Wednesday 26 August 2015

Sanary - so not St Tropez


I've been away the past week, a working break on the Côte d'Azur, if that doesn't sound too implausible. An old fishing village on the shores of the Mediterranean is such an old cliché that these days it almost always means millionaires on yachts and bronzed stick insects dripping in bling. But not always. Sanary-sur-Mer is still a working fishing town as well as a jolly holiday place for the more down-to-earth French.

I really was working. The page proofs of the new novel, 300 Days of Sun, had to be painstakingly checked, mistakes hunted down and sentences forensically assessed. With the house full of visitors again, I couldn't see how it would get done, so this was my answer. Work in the morning, sun in the afternoon.

It was great! I've never been away specifically to work on my own before, and I like it. Rather too much, perhaps. Previous brief visits to Sanary had intrigued me. It seemed friendly, with a lovely atmosphere, and is pretty as a picture. It has some lively literary connections, too, which are always interesting. Thomas Mann lived here in the 1930s, and Aldous Huxley wrote Brave New World just out of town along the coast. D H Lawrence found some easing of his tuberculosis here, and Sybille Bedford - a wonderful writer who deserves to be better known - wrote Jigsaw, her "unsentimental education" among the wild and eccentric bohemians in the twenties and thirties in Sanary.


 
A short walk down a tree-lined, almost suburban, street to the west of the port was the pretty Portissol beach, where the water can change colour from pale grey-green to deep blue.
 
 
I even took the train along the coast to La Ciotat one day, as I've had the glimmering of an idea for yet another novel and wanted to do some research. Another afternoon, I took a boat trip to the calanques at Cassis and beyond.
 
At night, there were unpretentious restaurants by the harbour where I felt perfectly happy eating on my own, watching the world go by and the night market being set up. After that, there were various bands and other free entertainments that sprang up along the esplanade. As I told the family when I got back, having completed my list of changes to the proofs and sent them off to New York yesterday morning before I left: it was a full week's work!

4 comments:

Barbara Lilian in France said...

Loved seeing your photos of Sanary a beautiful part of the Mediterranean coast, 25 yrs ago my husband & I lived in tiny village, we were asked would we like to visit the Mediterranean coast for a holiday, as they had a cousin who lived in Sanary and they had never seen where he lived, as they didn't have the means to get there, we had a big car so we could take them, What a wonderful time we had. A lovely memory & how fortunate we were to see a part of France we would never have thought to visit. Sounds like a good working trip for you.

bright star said...

Steve and I spent some time in Sanary last year. I love the place and will go back again I hope. Thanks for reminding me how charming it is.Lots of literary connections and a beautiful market what a heavenly place!

Marcheline said...

Wow - now that's the job to have, where a week's work includes a place like Sanary! I have never even heard of it, and here are two commenters that have also been there. From your description of artists and bohemians, it sounds like the European version of Florida's Key West(the haunt of Ernest Hemingway, Tennessee Williams, etc.) I've never been to Key West, either. Looks like I have some travel goals forming!

josina said...

I agree Sybil Bedford deserves to be read I read jigsaw too, the 1920's and its posse of adventurers, bohemians fascinates

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