Prévert wrote the part of Garance for Arletty, France's biggest star before Bardot. Garance and Arletty are the same and one woman, the epitome of th… - Agnès Poirier

If Britain were indeed a person, one could add that it suffers from body dysmorphic disorder and mythomania.

I was 12 when I first saw Les Enfants du Paradis, at the Ranelagh theatre in Paris, a stone's throw from Balzac's house. The neo-Renaissance theatre screened this story of mimes, actors, impresarios and swindlers every week-end for more than 20 years until the 35mm print became too fragile. Two generations of cinephiles did as we did, going up the little street like pilgrims on a quest. If God was a film director, he would have made this film, thought the child that I was. Later in my teens, I would go back to the Ranelagh, dragging school friends along. If they didn't get it, I'd never speak to them again.

The uncanny thing about spinal surgery, or at least the kind I had, is that I’m not allowed to sit down for three months. I can lie down or stand up, or at most perch on the edge of a bar stool for no more than 15 minutes at a time. This means reading and writing standing up, changing positions often and lying down to recuperate in between. My horizontal life has thus been rich and allowed for hours of listening: radio documentaries about Victor Hugo, radio dramas such as the Charles Paris mysteries, and mindfulness meditation podcasts during which I have discovered the art or rather science of proprioception; in other words the awareness of one's body position in space through nerves, muscle and joints.