Did you know that one of the major tourist attrac­tions in Mar­rakech is the cats? I didn’t either, but Avery quickly cor­rected me on that point. Dur­ing our entire visit she was on a one-girl mis­sion to see, count and pet every cat in the city. I can assure that assid­u­ous hand-washing was insisted on by her mother, but I have to admit I’m a sucker for a cat, too. We saw 43 in one day, Avery wants me to tell you.

Sat­ur­day saw us all fully battery-ed up and ready for another adven­ture, or sev­eral. Because he is, like Mary Pop­pins, prac­ti­cally per­fect in every way, Vin­cent had arranged for us to have access to a swim­ming pool at a nearby riad, so after another divine break­fast under the blaz­ing sun and the ever-helpful eye of Brigitte, we all gath­ered in the cen­ter court­yard to nego­ti­ate who was going where: Pam wanted to go to the mar­ket, Boyd and Emmanuel wanted to stay and soak up some sun, and Avery and I were adamant that if there was a pool, we were going swim­ming. As we dis­cussed all these pos­si­bil­i­ties, Vin­cent began danc­ing in the blinky sun­light to the Brazil­ian music that seemed to pour end­lessly from the hotel stereos. Now there are peo­ple who can dance and look divinely sexy and ele­gant, and that’s fine. But when he called over to me, “Kris­ten, come and dance with me,” I had to decline. “Three strikes against me, Vin­cent: I’m too Amer­i­can, I’m too white, and I’m sober.”

So Vin­cent, Pete, Mike, John and Avery and I headed through the labryn­thine paths of the Med­ina behind a guide’s back and fol­lowed him to another small hotel, in the cen­ter court­yard of which was… the small­est and COLD­EST swim­ming pool we had ever encoun­tered. How did they GET it so cold!! Pete dashed in, then Mike crept in up to his knees, laugh­ing hys­ter­i­cally, then Avery and I approached the water, then he said, “All you can do is just take the plunge,” and did so. “OHMIGOD!” So I ducked my head and just dived in. Yikes! Mike bravely averred, “After awhile, if you kick about, it gets bet­ter,” but truth be told, if you stayed in and kicked about, you sim­ply lost all feel­ing in your body and that made it seem bet­ter. After we felt we had shown suf­fi­cient chutz­pah, we all slith­ered out under the gaze of nice dry Vin­cent and John (was it a deri­sive gaze, or an admir­ing one? not sure) onto white mats and tow­els, and soaked up the sun com­ing from the open roof of the court­yard. “This is the life,” I said. “And I, who eats Ren­nies and Tums all day in Lon­don, have not had one scrap of indi-jaggers since we got here. I think the bac­te­ria in the water of Morocco agrees with me.” Vin­cent said, “It’s called relaxation.”

Off again then to change and head out with what turned out to be our long-suffering guide Abdul for a tour of some of the offi­cial sights. Poor guy. He was prob­a­bly a very good guide, but between Mike’s con­stant laugh­ter, Avery’s insis­tence on stop­ping to pet every kit­ten she saw, my obses­sion with the street food stalls, and Emmanuel’s “shiny object syn­drome,” it was like herd­ing cats to keep us together. At one point we got together with Jane and Peter at the gor­geous Palace Badii, home of the king, his four wives and 24 con­cu­bines (I briefly con­sid­ered explain­ing this all to Avery and then decided to pre­serve a cow­ardly silence). Intri­cate painted wooden carv­ing that for some rea­son reminded me of the Russ­ian dachas we saw out­side Moscow, and del­i­cate stucco trac­ery, plus enor­mously com­plex and rich mosaic tiles. It really was worth the visit. From there we trailed around the Jew­ish quar­ter and the Kas­bah, elud­ing our guide at cru­cial moments when he doubt­less had the most impor­tant gem to share with us! I did feel sorry for him.

