I <3 Nantes

Behold! I have had a thought.

Hello!

Hi! I have two very different recommendations for you this week.

Number one: this long and really brilliant essay on…living in a body? I think that’s probably the best way to put it. It’s about living in a body, and swimming in the sea, and exercise, and chronic illness. I don’t think I’m selling this very well actually but I don’t really know what else to say. Just trust me! It’s really great.

Number two: no idea how many of you fine people share my passion for both video games and watching silly videos about video games, but boy do I have a rec. I’ve spent the past few weeks watching a lot of Tears of the Kingdom challenges, because I’m sad there’s just not going to be a DLC, and these two videos of players trying to cross the game in a straight line - vertically and horizontally - are just so fun. Long Live The Line, and all those who sail in her. The Line Shall Provide.

A column

The problem with moving abroad is that suddenly people turn you into someone you’re not. I’d spent 17 happy years as a nantaise then suddenly I moved over to the UK and I became French, because in 2009 people in the UK did not know Nantes existed. I could have been a Parisian, or maybe even from Lille or Marseille, but my hometown didn’t exist outside of France at the time, and so I had to be a generic French person.

I didn’t like it at all and so I reacted by becoming quite scathing about France as a country, because I couldn’t relate to this new identity people had given me. It felt like wearing a dress your mum had forced you to put on for a big occasion, which was scratchy and too tight and not even in a colour that you liked. I spent years tugging at my collar and nervously playing with my sleeves, stuck looking like a person I knew I wasn’t.

In truth, I don’t believe I actually, genuinely dislike France. For a start, I don’t think I know it well enough to properly hate it. I’ve never been to the south and I’ve never been to the proper north. I’ve never been to the east and I’ve not visited most of even the biggest cities. I know Nantes and its surroundings and I know Paris and some bits of Brittany and Normandy, and this one time I went to Tours to see a friend. That’s essentially it.

What goes on in the other, say, 85% of the country? I have no idea. You’d have to ask someone else. You can see why this newfound “French” identity just didn’t sit right with me. I didn’t know what my passport and my nationality had to do with anything. I’ve not even done my one-day military service, because I moved before I turned 18, and so I couldn’t even get a French driving licence if I wanted to. I wouldn’t be allowed. Really, I’m barely French.

What I am, I thought last week as I walked across town on a grey, sticky and warm Sunday morning, is a person from Nantes. That is an identity I welcome, and which suits me well. I was crossing the Talensac weekly market and watching people drink their coffees and their half pints on terraces, pleasantly ignoring the crachin, that fine but persistent rain we’re famous for, and I felt something odd and new swell inside my chest. I think you’d probably call it patriotism.

I looked at those people sitting with their friends and family, or going to do their shopping for the week, and I loved all of them very much. They were mine; my people. I felt home in that way you can’t always explain, because you’re worried that putting it into words would cheapen it somehow. I walked up to the Viarme square and had a look around the vide grenier and again, my heart felt full of love for my fellow man. I’d removed the scratchy dress and slipped into something I found more comfortable, and which I’d picked myself. I felt nantaise again, and that felt good.

I suppose this is the point at which I should explain what makes Nantes so great. I reckon that’s something I can do. Nantes spent a long time being defined by the water, because it sits near the mouth of the Loire river and it used to be stabbed sideways by all manners of canals. Most of them ended up being filled in, long before I was born, but you can still tell that it doesn’t entirely exist on land. There’s something in the air.

Nantes was the largest port city in France for a while, then it wasn’t. It became this great city of industry after that, but then the 20th century came knocking and all those industries ended up dying or leaving. For a while it became la belle endormie - the sleeping beauty - but it couldn’t lay dormant for long. That’s just not what Nantes does. As I was growing up in the 1990’s, it built a service economy from nothing, and turned its attention to culture and tourism.

