Lately, I’ve found myself spotted by published authors, or generally treated nicely by published authors. Needless to say, everyone should buy all their books. I only attract the best.
Andrew Martin, author of The Necropolis Railway: A Novel of Murder, Mystery and Steam. He chats to me while I’m loitering in Archway Video, and says he’s spotted me in The London Library.
Travis Elborough, author of The Bus We Loved: London’s Affair with the Routemaster. He chats to me in The Boogaloo and says he’s spotted me in The British Library.
Dan Rhodes, author of Timoleon Vieta Come Home. Now, he hasn’t spotted me in a library but he can’t avoid spotting me at his book event in the Boogaloo the other evening. Because I am rather drunk and am bothering him about how great the band Orange Juice are. Like many authors, he’s a voracious music lover; the solitary act of writing often coincides with the need for a well-considered soundtrack. I think a compilation of his favourite music was playing in the background to his book launch. And Orange Juice must have been on the track listing.
I can’t quite remember the details, because on this evening I am rather drunk. I have been to another launch party earlier the same night, the launch party for the Latitude festival, in a trendy club off Shaftesbury Avenue. There, I down a few free wines on an empty stomach before topping them up with a number of drinks at the Boogaloo.
I think I was in rather flirty mode of drunkenness. I hope I didn’t try to get off with Mr Rhodes. Or indeed Mr Ben Moor, the comic actor and performer of the brilliant stage show Coelacanth. Mr Moor was at the Boogaloo, and also at the Latitude event. And I had seen him at Latitude festival itself in Suffolk last year: he was performing Coelacanth in the Theatre Tent and it was rather fantastic. Full of clever wordplay with lines such as ‘like a white flag to a bull’. So I bothered him about that. I think I annoyed him by saying I hadn’t worn one of his badges.
I regret not being able to remember very much about this night of flirty alcohol, but I don’t regret feeling extremely happy. It was a very happy kind of drunkenness.
What I can say is that at one point Dan Rhodes gives me a free signed copy of his new novel, Gold. It has rounded corners and isn’t too long. Mr Rhodes is a believer in keeping stories short and to the point: he has also published a collection of 101 stories each lasting 101 words.
On the flyleaf, he’s put a quote from an Orange Juice lyric – “To Dickon – I’ll Never Be Man Enough For You.”
