Incredibly, Lyn was back at work in her studio when I got up from the sofa to bid her good night last night. I don’t know how she does it – I was completely shattered by then. It had been a long, frantic few days: to be honest I have no idea what to write about our trip, where to begin and how much detail to give. Probably the first thing to say is that we ha a lot of fun, but it also has to be said that there were down sides too. Marseille struck us as quite a dirty, rather dilapidated city: I got the sense that it was once great and proud, but had falen into disrepair. The streets were far from clean; it was noisy and busy. That is not to say it was not beautiful: I really loved some o the classical French architecture – the quaint streets and the quintessential houses which all seemed so higgledy-piggledy. We had so much fun exploring them. We were also struck by the lack of authentic local quinine: fast food outlets and pizza shops were all too abundant.

We also enjoyed going outside the city. On sunday we went to L’estaque, a small fishing village not far to the north, where we saw a strange sort of jousting on boats. They had special, longish boats, each with five or six young boys in them, with a raised platform at the stern. The boys took it in turns to stand on the platform as the boats tilted at each other, and the boys tried to nock his opponent into the water. It looked like great fun. After watching this game for a while, we walked further up the coast: I was again taken with the architecture, this time because it was defensive. It looked to me like there were once a couple of castles there, guarding the port. On the way back, e stumbled upon ‘Yes We Camp’, an ecological village of performative architecture built just outside L’estaque, built to mark Marseille 2013. It was a very cool place, reminding me of a cross between a hippy commune and Alsager campus.

There we had a beer, and it was also there that we took the opportunity to get online. It is strange to think how important getting online now is to us, and this trip really drew my attention to that fact. Our hotel had no internett access, so for the first time in my life I felt eager to go into a Macdonalds, simply in order to use the free Wifi.

It was also at L’estaque that, whilst I was blogging, I lost the now famous bet that I could not prevent myself from saying sorry. Dom made it, I think, to draw my attention to the fact that I keep apologising, and that if you overuse certain words they loose their meaning. However, a few hours later he relented and let me have a beer.

The next day we went out late, having had what can only be termed a crazy night. It had involved some heavy rain, a fairly drunk guy who approached us in the park with a snow-white dog called Bob, and rather too much alcohol.We took the boat to les isles des Frioul, a stunning island not far fro the city once famously used as a prison. Now, though, it is a nature reserve full of interesting rock formations. We spent a happy couple of hours there (John took a dip in the sea) before buying dinner and getting the boat home. That evening was somewhat calmer tan te one before, but we did see some pretty cool live music in a bar not far from our hotel.

So that’s it: home again, and back to work. In all I found it quite cool, although, given that Marselle is not the most accessible place in the world, nor frankly the cleanest, I think we’ll be going elsewhere foor our next holiday. But if you don’t go, you never know. Indeed, now we know that it is possible for us to go on such trips, hopefully many more will follow. I just hope I can break the habit of constantly saying sorry.