Back again… only a few days away, but it doesn’t take much to provoke a re-evaluation of my life – in fact I’m pretty much doing it all the time lately.
What about now? What am I doing here, as in, sitting here in front of my computer writing this stuff, not in the more general existential sense. Should I continue? It feels strange today. I’ve been writing while I was away, I bought a new notebook at St Pancras and wrote all the way over on the train, about something totally different which I haven’t written about before. On Thursday evening I sat in a café in Montmartre just below Sacre Coeur, writing in my small notebook, just for the sake of being able to say I was sitting in Montmartre in a café writing. Though the Left Bank is actually more appropriate for me. I did some of that yesterday morning.
I made a pilgrimage to Shakespeare and Company. I heard about it on the radio a couple of years ago, a book shop started by an American in the 50s, where he allowed struggling writers to stay rent free in exchange for working in the shop. I’d forgotten what it was called, and I didn’t think to look it up before I left home, but on Thursday (over café crème in Montmartre) I decided that was the one thing I really wanted to do while I was there.. Fortunately I managed to find it in my Time Out guide, so I found out what it was called, and that it was on la Rue de la Bucherie, in the Latin quarter, and which square on the map in the back of the book, but I didn’t have a large scale map with a list of roads.
So, yesterday morning, when everyone else was still in bed (it was a late night on Saturday, naturellement!), I went there by myself on the Metro and wandered around in the sunshine. I found a city map and located the street, then went looking for the shop – which, as it turns out, is directly opposite Notre Dame. Imagine waking in a tiny little attic room and seeing that out of your window every morning. So, I’ve decided this is my new spiritual home. I will live on the Left Bank and write and improve my French by taking a 30 year old lover.
But in the meant time I have a Parish council meeting tonight. Should I resign? I am seriously thinking about it. If it is stopping me from taking more interesting opportunities? I don’t mean living on the Left Bank with a 30 year old Frenchman and writing (at a push I might even settle for 35). But Carlo has asked me to stay for a ‘steering group’ meeting after the Brussels meeting in 5 weeks, to talk about working on the website. When he mentioned it before, I’m sure he said it could be a day a week, which would be a big chunk of time. And if I got more involved with editing for the MOMD in Oxford, that would take up a lot of time too. These are both so much more interesting than the PC.
What I am arguing myself towards here is something quite drastic, I guess. Do I have the courage to do it?