I spent a week sitting in a room listening to a man and learning about dialogue. I have learnt so much in a single week in a city I am determined I will call home one day. Jonathan Miles, my tutor, was fantastic and a fascinating man in his own right. When ever I got bored I treated him as a character study to give you all a generally good picture of the man who was able to hold my attention for most of the seven days.
His clothes are always two sizes too large making his already tall, thin frame even more pronounced. His grey hair hints a perhaps brunette or black origin. His white beard seeming unable to grow larger than a centimetre. His face having the same elongated traits as the rest of his body.
He is either perfectly still or endlessly shifting around there is no in-between, trying to fight off the horrible habit of chewing the ends of his pens by only placing the lid against his lips. He only ever looks truly comfortable pacing back and forth as he passionately goes into too much detail over something.
You can tell he’s giving you his full attention when he’s face bends slightly down, forcing himself to look at you through his thick eyebrows. He looks like an evil mastermind plotting some sort of evil scheme. But when he responds his eyebrows shoot up into his forehead looking almost startled at the accusation of evil scheming.
He does have glasses but it wasn’t until the last few days he allowed us to see him in them. Big, thick and round, as if a struggling cartoonist had drawn Harry potter’s glasses. Luckily they didn’t increase his eyes to an amusing size or I’m afraid I wouldn’t be able to look at him seriously.
English but living in France most of the year, he still sounds Oxford-y English, apparently only I have the skill of picking up accents too easily (except Australian of course). Although by the end of the week I was starting to be mistaken for English.
I spent my days writing dialogue, discussing dialogue, reading dialogue and learning about the English political state. All I know for sure is I now feel like I’m good and dialogue and I’ve earned twelve new friends all in the same week.
I had beautiful three course meals every night, where I mastered how to eat food without giving away the fact I’m more comfortable eating fast food. I learnt how to pour wine, sit properly, what to do when there’s three different sets if cutlery (not panicking is a very important step) and most importantly how to act like a lady when you’re struggling to cut up whatever the waiter just put in front of you (stabbing it repeatedly is not an option apparently).
Our last night a few of us went out for drinks where I drank wine and we all opened up way too much, our conversations either super personal or way too deep for two bottles of wine to fully wrap your head around. However I think this was one of my favourite moments, I’d missed getting close to people, or at least talking to the same person a few days in a row. Even though I was the youngest and least successful out of all of them (some even already published authors) they welcomed me like a little sister and I will forever look back on my week there fondly.
But now back to London.
The Anxious Traveler 