We were so fas­ci­nated by fig trees, orange trees, bread ovens, patis­serie carts and lit­tle shops that to keep us on the straight and nar­row was never going to hap­pen. But he served one impor­tant pur­pose besides edu­ca­tion (and we did learn a lot): we didn’t get lost. Finally we ended up in the main pub­lic square and he was more than happy to leave us there, I think. We met up with every­one else at the souk and every­one accom­plished last-minute shop­ping goals: sun­glasses for Avery, one more flow­ing robe for Pete, and then John headed off with Pam to seal the deal on our car­pets. We agreed to meet up out­side the car­pet pas­sage, and Avery and I set out to score some Moroc­can candy.

Sev­eral kid­nap attempts later (well, I’m exag­ger­at­ing), and finally tir­ing of the crowds, Mike, Avery and I way­laid our car­pet guide of the day before and con­vinced him to remove the poster from the door, undo the pad­locks, and lead us to John. “Keep hold of my hand, Avery!” Mike shouted. The cor­ri­dors and squares that had been empty the day before were now crowded with shrouded women sell­ing what appeared to be car-boot booty: used shoes, old fab­rics, chipped dishes. It was a mad­house! “Make a right at the ostrich car­cass!” Avery yelled to me, strug­gling to keep up behind her. Com­pletely mad. Finally we reached John, who looked as though he had been dragged through the eye of a nee­dle. “Go on to the hotel, I’m almost fin­ished here,” he said through grit­ted teeth. “Bar­gain­ing going well?” I asked, then we left and caught a taxi to the hotel. It was nearly time for the long-awaited birth­day din­ner at the top restau­rant in Morocco, and we were… dirty.

Fri­day dawned hot and fair, and Avery woke me up to drag me up the steep flights of stairs to the roof ter­race, where every­one, includ­ing Pete who had just arrived before I awoke, had assem­bled for break­fast. Could there be a more idyl­lic set­ting? Every­one remarked on the beau­ti­ful ancient mosque adja­cent to the riad (Moroc­can for “home”, but only if your idea of home is a small palace), and the morn­ing prayers ema­nat­ing from it at 4 a.m. I was smug in my pos­ses­sion of a very effi­cient white-noise-maker, and had not been awak­ened at all by the sounds (turns out “Ama­zon rain­for­est” trumps prayers as far as deci­bels go, or maybe I was just very tired).

I have to say that life is a lit­tle more glam­orous, a lit­tle more edgy, and I in par­tic­u­lar a lit­tle more self-conscious when one’s break­fast com­pan­ions include two pro­fes­sional pho­tog­ra­phers and one fash­ion designer! Not that he ever said any­thing about my admit­tedly low­brow Gap and what­ever else cloth­ing, but Vincent’s friend Emmanuel’s impec­ca­ble style and run­ning com­men­tary on all things clothing-related was a def­i­nite kick to my lazi­ness as far as fash­ion goes. He is one of those men on whom cloth­ing hangs like on a hanger, broad-shouldered, tall and quite per­fect look­ing, and I found myself want­ing to hide behind Avery’s cool sense of style. But at the same time, he exists in a sort of oth­er­worldly state of inno­cence, float­ing through con­ver­sa­tions, meals, shop­ping trips and par­ties in a sort of gen­tle kind­ness. Emmanuel is one of those peo­ple for whom John’s and my invented phrase “shiny-object syn­drome” was intended: his eye is con­stantly being caught by some­thing that will then inspire his fash­ion designs, be it a rare plant in the Yves Saint Lau­rent gar­den, a length of fab­ric in the mar­ket, or Avery’s hair­style, and he flits from sub­ject to sub­ject with absolute spontaneity.

Then Mike was a source of con­stant laugh­ter, as well as doc­u­ment­ing our hol­i­day with the devo­tion of a kindly paparazzo. He has the professional’s abil­ity to frame shots, find the per­fect angle, and some­how turn quite an ordi­nary sit­u­a­tion into an event to record. Avery admired his trick of hold­ing his cam­era over­head as he walks, to cap­ture the activ­ity behind him with energy and sim­plic­ity. I guess prac­tice makes per­fect! He and John spent a lot of time talk­ing cam­eras, and I’m cer­tainly look­ing for­ward to his pic­tures of the week­end. But mostly Mike’s con­tri­bu­tion to any sit­u­a­tion was his bub­bling, con­spir­a­to­r­ial, seduc­tive laugh­ter. What a gift to find most of life amusing!

