city (the Medina) and begin to circumnavigte it. It is iluminated and very impressive. In fact the whole place is ornate and apparently well ordered, with the exception of the mildly manic, though not lunatic traffic.
All of a sudden we plunge head first into a parking space and are at journey’s end. The driver offers his services as our guide tomorrow, hands me his business card, and then transfers charge of us to a newer, younger guardian, who has emerged from the shadows.
We follow into the Medina on foot and are amazed at what we see. The tiny, cobbled streets are crowded with hawkers. The mopeds now weave in and out between pedestrians, and added to the mix are donkey carts and the occasional small car or van which can battle it’s way through. Everything is either laid out on the street, or contained in tiny, cupboard sized businesses giving out immediately onto the street.
We follow our new man for no more than fifty yards of this, but already we know that this is unllike anything we have every experienced before.
We turn left into an alleyway no more than a metre wide. To reach the doors that lead off from it require two steps down to get to them, and then when they open, they descend even further into the bowels of the earth. The alley, perhaps passage decribes it better, is swarming with kids and uncared for cats. At the end of this we turn left and things narrow still more. I am becoming concerned, but have read enough about these riads to not be too worried yet.
Twenty yards along, a small brown sign protrudes from the wall. "Riad Alaka ex Mozart" A magnificent, ornate wooden door opens before us and we are ushered in.
What awaits us is wonderful. There is a pool of deep blue water, maybe three metres square. Around the edge are delicately latticed iron lanterns givining off a cool light and shimmering on the water. All around there is a tiled walkway, giving onto more dark wooden hand carved doors. Above us is a balcony where the symmetry is repeated at a higher level. We are offered the choice of two ornately decorated, lavishly cushioned rooms, one Arabic, the other European. We opt to assimilate and seat ourselves in a sea of cushions.
Our young host dissapears, and soon returns with a tray asilver teapot and two small glasses. He ostentatiously pours the drink and a minty aroma fills the room. He leaves us to contemplate our new home, and we sip the sticky sweet liquid. The room is bathed in a half light we will grow to know as standard. Everywhere are the arches of the orient, dark wooden tones and light barely seeping from the ornate lanterns which puntuate the entire building.
We have to come to terms with new ideas of indoors and out. When we were ushered through the door, we imagined ourselves to be "in", but on gazing upwards we see that in fact only a piece of sheeting seperates us from the sky, presumably in place temporarily for the Morrrocan winter. It is only when we enter the rooms around the courtyard, or on the upper levels, the bedrooms, that we can truly consider ourselves indoors.
We are shown to the room, past the pleasant breakfast room. It is small, as internet reviews had warned me it might be, but utterly satisfactory. Another four to five of the mysterious lanterns fill the "Requiem",as it is called, all rooms having names, with mysterious shadows. The bed is wide, hard yet comfrotable, and both it and all the surrounding surfaces have been decorated with red rose petals in anticipation of our arrival. A wall and a curtain seperates us from a toilet and shower.
Tired. We take half an hour to lie down prior to moving outside to investigate the anticipated mayhem outside. We try to formulate a plan, read up on restaurants we might try to find, but realise without a clue where we are , or where we will be going, we are unlikely to find what we seek.
Our host, who it transpires is called Sofian, gives us a map of the Medina, and directions to the place. Basically, we follow back to the main track and head left until we see the great minaret of the mosque of the Koutouba. From there we will find it, and the world will be our oyster.
We leave our Riad behind with some apprehension, wondering will we ever be able to find it again. But Sofian has given us a phone number, so we should be safe.
The passageway is teeming with kids screeching, playing football, games of chase, and terrifying the feral cats which abound. We pick our way through them, greeted with the occasional "bonjour" from the bolder amongst them.
We reach the main drag and turn left into a maelstrom of human and animal life.
Men are sat on the ground, clad in sinister cloaked hoods and long one pieced robes. These, it turns out are the djerbelas we have read of, and I believe they are the "uniform" of the berber tribesmen who have migrated from the mountains to the town. Some sit sellling their wares, often no more than a couple of cigarette packets atop a wooden crate. Cigarettes are on offered either in packets or individually. Women, sometimes veiled, sit by half a dozen loaves of bread, a basket full of reinforcements by their side. Others have no more than hald a dozen pieces of fruit from which to eke their living. Some simply sit, their hand forlornly outstreched in the hope of a handout, with nothing left to sell. Around them are the small cupboard size shopes. In these can hang carcasses of an entire sheep, with four or more full sheep’s heads proudly displayed on the counter, and hooves hanging from the ceiling. Behind the display a butcher may be manaically decimating a further corpse in furtherance of his trade.
