Battling with Stupidity

Last week, I was told by a doctor that I was suffering from “non-specific post-viral fatigue”. As well as utter exhaustion, the main symptom has been one of feeling a bit stupid, like a hangover when you’ve not been drinking. I have to confess that none of friends have noticed any difference.

Feeling hungover is not necessarily such a problem. Sure, it makes writing a bit slower, but I can generally function. At the weekend though, I am due to appear at Cowbridge Book Festival to talk about The Mango Orchard. If I am to avoid the audience slow-hand clapping like the one Tony Blair suffered from at the hands of the WI, I have to have my wits about me.

I go to collect my train tickets from Paddington station. I pocket the tickets and go to buy some lunch. With one eye on the clock, I do a quick circuit of M&S and then shuffle slowly forward, mind in neutral, in the long queue waiting to pay. The lady at the checkout has a cheery round face and sing-song accent. She tells me how much I owe. I look in my wallet. My credit card has gone. I must have left it in the ticket machine.

After trying and failing to find the number of my credit card company – the number is, of course, written on the back of the card – I go into the ticket office to see if it has been handed in. Amazingly, it has. (Bless you, whoever you were.)

I now have my credit card, but I still haven’t had my lunch. Feeling exhausted, a little stupid and hungry, is not a good combination. I have less than ten minutes to find something to eat and get on the train.

I again rush around the aisles of M&S and then stand in the long, slow-moving queue. Again, I am served by the woman with a sing-song voice. She doesn’t seem to remember me, despite the fact that the last time she saw me, ten minutes before, I had cursed loudly, suddenly dropped my shopping basket and run out of the store.

I find my train seat and sit down. I get out my paper, open my lunch, and spill it all over my one clean pair of trousers.

At Cardiff station, I wander down the platform, conscious of the dark stain in my crotch, and am greeted by my hosts, the local writer, John Williams, and his wife Charlotte, also an acclaimed novelist. They live in a lovely, book-filled house over-looking a park. We sit in their conservatory as the sunlight fades and I feel myself relax. There’s something about being out of London that enables me to switch off more than I ever can in the capital.

Signing a book for my beloved Godmother, who came to the talk

I sleep soundly, but wake early as I am to be collected and taken to the festival at 9.30. I’m still feeling a bit stupid, but there’s nothing like a live audience to wake you up. I had worried I might forget my own name, but the talk goes well and the questions really make me think. As I write this, I am desperately trying to remember what their brilliant questions were… but I’m afraid I’m feeling a bit stupid again…

The Mango Orchard Paperback launch party

I am deeply indebted to the Mexican Tourist Board and the Mexican embassy who organised, and paid for, a press reception for the launch of The Mango Orchard paperback last week. Press, travel industry leaders, diplomats and VIPs gathered in the cool basement bar of the new Wahaca Soho restaurant on Wardour Street for delicious canapés and truly lethal (but very moreish) tequila cocktails.

It was a humbling reminder that Mexicans are the world’s most generous hosts. Gracias compañeros! 

For Those About to Rock… a Cup of Gin

 A Report from behind the scenes at the Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival

If the Hay Literary Festival is the book world’s Glastonbury, then Oxford is its Reading. It’s simply huge. Over a ten day period, three hundred writers talk about their work in theatres, halls, oak-panelled rooms and marquees.

As a writer appearing at the festival, it means I find myself chatting with travel writer Hugh Thomson, former BBC correspondent Sarah Mukherjee and legendary novelist Edna O’Brien; having lunch with David Starkey, or passing the time of day with Alan Yentob. If you will allow me to continue my musical analogy for a moment, I imagine like this is what X-Factor’s Olly Murs might feel like if he ever found himself rubbing shoulders back stage with Leonard Cohen and Van Morrison.

 

I first see Edna O’Brien when I enter the Green Room. She is sitting in an armchair in the corner of the room, bright sunlight back-lighting her hair, giving it the appearance of a halo. I had left my bag by her chair and I am about to collect it when she stops me with an extended hand. “Are you here to interview me?” she asks.

“No,” I reply, wishing I was. “But would you like a cup of tea?”

“My dear,” she says, touching my elbow, “That’s just what I want. They only offered me gin.”