And Boyd was… Boyd. Total icon­o­clast, refus­ing to pre­tend enthu­si­asm for the swarm­ing mar­ket when all the rest of us were in a state of avarice and bargain-hunting, watch­ing the activ­ity with the indul­gence of a favorite uncle, find­ing us all quite nutty. I have a feel­ing that there are still waters run­ning deep with Boyd, because Vin­cent (who knows him very well) kept say­ing, “Where’s Boyd?”, and Boyd would protest that he did not always have to be out­ra­geous, he could sim­ply enjoy him­self on hol­i­day, couldn’t he? Was he on good behav­ior for us? He said not, and we can only hope to get to know him bet­ter and see how his funny, ironic demeanor devel­ops. Com­pletely good company.

Pete was what I am now com­ing to think of as his typ­i­cal self: unruf­fled, always calm, act­ing as the per­fect foil for Vincent’s change­able, mer­cu­r­ial charm. He can tell a story bet­ter than any­one I know, I think, one involv­ing a farm­house (could the story have been set in Morocco? per­haps) that was an absolute tip, a dis­as­ter of mess and filth, and when the own­ers invite guests in, they look around at the debris and moan, “Oh, no, someone’s left the cow flap open!” Loung­ing in his tra­di­tional Moroc­can long robe (must find the word for it, like an Ara­bic sari-ish), he radi­ated benev­o­lent good humour all weekend.

Then there were Peter and Jane, the gallery own­ers from Not­ting Hill whose space had engen­dered in my such envy last fall, and who were part of such a fes­tive evening at Vincent’s house around the same time, as well. We’re hop­ing to make it to their next show, “Paule Veze­lay and her cir­cle: Paris & the South of France,” open­ing on Thurs­day. Check it out if you can; Peter and Jane have a very quirky and stim­u­lat­ing aes­thetic and you’ll be glad you put their gallery on your radar screen. I hope there’s a spe­cial place in the after­life for peo­ple who are nice to other people’s chil­dren. Both Peter and Jane, and in fact every­one Vin­cent invited to share his birth­day, treated Avery like an actual per­son, which was a relief since they could eas­ily have seen the one small child invited as crash­ing bore. What nice people.

Break­fast was a tri­umph of sim­plic­ity: glo­ri­ous fresh-squeezed orange juice, a frosted glass of mixed local fruit (peaches were very much in sea­son) topped with unsweet­ened yogurt, rich cafe au lait, and every day a dif­fer­ent lit­tle bread: Fri­day was a lemony corn bread in thick slices, Sat­ur­day lit­tle crepes, and Sun­day rolls speck­led with some native seed. Just deli­cious. After con­fer­ring in the sunny court­yard (while Avery amused her­self with the flower petals strewn all over the floor, more falling from the bougainvil­lea as the min­utes passed) we decided to head to the Jardin Majorelle, a glo­ri­ous tan­gle of inter­na­tional plants orig­i­nally designed by the painter Louis Majorelle in 1924 and recently restored by Yves Saint Lau­rent, amaz­ingly. The gar­den is nearly as remark­able for the over­whelm­ing blue (a sort of impos­si­bly cobalt shade) of its pots and walls, as for its flow­ers, but it is worth a visit in any case. Both Emmanuel and Mike snapped innu­mer­able pho­tos as we wan­dered among the wind­ing paths. Bam­boo so old and tough that peo­ple have scratched graf­fiti into it! Cacti sprout­ing blos­soms, strange spi­dery ferns grow­ing per­fectly hor­i­zon­tally, amaz­ing. On a truly hot day it would be an oasis of calm and cool, and as it was on our per­fect day it was a real pleasure.

