They say the best laid plans of mice and men go oft awry - and this certainly was the case with my study plans. After travelling to Dover by bus, then to Calais by hovercraft, I boarded a bus to Paris. However it was a time of political disruption and there had been some two dozen bombings in nine months in Paris, so the police were scrutinizing everyone coming into France, especially from the Middle East. We were held up for hours while they looked at passports and took a couple of men off the bus, and so by the time I got to Paris I had no time to find my Youth Hostel in Choisy-le-Roi, but instead had to go straight to the Eurocentre, bags in hand. And then once I got settled into my class I realised to my horror that the course was not what I had expected. It was geared towards computer and internet technology, which I was not familiar with in french. So to cut a long story short, I explained to the person in charge at the end of the day that it was not for me. Never mind that I had paid $500 to do it. (Today I would probably have persevered).
I then made my way to the youth hostel, and despite sharing a room with five or so noisy Spanish girls, I fell fast asleep, listening to James Taylor on a cheap portable cassette player I had bought at the markets in London.