Further along, chickens, from still living to various stages of butchery , hang or are piled highed on on top of the other. Then a high roofed shop, cigarettes stacked high to the roof on one side, toileteries on the other. Next, bizarrely comnes an internet cafe, it’s screens the huge monsters already outdated in the first world . A pile of microwave ovens, all years old totter precariously on the uneven cobbles, then recessed deeply into the already dark buildings comes the first moped repair shop. The smell of grease seeps into the street, and inside is a dark grimey mire of inner tubes and tyres, spare wheels,, dissassembled engines, rusty handlebars, wheel bearings, clutch parts, complete bikes which should have been retired twenty years ago, yet still somehow cling to life. Ancient Pedal cycles cling to the walls and hang from the ceilings, and deep in the corner a bent, gnarled man, his hands encased for ever with the grime of his trade, saws desperately, yet determininedly at some piece of engine, clutch, or exhaust which may just bring back to life some relic of a darker age.
The working mopeds whizz through the narrow alley at good speed. Often they are driven one handed, and their charges are adept at gliding them through the disorganised throng whilst texting on their mobile phones. Tiny, unnepealing cafes, peopled only by the male of the species are dotted everywhere. Their interiors are sullen, and the mood of the customers seemed to match, without the spice of alcohol to light the touch paper of excitmement and bonhomie. The eyes gaze out at us suspisioucly, from darkened, gnarled faces, often denuded of some or all teeth. As we grow accustomed, it is not comfortable to be white or european.
Some cook tiny meals on tiny stoves, the smoke wafting into the air wholly disproportionate to the frugal fare being prepared. Cats scurry everywhere, showing little trust in their human neighbours, but staying around long enough to scavenge in plastic bin bags. One senses no one here will be shopping for "Whiskas". One of the mysterious robed demons passes us by, puts a finger to one nostril, and with a careful air, blows half a nose full of snot onto the pavement. His companion compliments his skill by aiming a viscous gob in the same direction. There are people all around our feet, staring up at us, guys in cafes staring out at us, people walking past and staring through us. Now the crowds part, and an emaciated donkey comes into view, hauling a grimly determined driver atop a cart held together by rust and prayers, it’s sleek bald tyres glinting in the begrudging light of the street. The creature looks as though it has been eaten away by parasites. Here there is fur, elsewhere bare skin. It has a woeful, anorexic, air, yet it sticks to it’s task and guides it’s master through the rabble without forcing him to take up his whip
More shops, more cafes,more peddlars, more beggars. The road turns a corner, and to our left is a pink walled, ornate building, which apparently is the exterior of a royal palace in the midst of this mayhem.Tall, gand palms peer over the wall, mocking those outside. We turn again and are greeted with the sight of the town’s principal landmark, the magnificent minaret of the Katouba. mosque. Beautifully lit, the stone is whiter thanthe pink which oherwise dominates in these parts. The mosque is set in palm fringed gardens, but we are in the searchof the "placeJemma al Fna", supposedly the hub of the town.
According to the guide books, the mosque backs straight onto it, but we are now at the mosque and see nothing we recognise from the guidebooks.
For the first time, a local makes contact.
"You look square? I take, come come"
I ignore him
"Monsieur!! Monsieur, you come me, You look square . I take, Yes pleece, come come"
"You look eat Monsieur I take . Is very beautfiful"
"Non, non merci."
"Oui Monsieur, venez avec moi, I show, I take"
The books have warned about this. Unofficial guides who lead you aimlessly around the streets for hours, taking you from shop to shop where the owners will try to fleece you, with them on a commission.
I keep my head down, and looking down a dirty, grotty road full of more mean shops, I spy an oasis of grandeur.
This turns out to be the Hotel des Jardins du Palais, or something similar, a bleached white building in traditional arabic style. A group of westerners are being ushered throught an enormous decorative wooden door.
The security guard stops us, asks a question in rapid french which I don’t understand, and beckons us to wait a moment, along with some evidently well to do local teenage girls, modestly dressed and hair covered, yet full of conspiratorial smiles.