From there we emerged into a sort of unof­fi­cial taxi rank and were imme­di­ately set upon by what might have been three broth­ers, or at least three very solid busi­ness part­ners, who assured us that they were absolutely nec­es­sary for our hap­pi­ness. Vin­cent dis­cussed with them var­i­ous lunch pos­si­bil­i­ties, and we ended up in the opu­lent and oh so exotic Palais Chahra­mane in the Jew­ish quar­ter of Mar­rakech, eat­ing until I thought we would have to be rolled out. A first course of seem­ingly end­less dishes of veg­eta­bles to share, accom­pa­nied by typ­i­cal Moroc­can round bread: steamed car­rots, cour­gettes, hari­cots verts, aubergines stewed with gar­lic and toma­toes, gor­geous lentilles with pars­ley, still al dente, mar­i­nated cucum­bers, roasted beets. Then it was onto a Moroc­can del­i­cacy called a pastilla, which I can describe only as a sort of bak­lawa stuffed with roast chicken. Seri­ously. A crispy, del­i­cate, sug­ared puff pas­try crust, with chicken and cin­na­mon inside. Glo­ri­ous! Then a tagine of chicken, scat­tered with oil-cured olives and scented with pre­served lemons (although the lemons them­selves were not part of the fin­ished dish, as I have had before), slow-roasted lamb shank that had the con­sis­tency of a Peking duck, richly fatty and crispy, falling off the bone.

The best dish of all, though, to my mind was my plat­ter of tiny lit­tle Moroc­can meat­balls, kef­tas, served in a tomato sauce with two per­fectly poached eggs nes­tled among them. The fla­vor of egg yolk plus gar­licky tomato plus lamb was ridicu­lously and unex­pect­edly deli­cious, and although it had sounded odd on the menu, I’m so glad I tried it. Not that I plan to drop an egg in my next skil­let of spaghetti and meat­balls, but still, it was a del­i­cacy, and tasted very for­eign and exotic, and after all, that’s the point, isn’t it?

Finally there was an enor­mous mound of cous­cous topped with roasted pep­pers and aubergines, and although I don’t nor­mally groove to cous­cous, I tried it in the spirit of the day (and also to keep up with Avery who was eat­ing her weight in every­thing). It was a rev­e­la­tion: supremely fluffy and light, with real fla­vor. It must be a dif­fer­ent vari­ety alto­gether to what we get here, or in Amer­ica. Just when we thought we couldn’t eat another bite, along came a huge plat­ter with a tow­er­ing pile of oranges, their shiny green leaves still on the stems. Vin­cent asked for a lit­tle dish of can­nelle, cin­na­mon, and showed us how to dip the peeled sec­tions of orange into it. Now, I have always been a bit anti-oranges, not being a girl who adores pith, but I was glad I devi­ated this time, because the fla­vor of the oranges was beyond any­thing I have ever had before. Some­one reminded me that the road to the air­port was lined with orange groves, and cer­tainly these were the fresh­est I have ever tasted.

It was such fun to sit back among the glit­ter­ing cush­ions, look up at the walls and ceil­ing entirely cov­ered with bright tiles, lis­ten to the out­ra­geous con­ver­sa­tion, def­i­nitely not rated G, but since Avery didn’t seem to mind, we didn’t mind. I think it was a case of the bits of the con­ver­sa­tion we wouldn’t have wanted her to under­stand being so over her head that it didn’t mat­ter! For some rea­son, too, Pete got stuck hum­ming the theme song to “I Dream of Jean­nie,” and by the end of the lunch we all were as well. And “Avery, if you had to be one of the Flint­stones, would you be Fred or Wilma?” My French came back in leaps and bounds, remind­ing me as I was reminded in Paris last fall, use it or lose it.

