IT doesn't seem all that long ago since we were last in Marseille and noted the apocalyptic reaction of the media here to the World Cup draw which was to bring the dreaded English support to the city to mingle with a massive Tunisian exile backing, so we returned this week anticipating a city in a mood of imminent siege.

But after strolling around the neighbourhood of the stadium and down through the harbour where the tourists were being conned into thinking that the bits of deceased fish floating in tepid water was a genuine bouillabaisse and finding not an emblem, poster, banner or pennant denoting the greatest sporting event in the world was about to hit town, you would think the city was bracing itself for nothing more than a visitation from the Shropshire branch of the Women's Rural Institute.

You have even to believe me when I tell you that some of the bartenders couldn't remember who was playing whom in the first game in their city.

Having recently been in Montpellier, Bordeaux, Nantes and Paris as well as along the south coast and experiencing a similar limp interest we were beginning to think that detection of the World Cup in France could only be with the aid of the Hubble telescope.

There is a surprising absence of flaunting of the event in the very country that established the power of graffiti in the first place and from that the art of the declamatory poster.

This reticence for whatever reason has driven Platini to despair for his concept has been based on community involvement, linking fringe events to games. But here in Marseille with its decidedly low World Cup profile we could have interpreted that as typical regional perversity.

For this is a state within a state, liking to go its own way and instinctively reacting adversely to anything which emanates from Paris even from the great Platini who is himself a man of the south. This hatred of Paris is so intense that in the Under-21 game the French played here last Saturday against South Africa, every time a Paris St Germain player touched the ball he was booed to such an extent the coach admitted it had affected their play and they were substituted.

He has to watch whom he picks here.

This is an interesting variation on ''which school did you go to, son?'' when it comes to team selection.

Now admittedly not everybody is apathetic about what is in store. There is the Marseille special anti-terrorist gendarmerie who were put on display at the Velodrome this week to demonstrate how they will deploy themselves against even recalcitrant Essex man.

They look as if they were prepared at the Soddom and Gomorrah charm school and you get the feeling from them that the idea of handing out a traffic ticket is pumping you full of lead.

Curiously they allowed the television cameras in and the pictures were widely shown that night of them swooping through their routine in the stadium. The only terrorists about were those selling sandwiches at exorbitant prices and it may well be that the message is being deliberately spread through the media that the man in the crowd next to you might have a surprise in store if you move a muscle out of place.

For we are not talking about those smart uniformed men who help old ladies over the rues. No, these are French Serpicos, scruffy looking individuals whom you might think could be charged with vagrancy but whose bulges about person might not be strictly anatomical. For the guns were taken out and in communicating with one another by field radio they moved around the stadium like a security corps de ballet.

They had obviously all watched ''The Day of the Jackal''. Now that is impressive enough but out in the streets there is really no sense of informed apprehension or excitement amongst those you talk to.

The last time such a thing perplexed me was in 1984 in Los Angeles for the Olympic Games.

In that greatly self-obsessed city the games seem no more than the passing through town of some humdrum trade show and you would not have known the Olympics were there unless you were actually inside the venue itself. There was certainly no sense of communal identity with the event.

At the moment France is something like that and is, apart from some media sideshows, displaying the puzzling reticence to holler about it all from the rooftops. Perhaps in the last 48 hours or so before kick-off all these promised street parties around the country will spark off genuine clamour.

For would it not be the final irony that hosting the greatest sporting event in the world would lend the French of all people a reputation for modesty.