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Reading Gilbert Adair reminiscing about his two meetings with Alain Robbe-Grillet in last Saturday's Guardian reminded me of my own failed attempt to join with the then mere 70 year old nouveau romancier on a tour of the late night watering holes (a limited range of which existed in those days) of a small provincial city. The arts centre had hosted the bearded one for a talk and screening of L'homme qui ment I think, and I had foolishly attempted to ask him a question in French following his talk. Even more foolishly it was something about the represenatation of women in his films. I was attempting in French to stir a bit of controversy with AR-G. In some respects it was fortunate that my self translation rendered the question meaningless to him, while the interpreter deliberately made it even more innocuous, in a distinctly ideology-free version of whatever it was I had concocted merely in order to feel I had participated in an important event. (Subsequent years have hardly lessened the engrainment of this particular trait, it has to be said.) Undaunted I repaired upstairs to the bar and, after a nervous wait observing AR-G and his host from the other side of the room, I eventually encroached on their space, mumbling something along the lines of "admired your....", "always found your...", ..."extremely...", "great honour" etc. The host somehow failed to take advantage of my no doubt endlessly stimulating company on behalf of AR-G and so I skulked back into my corner. Bumping into the host a couple of years ago I attempted to get him to regale me with the tale of the night AR-G hit the town's hotspots. Neither was he amused by my prying, nor, it seemed, had his sense that I had no right to participate even in the most vicarious manner (which was, after all, the merest scrap I had left of the non-event) dimished.