Lord have mercy, we ate. Then we came out into the sun again and there were our taxi dri­vers, wait­ing to take us to the mar­ket, the souk Jemaa El Fnaa. Now, I am not much for bar­gain­ing. I like to know what some­thing costs and just either do it or not. But bar­gain­ing was expected, and Avery took to it like the prover­bial duck to water. It’s a bit of a tragedy, though, because some­how since her pur­chases the lit­tle guys have gone miss­ing: two lit­tle leather camels com­plete with bri­dles and hal­ters. Can we have left them in the riad? Brigitte has not found them so far, but I haven’t given up hope. Avery went in with a cer­tain amount of money and great deter­mi­na­tion, and emerged totally tri­umphant, like­wise with a silky bright blue top and trousers, and a lit­tle pair of slip­pers for Anna. To match her own pair, a gift from Vin­cent. Can you imag­ine, each of us found a pair of exquis­ite leather slip­pers, called baboushes, each a dif­fer­ent color and everyone’s the per­fect size, by our beds on arrival at the riad. Vin­cent sets a very high bar for the role of host. Hey: it was his birth­day; why was he giv­ing presents? Because that’s Vincent.

Every­one was shop­ping for tex­tiles, sil­ver, shoes, bags, and then John and I were intro­duced to Vincent’s car­pet source, Brahim Frifra, of the Bazar El Hamra, tucked away in the secret recesses of the mar­ket. Not for Vin­cent the eas­ily acces­si­ble, open shops at which lesser mor­tals find their wares. No, we had to be led down a dark pas­sage, to a pad­locked door hid­den by a poster of the sights of Mar­rakech, which was furtively moved to one side and the door opened by a silent lit­tle man, who led us through a filthy court­yard, past a tiny bak­ery set back in the wall, past an old marche des esclaves, slave mar­ket, up a crum­bling stair­case, down another pas­sage through which dust motes danced in the light, and then… the most beau­ti­ful car­pets you can imag­ine. John bar­gained, more and more were brought out to show us. “Spe­cial price just for you. Spe­cial spe­cial price, will not be any lower,” and tat­tered books of busi­ness cards of “famous” and “impor­tant” cus­tomers rev­er­ently dis­played for our admi­ra­tion. Finally we set­tled on a large one, a medium-sized one, and a small one for Avery, just like Goldilocks.

I got my wish and vis­ited one of the spice stalls, with tow­er­ing pyra­mids of dusky cumin, paprika, corian­der, every spice you can imag­ine, piled in cans out­side, and inside a ver­i­ta­ble shangri-la of spices, oils, pig­ments, medica­ments, you name it. I bought a mix­ture called ras el hanout, a Moroc­can sort of curry pow­der, smelling strongly of cumin, and a bag of lemon gin­ger pow­der, a small mound of Moroc­can saf­fron which the pro­pri­etor assured me was miles bet­ter than Indian saf­fron. And a jar of some­thing called argan oil, reputed to cure every­thing and make it taste bet­ter at the same time.

At last we made our way to the grand square in front of the mar­ket and, if you can believe it, hailed a caleche, a horse-drawn car­riage to take us back to the hotel. So exotic, so for­eign! Just won­der­ful, heav­enly to sit down finally, even with Avery on my lap so we could all fit, and jounce along past all the don­key carts, the snake charm­ers, the covered-up women, feral cats, and drink it all in. I often feel that the world is becom­ing one enor­mous Star­bucks, enlivened by Wal-Marts and McDonald’s and dressed by the Gap, so to find myself in a place of such wild weird­ness was truly a relief. I have to get out more, clearly.

Arriv­ing at the hotel, sweet Moham­mad asked if there was any­thing we needed, and it was but the work of a moment to ask for a cou­ple of glasses of ice, and after run­ning down a list of pos­si­bil­i­ties, a glass of jus de peche for Avery, and retire to our room. How cosy to hear a dis­creet “knock knock” on the wall out­side our room, and Moham­mad come in with a sil­ver tray. What lux­ury! After we all relaxed for a bit, had a cock­tail, and scraped the dust off our­selves and pret­tied up, it was time for a can­dlelit din­ner around the shal­low cen­tral pool. Lovely bro­chettes de viande and lit­tle parcels of pas­try hold­ing cheese, or spring-roll-like crunchy veg­eta­bles. I wish I knew what they were called, but they are a sort of Moroc­can ver­sion of the Indian samosa.

