a found photograph

In order to carry my mother's old desk downstairs - it helpfully divided into two sets of drawers and a top - I had to take the drawers out to lighten it, and found a few of sleeves of photos that had fallen down behind them - some of which I swear I've never seen, including this one of me.  That would make sense - I went on to Italy for a month after this was taken, presumably by my father, and he would have had the film developed back in London.

So where and when was it taken?  As I said, I have no memory of it, although the Biba top semi-dates it.  La Rascasse?  The scorpion fish?  So, France.  There are, of course, a number of La Rascasse restaurants, none with lettering like this ... until I hit upon an old photo in Getty Images, and, yes, it was in Marseilles!  So that would date it to latish August, 1975.  What I do remember, then, was that it was a ghastly, nightmarish evening.  I'd been in Corsica for a week with my parents, who emphatically were not getting on.  It was just after Bastille Day.  My father had totally failed to comprehend the impossibility of finding somewhere to stay, in France, at that time of the year, if one hadn't made a reservation.  I can't remember him having a row with my mother, but he must have done - we'd ended up, all three of us, in one room in a very seedy port hotel, and at some point, after dinner, he and I both found ourselves, separately, in this room, wondering if we could each sneak out and away.  We didn't, of course - having caught each other in the thwarted act of non-escape.  But what would then have happened?  My mother would have been stuck in Marseilles?  With or without the car, or would he have taken that, figuring that she and I could work out what to do?  What I certainly remember was how happy I was to be on a train the next morning - first stop, I think, was Milan.  No wonder I'm looking pained and sultry.