The first stop of my last day was a bookshop in the top of Harrods. Harrods was a trip. In the four years I lived in London I had never set foot inside the door, and I had no idea it was so funky inside. At that time my monthly clothing budget was around four pounds, and I had usually gargled that before it could even snag me a pair of socks.
I had been directed to the childrens' book department, which is at the top of the 'Egyptian escalator.' I didn't know the ancient Egyptians had discovered the escalator, but I was soon put right. This one seemed to have been excavated from somewhere in Giza and reconstructed piece by piece in the heart of Knightsbridge. It carried me up four levels, surrounded by a wealth of brass ornament featuring snakes and the like, with a strangely prescient touch of art deco. Massive sandstone pillars were carved with Egyptian gods. There were several I recognised, but the only one I could name was Anubis, presumably in town to pick up a Chanel bag and a pair of slingbacks for Mrs. Anubis.
Penny Publicist awaited me in the book department. 'Thank goodness you look like your picture' she said as I came in, although there wasn't another soul in the department apart from the shop assistant, and she was a girl. Penny was charming, and after I signed a pile of books she waited patiently while I emptied the shop of its entire stock of Doctor Who books. For my kids, you understand. Doctor Who may have travelled from the dawn of humanity to its fiery end, but he has yet to arrive in Spain.
I found out that September is the touring season for authors. They were coming in the windows, and in almost every shop we visited there was an author leaving as we arrived, and another arriving as we left. At Waterstones in Picadilly they were circling in a holding pattern in the stairwell. I have no doubt that with a good rifle and a vantage point in the Charing Cross Road you could bag a dozen in the space of an hour.
The standard uniform, at least among the more mature authors, is a smart jacket or suit and a silk cravat. 'Maybe I should get myself an outfit like that', I speculated. 'You're fine as you are,' said Penny, with admirable professionalism. Publicists are trained not to laugh derisively at their clients, just as hairdressers are trained not to say 'Oh crap!' when they're working at the back of your head. It was a quiet day, involving stock signings in a series of shops, with no fanfare. As an unknown author I can blend with the other customers, who look at me slightly suspiciously while I deface piles of books in a corner. After a busy week in the US I was glad of the break. I was sure my face would fall off if I had to smile much more.
I stayed overnight with my brother, who lives conveniently near Gatwick, and took an early flight home in the morning. I had planned to stay another day, but our house in Spain was without water as it had all drained out of the pipes and flooded the basement. The power supply was reduced to one electric socket with extension leads snaking in all directions, and I was needed at the pumps. Where we live, most houses over a decade old seem to have been designed by clowns. Turning on the tap is liable to make the lights go out, and a ring on the doorbell might produce a jet of water from under the sink. It's easy to understand why most plumbers are electricians and vice versa, although their verdict is usually the same: 'Oooh, complicated. Very complicated. You'd have to find the problem first, then fix it.'
Fortunately we found a plumbtrician who instinctively grasped that that was why we had called him, and what's more he knew where to start. Much remains to be fixed, but we now have both power and water simultaneously, and since that returns me to a semblance of normality I will put this blog in the freezer until my next trip, which I'm told will be sometime in summer 07. You have been warned.
Wednesday, September 27, 2006
Monday, September 25, 2006
'Arf a sixpence
From Chicago I flew to New Jersey where there was just one school visit scheduled in the intriguingly named town of Ho Ho Kus. 'Who can tell me,' I asked, 'where the name Ho Ho Kus comes from?' A few hands were raised. 'It's Native American,' said one boy. 'Okay,' I said, 'but what does it mean?' Another kid shot his hand in the air. I could see he was desperate to say something. Anything. 'Er...happy?' he said. I never found out the real answer, but that one was good enough for me.
I had lunch with Bob and Mary Bookseller, who had organised the school visit, and discussed the cover of the second book over a beer with Katherine Editor. Around 9.30pm I boarded a half-empty flight for London. The sensible hemisphere of my brain said: 'free seat beside you. You've been up since 4am. Get some sleep.' The stupid hemisphere said 'Look! individual screens with twenty channels. Watch a movie! You could even watch two at once.' The stupid half won. I watched two thirds of a movie, then fell asleep just as it was getting to the good bit. I didn't sleep for long. There was a metal box where my feet wanted to be. I put up the armrest and curled up over two seats, a position in which I could achieve a kind of nadir for about four minutes out of every hour. I felt like a prawn with arthritis, and I wondered if the stupid hemisphere was really the smart one, and vice versa.