Vincent’s sis­ter Pam arrived, stir­ring up for me a whole lifetime-ago mem­ory of her hold­ing week-old Baby Avery in our New York apart­ment. Isn’t it hard to sep­a­rate a real mem­ory from a pho­to­graph? Would I remem­ber that day with­out the pic­ture of us all, Vin­cent, Pam and our friends Chris and Marla, all star­ing down at the baby in Pam’s arms, me to the side and John behind the cam­era. A long time ago. I felt so lucky that we were still friends with these lovely peo­ple, ten years on.

And how cosy, too, to carry a very tired Avery to her own room adja­cent to ours. I remem­ber child­hood evenings of being put to bed while a grownup party was still going on, and how peace­ful it felt. A day and evening to remember…

First, I must say that to get away, pure and sim­ple, is a tonic. You, or at least I, don’t even know you need to. Sure you’re a bit accus­tomed to the whole rou­tine of food shop­ping, prep, cook­ing, cleanup (some­where in between there is the actual meal), laun­dry, school run, home­work super­vi­sion, clear­ing up after cats and humans. And it’s pleas­ant enough, any­way. Noth­ing needs to change.

Then your friend invites you to the per­fect exotic adven­ture: a week­end in Mar­rakech, Morocco, of all things, to cel­e­brate his birth­day. Only Vin­cent would do such a thing, after all. But he did, and we agreed, and then promptly put it out of our minds. I guess in the daily and weekly pleas­ant grind of horse­back rid­ing lessons, skat­ing lessons, keep­ing up with the blog, house hunt­ing and what­ever else, it just dis­ap­peared. Until we found our­selves last Thurs­day after­noon at yet another house with yet another estate agent, and he asked, “Any plans for the Bank Hol­i­day week­end?” Now, being long famil­iar with what I think of still as dear British odd­i­ties, I don’t flinch any­more at the phrase “Bank Hol­i­day,” but it did give me just enough pause to won­der, “what does it really mean,” so I looked it up. Of course it dates back 130 years, as does every­thing except things that date back 1000 years. But it’s to do with cel­e­brat­ing or observ­ing cer­tain impor­tant anniver­saries and also mak­ing sure work­ers have enough Mon­days off to jus­tify the occa­sional week­end away. In any case, we sud­denly realised, “We’re going to Morocco this evening.” When we men­tioned this to the estate agent, a father of a new­born baby, he sim­ply sighed. “Take me with you?” I had to say, “No, I’m embar­rassed to say that we haven’t even thought about what we’re going to do, haven’t researched or planned any­thing. We’re really going just to be with our friend Vin­cent for his birthday.”

The sweet guy said, “But that’s the best sort of hol­i­day. No plans, no expec­ta­tions. You are going to have the best time.”

So we raced home with Avery, packed in a haz­ardous unplanned sort of fash­ion (tuck­ing in for­mal dress for the offi­cial birth­day din­ner, of course), and took off for Gatwick. In the train on the way, I have to admit I suc­cumbed to Extreme Antic­i­pa­tion. All around me were other hol­i­day mak­ers, a cou­ple of thirty-something ladies trav­el­ing together, a middle-aged lady oppo­site Avery and me who took up two seats and was glued to her lap­top the entire jour­ney, a dapper-looking young man across the aisle who answered his mobile, “Si?” All on their way to the air­port! Who knows why. Just the thought of where, and why, was excit­ing. And I had a new book to enter­tain me. “Mur­der on the Menu,” and I would rec­om­mend it with­out reser­va­tion. It has every­thing: sum­maries of mys­tery plots, descrip­tions of loca­tions, analy­sis of typ­i­cal fic­tional detec­tives, and… recipes for all the dishes in mys­tery nov­els! Per­fect mind­less travel lit­er­a­ture, plus pro­vid­ing the odd tempt­ing recipe for an appetite antic­i­pat­ing sev­eral long hours of bad food, if any.