It was a riot of a place to be a child then a teenager in. There were parks everywhere, and something was always happening somewhere. I remember being 12 and going to this event which featured a photobooth, and you could hear people screaming a few seconds after they’d gone in but you didn’t know why. I went in and waited for the flash but instead a giant flame burst out from the ground, about a metre behind me. I screamed. The picture was great.

At around the same time, this arts company decided to see what would happen if they threw grand pianos off catapults. They’d asked around for spare grand pianos then set themselves up in random corners of town. I got to see one grand piano be thrown off a catapult. It was exactly as fun as you’d imagine it to be.

Not long after that, this giant, wooden, mechanical elephant came into town. It was 20 feet tall and for a while it walked around the city centre, spraying water on unsuspecting passersby. I remember once being late to meet a friend for a drink because the elephant had been on my bus route. That’d felt like a normal text to send.

The elephant had been commissioned to celebrate the centenary of Jules Verne’s death. He’s probably the most famous nantais there is, and another reason to be proud of the place. There’s just something about us, and the fact that our brains and bodies refuse to stay put. There’s a reason why the city’s motto is Favet Neptunus eunti - Neptune favours the traveller. We’re as tied to France as we are to the river, and to the sea it leads to.

I left in 2009 and every time I go back there’s something new for me to be happy about. This one time they’d put up a giant slide going all the way from the top of the city’s castle to the very bottom. It was free to use, and there for no obvious reason. Last year I went to do some shopping near Place Royale and found some Greek statues in the middle of the road, doing what looked like a conga line. Again, no explanation was given.

Whimsy aside, going back to Nantes always reminds me that things can always change, and they can always get better. The Lieu Unique is probably the best example of this. Once an art deco biscuit factory, it was empty and abandoned for a while then turned into a space housing a bar, a cafe, a restaurant, a bookshop, a gallery, a gig venue, a club and a hammam. You can go to the LU at more or less any time, day or night, and there will always be something for you to do. Nothing is lost, nothing is wasted.

Closer to home, I walked to the tramway stop near my dad’s house last week, deep in the suburbs of Orvault, and saw that the random patch of grass leading to the main road had been turned into allotments. It’d been empty for a while but obviously that couldn’t stand, not in Nantes. If we can do something with this then we will, is our unofficial motto. I walked past a group of people, young and old, tending to their fruit and vegetables, and felt my heart about to burst.

These things are beautiful and important to me because I believe that the place you grow up in can shape you just as much as your family or your friends. I have this stubborn optimism anchored deep in my soul and I’m not sure it came from my upbringing. I think it came from the city in which this upbringing took place. Who would I be if I’d been born somewhere else? I have no idea. I think I probably would have become a slightly worse, slightly more sullen version of myself. I’ve got Nantes in my bones and it often keeps me going.

This is probably why I beamed with pride over the weekend when I went to sit in the parc de Proce, which I have been visiting since my very first weeks, and heard some people speaking English. There were tourists! In my own little park! In my own little hometown! I wanted to grab them by the arm and thank them for coming, like an aggressive representative from the tourism board. What a joy it is for your city to finally be witnessed by others! It felt to me like bringing a new partner to meet your friends, and trying not to make your glee too obvious as you watch them seamlessly getting along.

After all, Nantes is mine and mine alone. My mother was born in Marrakech and my father in Normandy, and they ended up moving from Paris to Nantes only a year or so before I was born. My brother and I can truly say we are from Nantes, but we are the only ones. I didn’t end up staying there in the end, and neither did he, but I don’t think that really matters. Neptune favours the travellers and Nantes brought us up then gladly sent us away. That’s what port cities do; they’d frown at the idea of everyone staying put, when the water is right there.

I left Nantes but I kept a piece of it with me, and I carry it wherever I go, and I am always glad that it is there for me to return to. I just don’t care about France because it means nothing to me. What do people do over in Grenoble, or Toulouse? I don’t know. I don’t think it’s any of my business. Why would I want to know? I’m nantaise and that’s what matters. The rest is irrelevant.