It took a few hours to adjust to London. It was at once familiar and strange. For a while I felt like a character in an American sitcom who spends a hilarious episode in a sort of giant cliché-ridden London. The girls from Simon and Schuster all seemed like quintessential British Birds. The girls in the hotel reception didn't, because they were all Polish. By evening things had reverted to normal, and I almost felt like I had never left. I lived here in the early eighties, when the Wicked Witch of Grantham was still manfully scrubbing the stain of humanity out of the fabric of politics, but London has too great a mass to change its character in a mere decade or two.
The sensible hemisphere woke up and told me to grab a couple of hours sleep between the afternoon's book signing at Waterstones and the Publisher's dinner in the evening, but I wasn't going to be fooled again. There was shopping to be done.
The dinner was a medium-sized schmoozefest in a nice hotel. By this time I was so cross-eyed with tiredness that I could look at two people at once and follow neither of their conversations. Among the other guests were Mark Robson, a previously self-published author who could sell sand to the Arabs, and Matt and Dave, co-authors of a slim volume named Yuck's Fart Club. Apparently they had discovered a shared interest in flatulence while rooming together in college, and after some years this blossomed into a book. Where there's gas there's brass, and I have two small boys at home who will undoubtedly be interested in what Matt and Dave have to say on the topic.
I had lunch with Bob and Mary Bookseller, who had organised the school visit, and discussed the cover of the second book over a beer with Katherine Editor. Around 9.30pm I boarded a half-empty flight for London. The sensible hemisphere of my brain said: 'free seat beside you. You've been up since 4am. Get some sleep.' The stupid hemisphere said 'Look! individual screens with twenty channels. Watch a movie! You could even watch two at once.' The stupid half won. I watched two thirds of a movie, then fell asleep just as it was getting to the good bit. I didn't sleep for long. There was a metal box where my feet wanted to be. I put up the armrest and curled up over two seats, a position in which I could achieve a kind of nadir for about four minutes out of every hour. I felt like a prawn with arthritis, and I wondered if the stupid hemisphere was really the smart one, and vice versa.
It took a few hours to adjust to London. It was at once familiar and strange. For a while I felt like a character in an American sitcom who spends a hilarious episode in a sort of giant cliché-ridden London. The girls from Simon and Schuster all seemed like quintessential British Birds. The girls in the hotel reception didn't, because they were all Polish. By evening things had reverted to normal, and I almost felt like I had never left. I lived here in the early eighties, when the Wicked Witch of Grantham was still manfully scrubbing the stain of humanity out of the fabric of politics, but London has too great a mass to change its character in a mere decade or two.
The sensible hemisphere woke up and told me to grab a couple of hours sleep between the afternoon's book signing at Waterstones and the Publisher's dinner in the evening, but I wasn't going to be fooled again. There was shopping to be done.
The dinner was a medium-sized schmoozefest in a nice hotel. By this time I was so cross-eyed with tiredness that I could look at two people at once and follow neither of their conversations. Among the other guests were Mark Robson, a previously self-published author who could sell sand to the Arabs, and Matt and Dave, co-authors of a slim volume named Yuck's Fart Club. Apparently they had discovered a shared interest in flatulence while rooming together in college, and after some years this blossomed into a book. Where there's gas there's brass, and I have two small boys at home who will undoubtedly be interested in what Matt and Dave have to say on the topic.
Wednesday, September 20, 2006
Hairy, scary and vivid
Queuing for the security check at Los Angeles airport I was behind a girl with a baby buggy and two huge bags. She looked about twenty. I offered to help her with her luggage, and we got into conversation. She had a little brother who was nine, and who reads incessantly. 'Like, he reads a book in three-four days,' she said. 'I keep telling him - why y'all reading all those books all the time? Get outside and do sumthin.' She had a silver stud in her tongue, and it clicked against her teeth. Her bag felt like it was full of lead. I didn't tell her what I was doing in the US, and she didn't ask.
There were no events scheduled for the weekend, so I had arranged to fly to San Francisco on the Saturday morning. Northern California is stiff with Berkeleys, and I spent the weekend with family before doing two school talks and a book signing on the Monday. The kids were so keen and interested it made me think there must be something to this writing game after all. I arranged with their teachers that they would all draw pictures of 'The Null' – a nightmare beast who appears in the early chapters of the book. I awarded prizes for the best drawings, but so hairy, scary and vivid were the entries that choosing a winner was almost impossible. Afterwards I caught a late flight from Oakland airport, touching down in Chicago Midway at 2am.