The doorman goes off on an errand, they wait for him to dissapear, then dart inside and beckon us to do likewise.
The door shuts out the chaos on the street and seals us into a different world. A world of calm and luxury, a world of comfy sofas and uniformed flunkies. Huge glass doors lead on to a sublime pool shimmering in the evening air, fringed with palms and sun loungers. It is the Riad Alaka magnified twenty times in size, and thirty times in luxury.
Are we aallowed in here? Is it private?
I meet a flunky
"Pour boire un coup s’il vous plait?"
He motions to one of the many rooms leading off from the poolside. Schmalzy piano music floats into the quiet of the night as I open the door.
The piano bar. We had read about it in the guide book where it was the reccommended start of the "bar crawl" it’s nice to sit down, but I am still perturbed that we have not found "La place", the hub of the town.
We have a pastis apiece, take photos of ourselves, and then of a couple of friendly girls who turn out to be from, and strong advocates of, the town of Lyon.
We ask where is "La Place", but the explanation is lost on me after about 5 turns.
Heading back out into the melee, the doorman gives simpler directions,
"Toute droite" he motions with his left arm
Through a few more grubby alleys lined with seedy cafes. As the square gets closer, the fleecers , clearly professionals, become emboldened. We need verbal fly swatters.
Eventully one of the roads leads us onto La Place, and it is indeed a sight to behold. Four minarets, the largest being the Katouba, stand guard over it’s morality, as we will soon discover. All are grand, well kept and impressive.
There are restsaurants in all four corners, with terraces three or four stories up to afford what must be a sprctaulcar view.
There are veiled women sesated on the floor, a piece of cardboard box their only furnishing. These are apparently the "story tellers" who, for a price of course, will regale the passer by with some kind of wisdom or tales of mystery and wonder. There are crowds gathered around dancers who girate to the distinctive trill of the arabic pipes and the incessant beat of the drums. I hold my camcorder above the crowd to catch a glimpse and within 5 seconds a dancer is heading my way demanding
"La monnaie monsieur"
We run. Past a collection of perhaps a dozen identical market stalls, each piled high with huge oranges, which are to be squeezex into juice. 5 dh petit, 10dh grand. Each stall identical, as are the entreaties of each vendor to spend on his produce. Fortunately they remain captive behind their juice makers and cannot physically manhandle us to their wares. However, a verbal assault is launched as we pass each one.
Along the other side of the square, a similar scene, but here the fare is not oranges, but vast piles of tiny snails. Theses are doing a brisk trade. Identical pricing structure to their fruity counterparts, big bowls or small, into which huge scoops of snails are piled, followed by some form of sauce. These are doing a brisk trade, to the extent that tehre is no need to accost us on passing.

The middle of the square is given over to perhaps a hundred individual stalls, each selling food, and each vyeing for the custom of every bypasser.
As we walk the aisles through the rows of bright, whitely lit tents surrounding the grills which billow plumes of steam and smoke dozens of feet into the air, frying meat and fish and sauages and chickens and sheep and heads and feet and tails and eyes and ears, we are accosted with cheap, garish menus, poorly laminated with dog eared edges.
"Come, monsieur, come"
"We’ve eatenn already!"
That clearly cuts no ice.
"Where did you eat?" We have no answer, we just plough on. But even a glance in the direction of someone’s stall has a white aproned maitre d’ on top of us.
"Beautiful fish, lovely you like couscous?"
We put our heads down and make for the far end.
Menus are thrust under our noses, our arms are grabbed. They try to persuade, beg or threaten. Anything but anything goes in the bid to get our brace of arses on their aluminium benches.
"I think you are from Ipswich?" says a voice
For sheer originality, this is the one that stops me in my tracks.
"Yes yes very lovely I love London"
The boy telling us this can be no more than 15, but he smiles winningly, and launches back to his spiel.
"Yes I love London. Hackernee, Mansfield and Basingwater. I know all of this"
"Where you are from?"
"Basingwater." couldn’t reist this
"Oh yes very beautiful. You come now eat, we talk."
"Well we’ve not decided what"
"Yes, no, lovely food , you look"
And we had to admit, he did have a point.
The shrimps sizzled crazily on the makeshift griddle, brochettes smoked and filled the nosstrils, now hungry for food.
Heather thought it might be better to go for a restaurant tonight and try this tomorrow, the logic being that if we were to get ill from eating here, it’s be better on the last day than the first.
