23rd June, 2002. Avignon.
"Hôtel Garlande", a charming place on a quiet street just off the Place d’Horloge, with warm wooden wall panels and staircases, and cosy bookshelves and tapestry on the walls. We are staying in the attic bedroom, the same room, apparently, where a journalist stays every year. The romantic notion of this grips my imagination for a moment: I can imagine him sitting typing away in the tranquillity of this quaint room with its low beamed ceiling, while the hustle and bustle of Avignon continues outside. He, the journalist, oblivious to it, lost in his writer’s world.