Long weekend

So apart from keeping my right hand gripping whatever fabric is covering my right buttock so that I don't suffer another unintentional reveal, I've been in Paris this weekend, which was excellent. I was there on a course called Adventures in Non-Fiction, which in true expat Parisian style was held at the world's most ridiculous bookshop, Shakespeare & Co. For the uninitiated, imagine you are a forty-year old American divorcee who has always yearned to jack it all in, sweep up her dog, Loopy, and her mop-headed son, Sam, and head to the French capital to fulfill her always-yearned-for-but-never-once-voiced-in-four-decades lifelong dream of setting up a bookshop. It's ramshackle, clearly in breach of all UK fire restrictions, with wooden ladders affixed to brass rails to help you reach the higher shelves. Our classroom was a reading area upstairs, the walls crammed floor-to-ceiling with second-hand tomes, wooden pews around the edges of the room with scatter cushions scattered liberally, pink geraniums in the window box, a view of Notre Dame beyond, bunches of lavender on the sills wafting their scent in on the Autumn breeze along the occasional sound of an accordian player busking for tourists, mismatched cups, battered tin trays, superlative biscuits, a faded Moroccan rug over uneven floorboards, a farcially well-behaved black dog called Colette, a friendly fat cat to stroke, charming bilingual staff, bedrooms available for free to struggling writers... Even better, it has history, with regulars to its old premises including Hemingway and other impressive writers I've already forgotten, and some seriously groovy cats from the seventies like all those French writers whose names I've also misplaced. They were cool though. And influential. Anyone who's anyone's been to Shakespeare & Co. And then there is me.

So I arrived on Thursday night, settled in nicely to my room on the 23rd floor of a tower block in the 13th, learned the word for mortgage in French (now forgotten again), went to bed, overslept, arrived fifteen minutes en retard for the start of the course, met my coursemates while covered in sweat, my previously bouffant fringe now plastered to my forehead, missed the croissants (instant overpowering foot-stamping rage), asked a billion questions and no doubt made the other participants wish I'd slept until sixteen hundred hours instead of only 09:15.

First day's tutor was Francis Wheen, definitely one of the most erudite people I've ever had the fortune to be lectured by for around nine hours, bursting with stories about everything and everyone, dropping so many famous names that the area on the desk in front of him looked like someone had given this year's Who's Who a vigorous shaking. Fascinating and not unfond anecdotes poured out, from the young Tony Blair to... for fuck's sake, I literally cannot remember anyone else. What the hell is wrong with my brain? Anyway. The stories were gripping. And alongside all that, we got a massively helpful masterclass in non-fiction writing, particularly biography, eight students sitting agog as Francis educated and entertained, seemingly without inhaling, until 5pm, and from 10am until lunchtime on Saturday. If he ever wants to turn his hand to the didgeridoo (or any other skill requiring circular breathing), I've no doubt he'll be a hit. In the relevant circles.

I wrote eight pages of notes about research and timelines and other important things, and went away from that section feeling exhausted and enthused. From Saturday lunchtime until Sunday afternoon, Francis' place at the desk was taken by Jon Ronson, non-fiction writer and documentary-maker for film and TV, best known for The Men Who Stare At Goats, who added to the absurdly impressive collection of names on the desk by telling discreet stories about the time he lived with Robbie Williams, and George Clooney's insecurities and... oh I honestly don't know why I bother. I think he mentioned The Fall, but I might have made that up. Basically, unless it's about me, I can't remember anything. And even then I struggle.

Equally fascinating but utterly different, this second half of the course was more about finding great stories and developing our own ideas. Having thought LLFF was the limit of my writing landscape, I am now considering attempting a longer project and it's scaring the M&S opaque tights off me.

But all in all, it was money brilliantly spent: dreamy lunches at a make-shift trestle table on the pavement outside the bookshop, juicy quiches, salads, chocolate, yoghurts and juice on two days, and a nearby couscous restaurant on Saturday; an inspiring and enthralling combination of course tutors; crisp, bright, Parisian weather; free accommodation; interesting, kind and impressive coursemates - one with a ridiculously cute baby that sat on my lap for ages and was all warm and podgy; an amazing vintage store in the Marais that's open til 11pm, where I bought three dresses for 10 Euros each; a vague frisson of flirtation with someone who I didn't really want to kiss as it would be in breach of the boyban and I don't want to reawaken my comatose libido, and I wasn't sure from looking at his lips whether he'd be a good kisser, but then who generously developed a cold so I immediately went off him which couldn't have been more convenient if it tried; some lovely white wine and a few episodes of Arrested Development on DVD. Basically perfect.

My alarm went off at 05:15 Paris time this morning, and I came back to London on the 07:13 Eurostar, nodding off during the 2hr 15min ride with my old favourite alphabetical list game ("I went home to London and I brought Apple tart, a Box of macaroons, a Computer, DVDs, Estee Lauder foundation, Finnish memories, Good ideas, Housekeys, an iPod, a book by Jon Ronson...) Am now in the office feeling like I've recently done an optical rinse with battery acid and wondering how I will manage to stand without weeping during this evening's choir practice.

Dead a long time, dead a long time...