We explain our reaasoning. his smile dissipates. He must have heard, "well come back tomorrow" a thousand times before.
"Tomorrow Inshallah" he bids us
We battle past more stalls, more entreaties, more demonstrations, until we eventually reach the orange sellers again. Ignoring their pleas (though attracted by a glass of freshly squeezed orange) we head past the rows of veiled women selling knitted headgear and out to the restaurants on the periphery.
Whilst browsing the menus, we her grave news.
A tall, wiry, grizzled haired young man, maybe in his late twenties, has sidled alongside us.
"Vous allez mangez?"
We ignore him.
We will check out the the six or seven resstaurants, make a decision and get some food. We move form one to other.
"You like drink da wine?"
We almost choose a restaurant just to get away from him.
"This restaurant, no da wine" he pronounces gravely
In truth this is not what I need to here, if indeed it is true. I could do with a drink with my dinner.
We check. No alchohol mentioned on the menu.
I point out another resstaurant.
"This restaurant no da wine"
He has got our attention. He points individually to each restsaurant on the square. This restaaurant, no da wine, my friend. This restaurant no da wine. Thees restaurant no da wine.
He moves his rearranged nose closer to mine in conspiratorial intimacy.
"You know Islam, my friend?
He now motions back to the square
"Here is Mosquee. Here is mosquee..... four times this is repeated."
"Islam say, where mosquee see restaurant....no da wine"
I can see a certain line of logique, and my heart sinks. I mean, I don’t have a drink problem, but if we are going to have a meal, I’d like a drop of da wine with it
"No da wine anywhere here I?" ask
He shakes his head sadly "No da wine, no da beer"
Because of the Mosque.
"Here is mosquee...... here is mosquee"
"Yes, yes"
"You want know where is da wine?"
"Go on, I’ll buy it......where is da wine?"
"Hotel Tajiz, here is da wine. I take you"
"Just give us directions"
"No, no you come, I show you. Hotle Tajiz...Hotel Tajiz is da wine"
He returns his pointing to the square
"This restaurant, no da wine, this restaurant...no"
"Yeah ok, well, maybe we’ll pop by your place tomorrow"
We walk off. He walks after us
We look at a menu He’s there.
"This restaurant, no da wine.. You know Islam my friend? Look Mosquee....no da wine. No da beer"
We wonder off in another direction. He follows us. He beckons us to follow him. More promising. Let him get ahead and loose him. He must have rear view mirrors fitted though. Every time we try to put distance between us and him, he is back with tales of da wine, da beer and Hotel Tajiz
For half an hour we try and shake him off but he is limpett like. He takes us into a Riad, where the management suggests we
"Come upstairs, just for look" We decline, and leg it into the street, but just cannot shake him off.
He knows every crooked street cigarette salesman we pass, and helps himself to ciggies several times. Every plot to shake him off fails, until eventually he brandishes his hand in triumph.
"Here is Hotel Tajiz. Here restaurant. Here da wine"
The place contains not a single living soul, and is decked out with village hall style chairs and tables covered in plastic cloths. I’d rather snog our guide than eat there. From a distance the manager has spotted our arrival and is bearing down on us like a leopard after his prey.
"No I am not goign in" I announce, at last showiing the resolve required to overcome our pathetic western embarrassment that gets us all into these situations in the first place.
I stomp off and tell our friend to piss off. He fumes. The manager fumes, but at last we are shot of him.
In the end we go back to our friend from Basingwater. The food there looks sizzlingly exciting.
He is thrilled to welcome us back. We sit down and pass a few pleasantaries with a couple of french women who have also been hauled in.
Our man returns with grave news.
"It is very sad. The england rugby team have lost before the wales."
He Can’t quite understand why I can’t give a fourpenny fuck, nor what H is talking anout when she tries to explain she is irish.
The service is friendly, but the food sadly uninspiring. The brochettes are edible, the chicken couscous is wholly uninspiring. It costs 200dh or 20 euros, so whilst cheap it is hardly giveaway.
An experience though.
The place is starting to close down as we wend our way home. The crowds are thinner, the hassle lesss determined. We are quite proud that we have got the orientation of the medina straight away and get home without a problem. There are kids everywher in the alley, and some of them throw a cheerful "bonjour" in our direction.
It’s been a long day, and bed is welcome.