After the most bor­ing and cramped of flights, we arrived near mid­night in Mar­rakech, to be picked up by a dri­ver and led to a van we were to share (Vin­cent thinks of every­thing) with one Mike Red­fern, who was shortly to become our best mate over the week­end. A pho­tog­ra­pher by pro­fes­sion, he chat­ted with us about Vin­cent, pho­tog­ra­phy, Morocco and what­ever else we could find to enter­tain each other until we pulled up out­side the Med­ina, the old walled city, and were trun­dled with all our stuff to the place that became home for three days, the Riad El Ouarda, manned that evening by the incom­pa­ra­bly ele­gant and bright-smiled Mohammed. Vin­cent was there to throw his wel­com­ing and bear­like arms about us all, and we stum­bled through a can­dlelit court­yard, fra­grant with bouganivil­lea and pep­pered with faint chirp­ings of what would prove to be hun­dreds of spar­rows, right out the heavy bro­cade cur­tains of our rooms. Spec­tac­u­larly cosy, if that makes sense. Into bed we tum­bled, to await the next day’s adventures…

I do rel­ish a sen­tence that I’ve never heard uttered before. This one might take the cake. Can I tell you we’ve been to Marrakech?

I have SO MUCH to tell you, loads of pic­tures I want to show you. But suf­fice to say we’ve been to Africa and back in the last three days and it’s nearly mid­night. So I shall leave you merely with this bit of direc­tion in the post title, and I’ll also con­fess that I don’t even know if it WAS an ostrich. But it was upside down, very dead, and only one of the bizarre and mar­vel­lous things that hap­pened to us on our Moroc­can adven­ture. More tomorrow…

But first, before I tell you about my new class, I have to rec­om­mend a totally addic­tive British minis­eries called “State of Play.” It’s a crack­ing thriller about a gov­ern­ment min­is­ter whose assis­tant turns up under a tube train, set­ting in motion a whole series of events that don’t seem as if they could pos­si­bly be con­nected, but… well, you know. I came upon it in my quest to watch all things con­tain­ing the incan­des­cent James McAvoy, and he’s well worth the hunt. But the actors are all mar­vel­lous: Bill Nighy, John Simm, David Mor­ris­sey and oh! Marc War­ren, who is so won­der­ful in “Hus­tle.”

And then there’s the wickedly funny and oh so totally British sit­com “Shame­less.” We were led to this by my film friend who knows I’ll watch any­thing with James McAvoy, but really it’s Anne-Marie Duff (his real-life wife) who steals the show. It’s set in Strat­ford on a coun­cil estate and you have to give it at least fif­teen min­utes before you think you don’t like it. Cig­a­rettes, chil­dren drink­ing lager in school uni­forms, peo­ple get­ting drunk and end­ing up in car boots on their way to Calais on the ferry. It’s writ­ten by the won­der­ful Paul Abbott who wrote “State of Play,” but you could hardly find two projects less like each other. “Shame­less” is auto­bi­o­graph­i­cally based, though, so that may account for the range. Any­way, two really addic­tive pro­grammes for you to enjoy.

But my new writ­ing class! As you know, I have slogged through a lot of classes at Citylit, try­ing to find my niche. Fic­tion? Nope, don’t have a gritty novel in me, as my class­mates seemed to want me to try to pull out. Screen­writ­ing? Hmm, I hate most films, so no, that’s not my world it turns out. Com­edy writ­ing? I’m just not that funny (although we had fun in the class). A one-day work­shop last year called “Auto­bi­og­ra­phy into Fic­tion” was on the right track, but one day isn’t enough to find out if you’re cut out for the sub­ject. Now, last week I started “Cre­ative Non-Fiction,” and it’s… right up my alley! It’s basi­cally about turn­ing your own life into some­thing you can write about and not be sim­ply report­ing the facts. Like this blog, only more… creative.

