«Cette fois, l'obsession de Claude entrait en lutte: il regardait opiniâtrement le visage de cet homme, tentait de distinguer enfin quelque expression dans la pénombre où le laissait l'ampoule allumée derrière lui. Forme aussi indistincte que les feux de la côte somalie perdus dans l'intensité du clair de lune où miroitaient les salines (…) Un ton de voix d'une ironie insistante ...» (…) Claude, sentant l'odeur de poussière, de chanvre et de mouton attachée à ses habits ...»

Friday 14th November. The 10:22 am TGV to Paris. I open my book, a tattered copy of André Malraux, La Voix Royale, picked up last night in the second-hand bookshop in the Rue de Verdun. I'm pleased: my newly acquired writer's eye spots Concrete! Specific! Detailed! I know where Claude is; I can see what Claude can see, I can hear what Claude can hear and I can even smell what Claude can smell … 

Wednesday 12th November. First meeting of my Writing Class: 6 women in what looks like an old-fashioned grocery shop, shelves full of tins of equally old-fashioned English food: Bisto, Oxo cubes, Colman's mustard. If you look at the ceiling though, way up, the impression changes: it's the hall of a medieval stronghold, with thick wooden beams

Tutor Fiona asks us all to write sentences about red, blue, love, hate, then make a selection. I'm surprised at what comes out of my pen, some of it pretty good, I think: evocative, colourful, lively. She spots my wide geographical background. Well done, Fiona, I've done a lot of travel-blogging.

I love some of the sentences the others write: Wendy's Cadbury's recollections – suddenly there is chocolate in the air. If you don't write this book, Wendy, I will! Fellow student Fiona's writing smells of the garrigue, thyme, rosemary: Hot sunshine, a local farmhouse, raspberries. It is full of sounds and voices.

We are also surrounded by sound in this unusual location: outside kids are rapping and it's not until I leave that I notice we are next to Antirouille, a place I have only seen on posters so far. I liked the name, but had no idea where it was. Now I know. If my writing progresses, I might take some of it next door and rap it. They'll hate it, but who cares?