My motive in attending the inaugural meeting of the Bloggers Union was completely ulterior. To my digestive system’s great relief, I am no longer a beer and pizza man – but I went along to the rendezvous for more tangible reasons. It brought back memories of a trip to Paris some years ago.
We were strolling along a street when I spotted a bar.
“That’s Harry’s bar!” I yelled in excitement. “I have to go in there and have a beer!” I checked the address – “5, Rue Daunou. Yep, this is it!”
“What’s going on?” asked my wife. “You hardly ever touch a beer and we don’t know anyone in Paris, especially in a bar!”
“There was this writer, Ernest Hemingway and he used to do his drinking and his writing in this bar!”
“So?”
“So if I do some drinking in the same bar perhaps some of his writing skills will rub off on me…”
“That’s sheer nonsense!”
“Maybe, but it may work. Let’s go in!”
Of course she was correct. My scheme didn’t work and I ended up as a second-rate blogger banging away at my keyboard into the late hours. But that doesn’t mean I should give up trying, I reason. I mean if I’m 80.9 years old there’s still a chance, right? So what it boils down to is, if I hear that some real writers are about to go drinking and then on top of it all I get an invitation, I don’t hesitate. This particular bar happened to be the only one in the village of Even Yehuda, but writing isn’t a case of Location, Location, Location.
So I drank the beer in a watered down form of Shandy, ate the pizza which was topped with oversalted indigestible anchovies and listened intently to the other writers yakking away about every topic under the sun except writing. Not an idea for my next novel, not a single scrap of help…