My class­mates are fas­ci­nat­ing, mostly British but with a gor­geous French woman and her Israeli best friend thrown in for spice, and a girl born in Lagos but raised here, and a Kenyan lady keen on writ­ing her fam­ily his­tory. It seems that most peo­ple want to chron­i­cle their fam­ily trees in some way, and I sup­pose I do have auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal fam­ily inter­ests as well. Have you read a mem­oir called “A Girl Named Zippy?” You must, if you have not. A girl’s small­town Indi­ana life described with such wacky humor and wit (of course, her fam­ily was quite, quite nuts so she had bet­ter mate­r­ial than have I) that you find your­self read­ing it aloud to what­ever poor per­son is sit­ting next to you. That’s the sort of project I’m aim­ing for. There are, of course, two types of mem­oirs: the first (like Peggy Noonan’s “What I Saw At the Rev­o­lu­tion” is easy to write and easy to get pub­lished because it’s writ­ten by some­one famous, to whom fas­ci­nat­ing things have hap­pened, and who knows com­pelling and famous peo­ple. But no, such a lazy path is not for me. I must opt for the sec­ond type of mem­oir: one writ­ten by a com­pletely unknown per­son who doesn’t do any­thing very mem­o­rable or impor­tant, but some­how makes it inter­est­ing enough to get a pub­lish­ing con­tract. Sound impossible?

Per­haps, but I have sev­en­teen weeks of class to prove it wrong.

I do love mem­oirs. Ruth Reichl had a head start, being the edi­tor in chief of Gourmet Mag­a­zine, but still, her “Ten­der at the Bone” is price­less no mat­ter who she is. When her mother poi­sons every­one at her son’s engage­ment party by feed­ing them out­dated food from a store that was offload­ing its Automat machines, you know you’re in for an excel­lent ride. And Annie Dillard’s “An Amer­i­can Child­hood” is unput­down­able. Can I do any­thing half so good? We shall see.

But I digress, because I meant to explain why the class this week was so good. The writ­ing exer­cise was a seem­ingly point­less and rather bor­ing assign­ment to spend ten min­utes writ­ing about a vivid child­hood mem­ory. We could choose between ages 0–5 years, 10 years, and 16 years. Well, it turned out sur­pris­ingly easy to do, fun to craft, and everyone’s exam­ples were so intrigu­ing that we real­ized the old Flan­nery O’Connor quote was quite true: “Any­one who can sur­vive her child­hood has enough writ­ing mate­r­ial for a life­time.” Any mem­ory of child­hood is fas­ci­nat­ing, it turns out: a dreaded Sun­day tea with grand­par­ents, wak­ing from a nap to find a stranger bend­ing over one’s crib, the town dance with sweaty-palmed boys, a trea­sured mea­sur­ing cup used by a beloved mother. Really won­der­ful. I hadn’t been par­tic­u­larly pleased or dis­pleased with what I wrote, but then the time came for me to read aloud (so nerve-wracking! why do I put myself in these sit­u­a­tions!) it was well-received. It was really a mile­stone: the first time I’ve ever had feed­back on style. Not con­tent, as in my dear blog read­ers enjoy­ing a recipe or an anec­dote, but the way it was writ­ten. I have come to the con­clu­sion that one can­not really ana­lyze one’s own style, or even notice it for what it is. That is for read­ers to see. And it’s prob­a­bly quite con­sis­tent within each writer, if only we can learn to see and describe what it is. So we’re meant to expand on our pieces in the com­ing week, and go back to class ready to be ripped apart or praised, as the case may be. I think it’s going to be fun.

Well, in the mean­time, in the quest for decent writ­ing mate­r­ial, we are headed off this evening for a week­end in Mar­rakech to cel­e­brate our dear friend Vincent’s birth­day. Should be an adven­ture! I broke down and bought a bathing suit yes­ter­day, in antic­i­pa­tion of the hotel swim­ming pool. I don’t even know where we’re stay­ing! Vincent’s arranged every­thing. I grov­elled to Avery’s head­mistress for per­mis­sion (well, sort of after the fact since all the plans had been made) to take her out of school tomor­row, and asked that any beat­ings be lim­ited to the wet-noodle vari­ety. She wrote back and said that the cater­ers at school were low on wet noo­dles, so Avery was quite safe.

See you Sunday…