I haven’t been to any form of writing class since… well, since I was at school, as far as I can remember. I’ve often seen appealing courses advertised, but they always seem to take place over a ten-day period in Spain, or something equally impractical.

However, an email turned up last week: Shaun Levin, of The A3 Review, was planning to hold a “writing workout” on Sunday afternoon. We'll be getting a lot of writing done in an hour and a half, promised the mail, and you'll have the foundation for three new pieces by the end of the workout. It intrigued me, was inexpensive, and seemed an exciting thing to schedule into a weekend that was looking a little bare.

Conducted over Zoom, the workout involved nearly thirty people. Shaun had selected three short pieces of writing to share, which we read, and then took them as inspiration to write responses to the current pandemic. A few people shared their work, and after one exercise Shaun dropped us into “breakout rooms” (who knew Zoom could do that?) to share and discuss the pieces we’d written, one-to-one.

In a globally-distributed class, my companion for the one-to-one section was a lovely chap who was, in fact, about 15 minutes drive away. It was interesting to hear tiny snippets of lockdown life from other countries, too. A lady with an Australian accent described the 2m social distance as “about the length of a really tall dead person”, and implied that the phrase had been used in official awareness campaigns. Another described the appropriate distance as “the length of an alligator”… which may even be useful if, as she did, you live in Florida.

I have done surprisingly little writing of late, and it was great to be given the impetus to get on and do it. No ifs, not buts: you have 9 minutes. Go! It was lovely, too, to hear other people’s writing - if daunting to hear how much someone could produce in 9 minutes. All in all, I’d say it was 90 minutes well spent, and if he does such a thing again I’d heartily recommend it.

For the final exercise, we read Déjeuner du Matin, which I remember from school French lessons (the link also has an English translation); the challenge was to write something which builds similarly on a series of simple steps. Here is a tidied-up version of what I scribbled out.

Happy Birthday To Me

You should wet your hands with water.

In the sunlight, the water sparkles like it used to at the seaside.

Apply enough soap to cover your hands.

Thank goodness the corner shop finally had soap.

Rub your hands together.

Grandpa’s hands used to feel the way yours do now, rough over the knuckles.

Use one hand to rub the back of the other hand and clean between the fingers. Do the same with the other hand.

Ellie’s fingers were so tiny when she was newborn.

Rub your hands together and clean between the fingers.

When you still gardened, the mud used to turn the water black.

Rub the back of your fingers against your palms.

You must remember to put coffee on the shopping list.

Rub your thumb using your other hand. Do the same with the other thumb.

That scar has all but disappeared.

Rub the tips of your fingers on the palm of your other hand. Do the same with other hand.

He used to stroke the lines on your palm as you watched the sunset.

Rinse your hands with water.

My goodness, where has the time gone?

(OK, technically only every other line was written by me. Odd-numbered lines are courtesy of the NHS.)