Mind the Gap… between writing and ‘performing’

A bright & early start this morning. I crossed London by tube, marvelling – as I always do these days – at how such dense rivers of people can push through the underground system at rush hour. For years I lived & worked in London, and travelling across the city to and from work was something I didn’t question. It was exhausting, yes, and frustrating, frequently, but I wasn’t struck by the sheer quantity of people on the move. Now, after a few years in Bristol, it hits me between the eyes every time I come back here. My imagination strains to take on board just how many individual lives pass by (and if I can’t ‘get my head round’ the number of people in London, what about the rest of this country – or the world?).

At Waterloo I caught a train – travelling, mercifully, against the tide – out to Ashford in Surrey. The railway line passed by the upside-down snooker table that is Battersea Power Station…

I can’t see it now without thinking of how that intrepid Blue Peter presenter, Helen Whatnot, crossed one end of it on a tightrope, hundreds of feet up… mmm, I’m feeling queasy just thinking about it.

At Ashford, I was met by the super-lovely expert bookseller Natalie Likness from the Staines branch of Waterstone’s. Natalie is a Twitter friend of mine, so it was great to meet her in person (I have recently discovered that this is called a ‘tweet-up’). She took me to Thomas Knyvett College – her old school, in fact. Outside stood this beautiful tree:

My gardening knowledge hardly goes further than ‘plant’, ‘flower’, ‘tree’, but I’m wondering if this is a crab apple? If it is, we have one in our back garden at home. And if it ever grows this big it will fill the entire plot…

At Thomas Knyvett I had an hour with all 115 of the Year 8 pupils, in the library. They were an energetic group – loud & lively – and as I watched them bound into the room, I knew I would have to match them for energy. It turned into a great session, in fact, and they came up with some excellent questions. Many thanks to Madeleine Manning & her colleague Rob who were in charge of the event, & to all the staff who attended.

Then Natalie and her colleague Chloe opened their stall selling copies of VIII, and I got the chance, while signing, to chat to some of the pupils. One told me that the title of the book was boring, but the talk (& trailer) had made it sound really good. Result! Though maybe I need to work at my titles…

Chloe, me, Natalie & Madeleine

Hooray for the fab Year 8s!

Next stop: lunch with my wonderful minder Jayne Roscoe from Templar who this morning, as at so many events before, had been my invaluable support & helper. And then a train back into London. I’m washed out as a dishrag after an event; although I enjoy ‘performing’ it’s just so different from the kind of mental energy required for writing that I find myself both needing to build up to it, and taking a while to ‘come down’ again. But I do need to develop some stamina, because today has been the super-gentle start to the tour: Thomas Knyvett College was my only talk for today, and later on I’ll have two events a day & sometimes three. For now, however, I’m going to spend the rest of the afternoon working on my new book at my hotel, with dinner with Helen Boyle (Commissioning Fiction Editor at Templar) to look forward to as my reward at the end of the day.

I’m very glad of a chance to do some thinking about the new book in amongst the events. It’s at a crucial stage, and before I came away on this tour I was concerned that the concentration needed for the events would drive the new book so thoroughly out of my mind that it’d be a hard & time-consuming task to pick it up again afterwards. It may still be! But I’m off, now, to at least try to keep my hand in…