It was warmer than I expected outside, but in Chicago hotels they take their air conditioning seriously. The hotel corridors were supernaturally cold, and I half expected to see the spirits of the dead sliding hollow-eyed out of the stripy wallpaper. I headed for my room in the hope of a more hospitable climate, but when I opened the door it was like stepping into a meat-locker. I could see my own breath. I threw the air conditioning into reverse, and while I waited for the temperature to rise to life-sustaining levels I kept myself warm by tossing the excess pillows from the bed. Upmarket hotels take pride in the number of pillows they can arrange on one bed, but I only have one head, so most of them have to go. I sometimes wonder how many ducks go naked to provide just one hotel with surplus pillows, and I think of our usual family holidays, which generally involve the cunning art of trying to sneak a family of seven into a single hotel room half the size of this one. Here we'd have three pillows each. The Irish were kings of the world at room-stuffing, at least until we were overtaken by the Chinese. They stack up, I believe.
I've also discovered the secret of dining in silver-service restaurants without feeling intimidated. It's very simple: always eat the garnish. All of it, including the flower. It's the last thing they expect you to do, and it keeps them on the defensive. Leave the prawns instead. It's far from prawns we were raised.
Speaking of silver service, I was drawn into McDonalds at the departure gate in Chicago O'Hare by a mysterious force called breakfast pancakes with syrup. Hot pancakes are a triumph of American civilisation. They understand sugar lows. On the bin where I emptied my tray there was an ad: Cholesterol and Blood Sugar Screening, $45.
There were no events scheduled for the weekend, so I had arranged to fly to San Francisco on the Saturday morning. Northern California is stiff with Berkeleys, and I spent the weekend with family before doing two school talks and a book signing on the Monday. The kids were so keen and interested it made me think there must be something to this writing game after all. I arranged with their teachers that they would all draw pictures of 'The Null' – a nightmare beast who appears in the early chapters of the book. I awarded prizes for the best drawings, but so hairy, scary and vivid were the entries that choosing a winner was almost impossible. Afterwards I caught a late flight from Oakland airport, touching down in Chicago Midway at 2am.
It was warmer than I expected outside, but in Chicago hotels they take their air conditioning seriously. The hotel corridors were supernaturally cold, and I half expected to see the spirits of the dead sliding hollow-eyed out of the stripy wallpaper. I headed for my room in the hope of a more hospitable climate, but when I opened the door it was like stepping into a meat-locker. I could see my own breath. I threw the air conditioning into reverse, and while I waited for the temperature to rise to life-sustaining levels I kept myself warm by tossing the excess pillows from the bed. Upmarket hotels take pride in the number of pillows they can arrange on one bed, but I only have one head, so most of them have to go. I sometimes wonder how many ducks go naked to provide just one hotel with surplus pillows, and I think of our usual family holidays, which generally involve the cunning art of trying to sneak a family of seven into a single hotel room half the size of this one. Here we'd have three pillows each. The Irish were kings of the world at room-stuffing, at least until we were overtaken by the Chinese. They stack up, I believe.
I've also discovered the secret of dining in silver-service restaurants without feeling intimidated. It's very simple: always eat the garnish. All of it, including the flower. It's the last thing they expect you to do, and it keeps them on the defensive. Leave the prawns instead. It's far from prawns we were raised.
Speaking of silver service, I was drawn into McDonalds at the departure gate in Chicago O'Hare by a mysterious force called breakfast pancakes with syrup. Hot pancakes are a triumph of American civilisation. They understand sugar lows. On the bin where I emptied my tray there was an ad: Cholesterol and Blood Sugar Screening, $45.
Saturday, September 16, 2006
A fibreglass bandit
I flew into LA, and was driven along palm-lined boulevards to my hotel. Between the palm trees marched endless billboards which seemed to be part of some fierce ratings battle between rival TV medical dramas. Immaculate teams of white-coated hollywood personalities grinned from every poster. I wouldn't want any of them near me in an operating theatre. They looked like they would be too busy buffing their teeth in the mirror to notice that your liver had fallen out and was flopping about in a steel dish.
