I wish I could fly - you can, you can

So here I am. Drinking a gin and tonic at an airport bar with some very loud Calvin Harris in the background.

Today I sent off my final THIRST edits to my editor. I ate eggy crumpets, bacon and maple syrup, drank a litre of black coffee (the food details are important I think…) and read and re-read the notes I’d been given and when I realised that, yes, I had done what I was meant to, I marked the file ‘THIRST edits complete’ and pressed SEND. I am elated. That book feels as real to me now as anything I’ve lived through myself, the characters as close as people I’ve known and loved. It’s seeped into my marrow somehow. I wonder how you keep storing those stories inside you as you keep writing more books…I hope I get the chance to find out. 

Then I wrangled my giant bags (eight hardbacks, five of my own, many, many variations of gym kit/pajamas, my one posh dress) and my elated self to Heathrow. My driver, from Bangladesh, told me all about his home town, of his own troubled love affair with a Russian woman and how he honeymooned in Nepal and stayed in a hotel made of bamboo. My check-in man said I looked ‘very excited to be travelling’ and changed me to a better seat, the twinkly elderly man looking after oversize luggage (those hardbacks…) winked at me and promised not to lose my backpack. I’d forgotten one of the greatest pleasures of travel is the kindness and company of strangers.

And I love an adventure, I never feel more engaged or inspired to write than when I am somewhere unfamiliar, learning every day my curiosity provoked on every street turning. 

For the next week I’ll be doing a week of festivals, talks and interviews in Seoul, the following week I’ll be writer in residence in Gongju, followed by a further two week residence in Seoul. All supported by the brilliant British Council (which I’m hugely grateful for). I’ll be on here each day talking kimchi, petting dogs and cooing children, research, stories, stormy skies, bustling markets, brief encounters, planes, trains and buses, saunas, stories, hotel rooms, the parts that make my heart swell and the ones that make it break a wee bit. I’ll be craning my neck, opening my eyes (and belly) to everything and capturing everything on here to remember it by. 

Excited? Me too. Before I catch my flight, here’s a picture of a knitted duckling with a plastic bowl of Ramen. You are all welcome.