Friday
Lunch with four poets and a blogger. Karyn
Hay was supposed to join us but she emailed to say she would be a no-show.
Bitter disappointment all round. I explained to Peter Bland, “She does this a
lot. She’s a lunch-teaser.” Other topics of conversation: work in progress; a
mutual writer friend who has gone mad; the works of Geoff Dyer; the excellence
of Dan Poynton’s recordings
of Lilburn’s piano music and the new Naxos CD
of Ross Harris’s Second and Third Symphonies; ARD Fairburn; and, as always,
smut.
I went to the afternoon session
on “Broken Britain” with Dame
Stella Rimington, A.D. (Andy) Miller and Geoff Dyer, with Robin Congreve
chairing, mainly so I could get a sense of what Stella and Andy were like. I
took a seat on the aisle in the back row and had to leap up eight times in a
row as eight attractive women came in, each one going “M-wah m-wah” at me. I do
not get this response from the other mothers when I do the school run.
Andy seemed harmless so after the
book-signing session I introduced myself and we arranged to meet later for
dinner. I took him to Coco’s Cantina
because I like it there and because I was pretty sure I would be greeted with a
kiss by Damaris, the beautiful co-owner, which would impress him. I was, and it
did. We hit it off, had a great time then went back to the hotel for more
intensive preparation for Saturday’s session, i.e. another drink.
Also at Coco’s were Jeffrey Eugenides,
Geoff Dyer, Anthony McCarten, Sebastian Barry and several other famous writers.
It’s quite the Les Deux Magots of K
Road.
Saturday
I was pacing nervously in the foyer of the
Aotea Centre. Fergus Barrowman, who is mostly harmless, asked why. I said I was
about to chair an event and, when chairing, I try to stay out of the way and
let the star shine though I do try to be entertaining: “But I’m not as funny as
I think I am.”
Fergus said kindly, “Don’t worry, you’re
funny enough.” I thought, brilliant, I can use that: “Stephen Stratford – he’s
funny enough.”
The session went off well. We had a Q&A
for 20 minutes, Andy read from the novel for 10 minutes, then another 15
minutes of Q&A before questions from the floor. This is the
terrifying part – you don’t know who is out there. Nevil Gibson had had to turn
the mike off when a loony began ranting in the session he chaired on Consumptionomics
just before us. We were lucky: no bozos. But an hour is an awfully long time.
Sunday
My second event, the panel on book awards.
Stella Rimington is not harmless at all but she was great – friendly, funny and
super-smart. As are Jenny Pattrick and our chair, Sam Elworthy of AUP, so it
was a very relaxed discussion.
There was one weird question from the floor
for Stella: “Given what you did in the miners’ strike in 1984, what does the literary
community think of you?” She started to explain why it was totally legit for
MI5 to get involved (a foreign power was funding locals who said publicly they
wanted to overthrow the elected government) but stopped and said, “Why am I
talking about this? It’s ancient history. What has it to do with book awards?
And what is the literary community?
Who are they?”
There is a lot to be said for a brisk
Englishwoman of a certain age.
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