To London on Tuesday last, to film a piece for next year's World Book Day website. On the way I stopped off at Exmouth Community College where I talked to three great groups of pupils. Most of them seemed to have read some of my books, those who hadn't at least seemed to know who I was, and they all had good and intelligent questions, which I did my best to answer. There was a lot of excellent Reeve-related work on display around the library, and even a
Mortal Engines cake. ( I think I might make a cake in the form of one of my books my rider for future events.) It was a really enjoyable day, and I'm hugely grateful to the staff at ECC, to Booktrust, who arranged it, and to Booktrust's Caroline Wright, who came all the way to Devon to look after me.
I reached London on Tuesday night, and hurried to Chez Gerard in Charlotte Street (posh, eh?) for dinner with Sarah McIntyre and her husband Stuart, which was lovely. Sarah and I have both been reading Geraldine Mccaughrean's latest,
Pull Out All The Stops, and Sarah's done a fabulous hand-written review in the Old West stylee which you can read on
The Solitary Bee. Why don't I think of doing elaborate copperplate reviews in letter form? Well, probably because I'm not a memorably-bespectacled comics'n'illustration goddess, that's why. It's very nice to know someone who
is, though, and when I look back on 2010 in years to come I shall remember it as The Year I Met Sarah McIntyre. Here's a doodle of her that I drew on the train home, hence the wobbly lines.
Doodling away, I left Paddington Station at around 4pm and arrived home ahead of the snow, which was lucky - the back-up plan would have involved me stopping overnight in Ashburton, buying walking boots and hiking home over the top this morning. Happily that wasn't necessary, but it would have been if I'd been just a few hours later; we had a couple of inches of snow overnight, and when we tried to go out at lunch time the car ended up slithering sideways down the lane and had to be coaxed back up with many a shovel-load of grit. I think we're probably Bonehill-bound until the thaw sets in.