I met up with some friends who moved recently to LA, and we went to Sunset Boulevard to eat. After the restaurant we strolled along the boulevard looking for a bar. Most of the bars were themed, but whereas in other places the theming tends to be mainly internal, in LA they wear it on the outside. We sat outside a bar that was like a film set of a Waaald West Saloooon. Two fibreglass bar girls waved from a balcony in their flouncy dresses, and a fibreglass bandit burst out through the wall beside them on his fibreglass horse. The beer seemed real enough.
Back in my hotel room I could hear the rattle of helicopters outside the window. There were three of them holding a triangular formation above a tall building. Their noses were all facing into the centre and they looked far too close to each other for comfort. A fourth helicopter was flying in rapid circles around them, his own nose pointed towards the hovering group as he flew. This went on for some minutes, like a strange mating ritual. I suppose helicopters have to come from somewhere. Eventually the three female helicopters broke formation and flew off towards the hills, and the male helicopter headed in another direction to sulk.
There were three school visits the following day, where I faced the combined intelligence of hundreds of sharp-witted ten-year-olds with nothing for protection but a wireless microphone clipped to my ear. I found that turning my head at a certain angle produced feedback from the speakers. It occurred to me that if a rock-hard question came up I could just tilt my head and stun the questioner with a scream of feedback. By the time they recovered the question would be forgotten. It didn't come to that, which was probably a good thing.
Later I ate in a fancy creperie, attended by an extremely eager waitress. I've noticed with some American girls that the more polite and helpful they wish to appear, the higher their voices become, and this waitress swiftly reached a pitch where she could only have been heard by a dog. She must be saving for something important, I thought, so I tipped big.
I met up with some friends who moved recently to LA, and we went to Sunset Boulevard to eat. After the restaurant we strolled along the boulevard looking for a bar. Most of the bars were themed, but whereas in other places the theming tends to be mainly internal, in LA they wear it on the outside. We sat outside a bar that was like a film set of a Waaald West Saloooon. Two fibreglass bar girls waved from a balcony in their flouncy dresses, and a fibreglass bandit burst out through the wall beside them on his fibreglass horse. The beer seemed real enough.
Back in my hotel room I could hear the rattle of helicopters outside the window. There were three of them holding a triangular formation above a tall building. Their noses were all facing into the centre and they looked far too close to each other for comfort. A fourth helicopter was flying in rapid circles around them, his own nose pointed towards the hovering group as he flew. This went on for some minutes, like a strange mating ritual. I suppose helicopters have to come from somewhere. Eventually the three female helicopters broke formation and flew off towards the hills, and the male helicopter headed in another direction to sulk.
There were three school visits the following day, where I faced the combined intelligence of hundreds of sharp-witted ten-year-olds with nothing for protection but a wireless microphone clipped to my ear. I found that turning my head at a certain angle produced feedback from the speakers. It occurred to me that if a rock-hard question came up I could just tilt my head and stun the questioner with a scream of feedback. By the time they recovered the question would be forgotten. It didn't come to that, which was probably a good thing.
Later I ate in a fancy creperie, attended by an extremely eager waitress. I've noticed with some American girls that the more polite and helpful they wish to appear, the higher their voices become, and this waitress swiftly reached a pitch where she could only have been heard by a dog. She must be saving for something important, I thought, so I tipped big.
Thursday, September 14, 2006
Win Big With the Ladies
I arrived in Raleigh after flying over the vast wetlands of the North Carolina coast. A car was waiting for me. When the driver heard I was on an author tour he began to describe enthusiastically the book he was writing, a sort of manual on how to Win Big With the Ladies, based on chess strategy, a dash of the Bible, and the remembered advice of a mentor from his teenage years. He had a look of Steve Buscemi about him, and since he was wearing a black suit I felt like I was being driven by Mr Pink from Reservoir Dogs. I asked him if his strategy had worked for him, and he shrugged. 'Sure' he said. A couple of miles later he added 'Sometimes.'
I was dropped off at the bookshop that was organising the day's events - three school presentations in a row. The manager was a bit surprised to see me. 'You're here Friday, right?' she said. My schedule said Wednesday. 'Oh my lord,' she said, and got on the phone to the schools to ask them if they could make a Friday into a Wednesday.
The presentation consists of me rambling on for fifteen minutes about why and how I write, after which I read a chapter of the book. Out loud, that is. Then come questions from the floor, literally, as that's where the kids are seated. I point to each child and say 'you in the green T-shirt,' or 'there, with the flowery dress,' and every child without exception glances down at themselves for a quick check - Am I wearing green? Yep, that's me. Later that day one of the teachers caught up with me in the bookshop and presented me with an envelope of beautifully written letters from her entire class, complete with illustrations of characters from the book. A boy named Nicholas writes 'you have a big imagination. Like that vortex of lightning. Write to me if I am wrong about the lightning vortex.'
