On Sunday 5 August, Holland Park Press had a stall at Deventer Book Market in the Netherlands, ‘the largest book market in Europe’. The publisher had travelled from London and I was there too.
Everyone in London is an information point. While my publisher and I were walking towards Hyde Park, at the bottom of the street, we were asked three times for directions to Hyde Park.
The older I get, the more I’m plagued by nostalgia: for things and people. For example, I feel nostalgic about Tony Blair, who didn’t really become interesting until he invaded Iraq.
At the time of writing Andy Murray is through to the semi-finals at Wimbledon, and yet I don’t think he will win Wimbledon. Maybe I’m wrong, but I always get a bit depressed when watching Murray. Even on a blissfully sunny day he looks as if he’s expecting rain, and his mother sits like a small angry cloud in the players’ stand.
Last Saturday I went to a reunion. I can just hear my friends say: ‘But you never go to reunions!’ That’s right: normally you wouldn’t find me at such an event. Death is the guest of honour at most reunions. But I went as my mother’s wheelchair-pusher.
I recently visited Cape Town to attend a book launch. I’d been looking forward to it. ‘Cape Town’ my acquaintances sighed with a hint of jealousy, as if they saw a faraway vision, but I was also thinking about flying for twelve hours in economy class.
A few years ago, I was looking at Africa across the Strait of Gibraltar from a windswept Tarifa in Southern Spain. Africa looked enormous and I felt minuscule, like the grain of sand in Ingrid Jonker’s poem.
It has been a bad week for disco: Robin Gibb, one of the Bee Gees, and ‘disco queen’ Donna Summer passed away. I’m nearly fifty, so you could say I’m one of the disco children. I turned 15 in 1977, the year in which the film Saturday Night Fever was a smash hit. Those could be called my glorious years: I still had a full head of hair.
David Cameron sometimes signed his emails to Rebekah Brooks, former editor of the News of the World tabloid, with LOL. David was under the impression that it meant Lots of Love.
I recently watched an interview on BBC Breakfast with a representative of the Cloud Appreciation Society and the author of a book called Clouds That Look Like Things.
Closing date midnight (GMT) 31 Dec 2012 – Shortlist 31 January 2013 – Awards ceremony 27 February 2013
An emerging inappropriate crush & her sister’s in-laws
During the past few weeks I’ve frequently been reminded of the 1634–1637 tulip mania. In the early seventeenth century, French ladies at court would pay hundreds of guilders for a tulip flower, which they wore in their décolleté at gala evenings; a wonderful image.
Most royal families are just a tiny bit common: witness their preference for fast cars, planes, yachts, hunting, firearms, money, hydrogen peroxide, extramarital affairs and villas in sunny countries, though not necessarily in this order.
I stayed in London last week and came across a lot of Berties: boys with ambitious mothers. The Berties in London all have scooters, and are mainly busy trying to escape.
When visiting London I always stay with family near Paddington. After arriving by Eurostar I travel by tube from King’s Cross–St Pancras to Paddington. For the Olympic Games the names of these stations will be changed to Nadia Comaneci and Lionel Messi.
I know two people whose first name is Engelbert – well, one I really know and the other I know from TV. One is a former colleague from my time in the army, and although he is nearly seven feet tall, his name is not so heroic.
There are people who think it’s odd that a coach crash in Switzerland which killed 28 Dutch and Belgian passengers, including 22 children, receives more attention than a similar accident that took place in Africa, involving African victims. They ask, ‘Aren’t both events equally awful?’
