Woo-hoo-hoo! Three cheers for us! Or… should I say, three years for us! Guillaume and I are having an anniversary today! Yeah, yeah… boring. There’s not much amusing to say about it, so I’ll leave it at that. But it does get me onto the topic of luuurrrve…


This time two years ago we were overlooking Toulon…

I’ve been musing over this one for a while. I even cut it out and kept it, just because I found it so ludicrous. But, back in November, when I went to Venice, I spent my flight reading the Easyjet magazine from cover to cover. I’ve always been something of a fervent reader, so this comes as little surprise.

But this is the snippet that caught my attention: ‘A recent survey by holiday experts TripAdvisor found that the most romantic getaway for a weekend break was Marseilles, France. Must be all that bouillabaise [sic] being the food of love.’

Marseilles, hey? Fair enough. But bouillabaisse being the food of love? Could it contain oysters, perhaps? But then again, the French don’t regard oysters as an aphrodisiac (unlike ginger. I learnt that cultural difference the embarrassing way, being rapturous over ginger in the kitchen of Guillaume’s mother on our first meeting, all the while she’s wondering what kind of girl her son had found…)

I asked a few Marseillais friends and they confirmed my first suspicions – fish stew ain’t conducive to amour. In fact, after a bowl of bouillabaisse, you’ll only want to go to bed to sleep in off. Such was the mythological reputation of the soup too, apparently in Roman lore, Venus fed the stuff to Vulcan so that she could romp with Mars as her blacksmith husband slept.

The food of other’s love? I don’t think that’s quite the catchiest jingle…

My theory (totally unsupported, and mocked by any French person I’ve so far suggested it to), is of an intentional misspelling of bouillabaisse to emphasise the baise. For while un baiser still means ‘a kiss’, the verb baiser no longer means ‘to kiss’ (try embrasser instead!), but to make love.

Was it supposed to be a play on words for some sort of a boiling-hot screw? Who knows…


… living in Hyères, with the Mediterranean as our backyard!