The booksellers and the teachers are unfailingly polite, and say nice things about my book. There are two levels of hyperbole in the US. Level one is 'Ossum.' Level two is 'it blew me away.' This always makes me think of Vito Corleone's unfortunate mother in the Godfather II, when she pleads to the local don for her son's life, and receives a blast from a shotgun in reply. When people tell me my book 'blew them away' I picture them flying backwards through a Sicilian olive grove in widow's weeds, a copy of the book clutched in one hand. Maybe I watch too many movies.
Tuesday, September 12, 2006
Sauce. Genocide. Sedatives.
I'm waiting for a connection in JFK airport at the beginning of a book-signing tour, eating egg foo yung from an outlet named Wok & Roll. 'You want sauce?' the Chinese bloke asks me. 'What flavour have you got?' I ask. He looks at me for a minute. 'Green,' he says.
I had to fill in an arrival form on the plane. One of the questions asked me if I was entering the US to engage in criminal or immoral activities. I wonder if anyone's ever answered yes to that one. Another enquired if I'm guilty of genocide. Yep, I eradicated an entire race only last week. They were laughing at me, and I just lost it. Can I still come in?
I was flown over already in April for a pre-pub tour, before the book was released. Being new to the writing game I was naturally expecting to tour for a bit, and then go to the pub. I'm from Dublin, and that's how we'd do it there. It turned out that pre-pub was short for pre-publication, and the tour consisted of having dinner with a number of extremely friendly booksellers in various choice restaurants. This is not a hard job, I thought to myself, and I was right.
The booksellers fell chiefly into two categories; young earnest girls who read around eighty childrens' books a week, foregoing sleep and who knows what else in the pursuit of Total Catalogue Penetration, and pleasant elderly ladies who know a great deal about everything, especially seafood. Men are thin on the ground in the world of childrens' publishing, but not altogether absent. They're usually in partnership with their wives, for extra protection.
This time around I'll be 'appearing' at a number of schools and bookshops around the country, talking to kids and signing a lot of books. Back in the days when it was necessary to sign a hundred travellers' cheques before setting off on holiday I used to find that my signature fell apart about halfway through the batch. If you find a 'signed' copy of my book (it's called The Palace of Laughter) with a sort of spastic pen line dribbling off the title page, it might still be genuine. It's probably from the end of a session. This might make it a little too easy for forgers, especially if they're drunk or under the influence of sedatives, which would probably be the case if they decided my signature was worth forging in the first place. Maybe I should get a stamp made up.
I had to fill in an arrival form on the plane. One of the questions asked me if I was entering the US to engage in criminal or immoral activities. I wonder if anyone's ever answered yes to that one. Another enquired if I'm guilty of genocide. Yep, I eradicated an entire race only last week. They were laughing at me, and I just lost it. Can I still come in?
I was flown over already in April for a pre-pub tour, before the book was released. Being new to the writing game I was naturally expecting to tour for a bit, and then go to the pub. I'm from Dublin, and that's how we'd do it there. It turned out that pre-pub was short for pre-publication, and the tour consisted of having dinner with a number of extremely friendly booksellers in various choice restaurants. This is not a hard job, I thought to myself, and I was right.
The booksellers fell chiefly into two categories; young earnest girls who read around eighty childrens' books a week, foregoing sleep and who knows what else in the pursuit of Total Catalogue Penetration, and pleasant elderly ladies who know a great deal about everything, especially seafood. Men are thin on the ground in the world of childrens' publishing, but not altogether absent. They're usually in partnership with their wives, for extra protection.
This time around I'll be 'appearing' at a number of schools and bookshops around the country, talking to kids and signing a lot of books. Back in the days when it was necessary to sign a hundred travellers' cheques before setting off on holiday I used to find that my signature fell apart about halfway through the batch. If you find a 'signed' copy of my book (it's called The Palace of Laughter) with a sort of spastic pen line dribbling off the title page, it might still be genuine. It's probably from the end of a session. This might make it a little too easy for forgers, especially if they're drunk or under the influence of sedatives, which would probably be the case if they decided my signature was worth forging in the first place. Maybe I should get a stamp made up.
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