I had been offered gin too “for Dutch courage”, and in a tea cup “so no one will know.” Edna and I agree that facing an audience half cut is not a good idea.

Just before my talk is due to begin, I am asked to sign a book that has been signed by all the writers at the festival. The signature before mine is that of Ron Moody, he has drawn the figure of Fagin – a role that helped to make his name. I sign. No one will be able to read that, I think, so I draw a Mexican sombrero to give a clue. I am feeling quite pleased with it, until Edna points out that it looks like a traffic cone in a puddle.

It’s then straight into the talk. It takes place in one of the oak-panelled chambers just off the main quad. The audience listens attentively, asks intelligent questions, and then buys a pleasing quantity of books.

From there I go to the main tent to give my second talk, to a different audience about exactly the same thing. This talk is sponsored by Highland Park whisky. The concept is for the audience to sample their whisky, while they sample some readings. Clever, eh?

I generally try to start each talk with a joke or something that relates to the event. I wrack my brains, and the only link I can think to connect whisky with The Mango Orchard is that my great grandfather’s father drank too much of it and died of dropsy. Perhaps this is not the kind of thing I should mention.

As I am waiting to be introduced, there’s an announcement for the beginning of an event with Terry Jones. At a stroke, I lose almost my entire audience. I start anyway, and bit by bit, the seats begin to fill. Eventually the crowd spills out beyond the entrance.

Afterwards, a man approaches me. He congratulates me on the book and tells me how much he enjoyed my talk. He moves closer and says, conspiratorially, “Could you do me a really big favour?”

“Sure,” I say, reaching into my pocket for my pen to sign his book.

“Could you possibly use your influence to get me another wee dram?”

Early morning panic - it's launch day!

I live opposite a pub. It’s a posh gastro pub – the kind of place that offers braised llama loin with a lemon and tarragon reduction, and charges the price of my book (£7.99) for a cup of frothy coffee. There’s generally a combination of yummy mummies, dog walkers and confused tourists sitting outside. I like this, as it allows me to imagine, just for the moment it takes me to walk past it on my way to the tube, that I live in a chic café society.

The only downside to where I live is that the ingredients to said pretentious menu seem to arrive at odd hours throughout the night. It is for that reason that I have been awake since the small hours; that and the sudden launch day panic and fretting about all I have to do in the next few days.

Today I have to be in Oxford by 2pm to be interviewed by Jo Thoenes of BBC Radio Oxford to talk about the book and my appearance at the Oxford Literary Festival on Sunday. I also have two other press interviews and have an article to write.

The last two articles I wrote are on sale today: Family History Monthly and Family Tree magazine. It was tricky to write two completely different articles to similar audiences about the same subject, but I’m pleased with the result. Both issued look really good.

I had better get on. There’s a press reception to attend to as well…

Essex Book Festival

For the second time in two days, I find myself on the train heading from Liverpool Street station towards Essex. Today, I’m going to Prettygate Library in Colchester, to speak at the Essex Book Festival.

I had allowed enough time to walk from the station, but when I arrive in Colchester, and I see the spitting grey sky, I jump into a cab. I arrive at the venue half an hour early so I while away the time in the nearby pub. The Jefferson Starship song We Built This City on Rock and Roll is playing on a loop on the jukebox, to about four regulars.

Sylvia, the library supervisor, welcomes me. She introduces me to Karen, the Audience Development Officer (what a wonderful title!) and the rest of the staff.

“Thanks for your Tweet,” Sylvia says as she takes my coat. “And we heard you on Radio Essex as well. We had a few people phone up after they heard you.”

She takes me up to the staff room which looks out on to the car park. It is empty. I look up at the sky. It’s still grey and spitting. Will anyone come?

Karen comes up to collect me, and she has a smile on her face. I take comfort from this. As Audience Development Officer, I figure she wouldn’t be smiling if she hadn’t managed to develop a decent audience. Indeed, when we come down the stairs, I see that the library is full.

Karen’s job of developing the audience, I see, is not limited to getting them to come, she also acts as compere. “I think we have some of the local book group here,” she says, and the whole of the front row cheers.

