My trip to London this week really was very whistle stop but I have to say a big thank you to anyone living in London right now.
You are doing a stalwart job of coping with all the pre-Olympic disruption so that people like me, who have loved the Olympics for ever (me since Rome 1960) can revel in 2012. London is being rebuilt and refurbished whilst life carries on around it, and only 856 more days of it to go I see from the countdown clock on the Telecom Tower. We've registered for tickets this week and I'll sell everything to be there, I'll watch anything and I'll sleep on the underground if I have to.
You might wonder how I got that shot...not the hotel, that was tucked behind Euston station and I listened fondly to the platform announcements from my room, nor the 'day job' staff meeting venue, that was Holloway Road, but I'm getting ahead of myself.
It was my complete good fortune to discover that David Vann was in the UK and doing a reading from his novel Legend of a Suicide at the To Hell with Books on Tuesday evening, which as luck would have it was within pigeon spitting distance of my hotel and only required a minor dash through Bloomsbury to get there.
I had a quick literary moment as I took in Gordon Square, one time home of Virginia Woolf and imagined her walking across here too.
I wasn't the only one who had to be there to hear David Vann either, the place was jam-packed and steaming-hot and we can only be thankful that I had decided to leave off my long sleeved thermal vest thinking London is always much warmer than us here in the middle of nowhere.
As it is I only lost one stone when with the vest I might have lost two but would have needed an ambulance.
I managed to sneak a shot of David Vann around the heads and also get my copy of the book signed, and by the time you read this we know that David sadly didn't win the Sunday Times Short Story Award last night for which his story had been short listed, and which he read us and which we laughed at and loved.
It was also a real pleasure to meet these hands that blog too.
Yes that's fellow NTTVBG bloggers Simon of Savidge Reads and Kimbofo of Reading Matters.
And it was also a real pleasure to meet and chat to Evie Wyld author of After the Fire, A Still Small Voice which I've promised to read, it's had stunning reviews.
Another work day and then as luck would have it an early evening invite to a gathering of bloggers at Headline Books, on the 16th floor of that building and thus that stupendous view across London.
Good to meet Simon and Kim again...that's life, you've never set eyes on someone before and then you see them two days running, and I came away from Headline clutching amongst other things a copy of Andrea Levy's The Long Song for which I am also very grateful.
By the time I sink into my train seat there's a real risk I'll be unconscious before Berkshire and unlikely to wake up at Exeter, so I have to do things to keep awake, because I have this nightmare vision of Bookhound on the platform at Exeter shouting 'Hold the train, she's asleep in there' and him having to come on and drag me off.
My 'real book' concession along with the e reader was Time Will Darken It by William Maxwell and fortunately I had no wish to fall asleep as I read.
I just had to keep stopping and thinking about what makes this book so amazing, thus far it's the way William Maxwell ends his chapters with an observation or a single moment or gesture, carefully refracted and at a slightly oblique angle allowing the reader to invest the significance, I could have carried on reading all the way to Penzance...imagine that
'Hold the train, she's reading in there...'
You are doing a stalwart job of coping with all the pre-Olympic disruption so that people like me, who have loved the Olympics for ever (me since Rome 1960) can revel in 2012. London is being rebuilt and refurbished whilst life carries on around it, and only 856 more days of it to go I see from the countdown clock on the Telecom Tower. We've registered for tickets this week and I'll sell everything to be there, I'll watch anything and I'll sleep on the underground if I have to.
You might wonder how I got that shot...not the hotel, that was tucked behind Euston station and I listened fondly to the platform announcements from my room, nor the 'day job' staff meeting venue, that was Holloway Road, but I'm getting ahead of myself.
It was my complete good fortune to discover that David Vann was in the UK and doing a reading from his novel Legend of a Suicide at the To Hell with Books on Tuesday evening, which as luck would have it was within pigeon spitting distance of my hotel and only required a minor dash through Bloomsbury to get there.
I had a quick literary moment as I took in Gordon Square, one time home of Virginia Woolf and imagined her walking across here too.
I wasn't the only one who had to be there to hear David Vann either, the place was jam-packed and steaming-hot and we can only be thankful that I had decided to leave off my long sleeved thermal vest thinking London is always much warmer than us here in the middle of nowhere.
As it is I only lost one stone when with the vest I might have lost two but would have needed an ambulance.
I managed to sneak a shot of David Vann around the heads and also get my copy of the book signed, and by the time you read this we know that David sadly didn't win the Sunday Times Short Story Award last night for which his story had been short listed, and which he read us and which we laughed at and loved.
It was also a real pleasure to meet these hands that blog too.
Yes that's fellow NTTVBG bloggers Simon of Savidge Reads and Kimbofo of Reading Matters.
And it was also a real pleasure to meet and chat to Evie Wyld author of After the Fire, A Still Small Voice which I've promised to read, it's had stunning reviews.
Good to meet Simon and Kim again...that's life, you've never set eyes on someone before and then you see them two days running, and I came away from Headline clutching amongst other things a copy of Andrea Levy's The Long Song for which I am also very grateful.
By the time I sink into my train seat there's a real risk I'll be unconscious before Berkshire and unlikely to wake up at Exeter, so I have to do things to keep awake, because I have this nightmare vision of Bookhound on the platform at Exeter shouting 'Hold the train, she's asleep in there' and him having to come on and drag me off.
My 'real book' concession along with the e reader was Time Will Darken It by William Maxwell and fortunately I had no wish to fall asleep as I read.
I just had to keep stopping and thinking about what makes this book so amazing, thus far it's the way William Maxwell ends his chapters with an observation or a single moment or gesture, carefully refracted and at a slightly oblique angle allowing the reader to invest the significance, I could have carried on reading all the way to Penzance...imagine that
'Hold the train, she's reading in there...'
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