The highlight of many talks is often the Q&A session; today is no exception. All the questions are intelligent and thought-provoking. One man tells me how much the book had meant to him because of his own family story which, in different circumstance, had also taken him to Mexico. There is real emotion in his tale, and I’m not the only one to be brushing away a tear.

Pedro

Back to London and I go straight to the premiere of the Colombian film, Los Viajes del Viento, or Wind Journeys, screened as a fund-raiser for Friends of Colombia for Social Aid. The film is stunning. I particularly appreciate it because the Colombian landscape is extraordinary and reminds me of the journey I did through Colombia with my friend Pedro (chapter 3 in The Mango Orchard) to La Guajira at the northern tip of South America.

I arrive home and check my e-mails. For the first time in nearly a year, I have a mail from… Pedro.

From Proud Father to Drug-Dealing Pimp in Three Easy Steps

The final weeks before birth is I gather, the most tiring and tiresome period of pregnancy. You don’t sleep well and can never get comfortable. It reminds me of the old Joan Rivers joke: “I was screaming ‘get this damn thing out of me!’. Nine months earlier I was screaming the exact same thing.”

Women, especially mothers, tend to give me short shrift when I compare the publication of a book to having a baby. But after weeks of anxious waiting, and at least one false alarm, this morning the little bundle carrying the paperback (yes, with photos) finally arrives.

I rip open the box and there it is at last. I don’t have time to spend much quality time with my new arrival though, as I realise I am running late for my appearance on the Steve Scruton show on BBC Radio Essex. I run to the tube, hoping someone will notice the book I am brandishing.

Radio BBC Essex is in a white-walled building in a leafy part of Chelmsford. From the outside, if it weren’t for the BBC livery, it could be a posh dentist’s surgery. I walk into the studio as Steve is in the middle of a link. I sit down and squint at the wall-mounted TV screen showing BBC 24. The images are of men riding in the back of pick-ups carrying rocket-launchers. I read the caption at the bottom of the screen: “Lady Gaga.” That doesn’t make much sense, but I have poor eyesight, and I’m dyslexic, so I’m used to reading things that no one else sees. I look again, and see it says “Libya”.

Steve finishes his link and leans across a desk of microphones to shake my hand. I like him immediately – open and friendly. “Thanks for the Tweet from the train,” he says. I’m always amazed that anyone reads them.

The interview begins and before I know it, I find myself telling the story about how I nearly became a drug-dealing pimp in Colombia. This was probably not the kind of story Steve had in mind when he booked me, but we have a good chat and he very generously gives my appearance at the Essex Book Festival a good plug, and makes admiring noises – live on air – about my new pride and joy.

Transvestites and National Treasures

A big thank you to everyone who came to hear me speak at Words by the Water last week, especially to Maggie and her book group, who suggested the festival to me in the first place.

I had fully intended to tweet in between readings, but had forgotten that the Lake District is almost entirely a mobile free zone.  There was apparently a weak signal next to the lake, a few hundred yards from the theatre, but it was raining stair rods most of the time, and when it wasn’t, it was too cold for me to have any practical use of my fingers, so the update has had to wait until now.

Someone described Words by the Water as being in like “an interactive Radio 4”. Indeed, Melvyn Bragg was there and I attended some wonderful talks by the likes of Peter Hennessy, Roy Hattersley   and Jean Baggott. I also got to meet the brilliant John Gray and Ted Nield and had been promised an introduction to John Simpson, but Muammar Gaddafi had other ideas.

During my stay there I learned that there is only one lake in the Lake District (Bassenthwaite, all the others are officially “waters”, “tarns”, “meres” or reservoirs) and that David Lloyd-George sired over 50 illegitimate children in Carnarvon alone. I learned that in the 1950s, Britain’s nuclear deterrent depended on AA phone boxes and the Prime Minister’s driver having some loose change. I also discovered that JG Ballard refused to invest any money and kept everything he ever earned in his current account. I was told by a highly respected broadcaster and national treasure (who shall remain nameless) that he keeps fit by running up and down stairs… in the nude.

Also in attendance most days at the festival was six-foot-something Welsh drag artist, who spent her days walking grandly through the theatre foyer claiming to be “the world’s first female baritone”, and trying to lure people up to the Sky Arts den to ‘see her arias’.

Ps: Thanks to Jo-anne for her media advice!