Yes, yes, I’m fully narcissistic with all these photos of me-n-someone else but COME ON!
What cooler way to navigate the mountains of Switzerland than in a Porsche?
R kid is driving, Michael who lives in Switzerland with wife and kids.
Today we did birthday celebrations (including mine!) with cousins and all. Two of the boy cousins, Max and Cyrus, are 14, the same age as Josh Garcia in books 2 & 3. Watching them play like daredevils in the playground I wondered how they’d fare if plunged into the same kinds of perils and dangers as Josh. And decided that they’d probably do pretty well, no worse than Josh.
At 14 they’re MUCH fitter and stronger than…ooh, let’s say, for example, me. They may still be children but they’d survive jungle dangers far better than I.
I’d be a total wuss. I’ve seen the rainforest thicket into which I sent Josh. You wouldn’t get me more than 5 metres into that without severe panic…
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I’ve been getting ready for the Edinburgh Book Festival, much excitement, yay!
My event is on Wed 21st – sold out, I’m surprised and impressed to see. It’s a heck of a marketing machine, the Edinburgh Festival. Most of the Schools Events are sold out.
I have been getting my multimedia stuff up to scratch, cutting DVDs of my videos and rejigging my Powerpoint slideshow with one new slide – all about 2012. Apart from that, I have now booked my schedule solid between seeing friends who are visiting the Festival and hanging out at parties and lunches with my lovely publishers.
And I’m flying there! I will feel rather fabulous…
Meanwhile my sister has made us all very proud by giving birth to a bouncy boy, Benedict. I’m seriously thinking of going to his christening, all the way in Australia. Since we all live so many squillions of miles away from each other, my brother and sisters, these sorts of events are starting to be the kinds of excuses we can use to justify the increasingly terrifying expense of meeting up.
But maybe Scholastic Australia would like me to do some book events and schools visits….
That makes it much more justifiable, doesn’t it?
Meanwhile despite some very good news (apart from a new nephew) – which I’ll share in the next few weeks – I’m feeling rather melancholic. It’s been far too long since I went dancing – not since the Oscar D’Leon concert on July 12th. I think the doctor may order a trip to Mambocity soon. Damn salsa for being so addictive! I’m good and hooked.
Listened to BBC Radio 4 last night; Grevel Lindop reading from his book Travels On the Dance Floor – also on listen again. For a UK-based salsera like me his experiences are very familiar. It made me think nostalgically of Cuba. Especially when he played a song which played often when we were in Cuba. Whenever I hear it I feel a kind of desperate, romantic ache for Havana.
Well I listened to the lyrics, searched for the first line on Google and found this video: it’s the late guajiro Polo Montanez singing “Un Monton de Estrellas“.
Very romantic song. And turns out he’s dead – in a traffic accident in 2002, when he was 47. *sob*
I NEED TO DANCE TO THIS SONG SOON OR I WILL BURST!
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I finished editing the clips I filmed of the son band playing and people dancing at Carnival de Cuba last Saturday in sunny London. Featuring my friends Becs (in white with turquoise top), Deborah (red cardy, dancing with me), Nicola (white top and trousers, flowing blue-and-white overshirt) and Mel (halter-neck, brown-and white polka-dot dress), all of whom I’ve previously blogged.
Seems implausibly cold now…an artic breeze in blowing through my window at exactly the right angle to torment my wrist, which already throbs with strain from typing and the computer mouse.
I dreamt such a great idea for a story last night. I really should have written it down but as usual I thought it so vivid on waking that I wouldn’t need to. But as ever, an hour or so later and all I remember are fragments. In the dream I was shown a photo of a bunch of people who were known to have been behind the funding of a particular scientific project – a project that later had was found to have sinister connotations. The photo was an unexpected capture of all the suspicious parties together. And those faces were indeed surprising. I could identify some of them from my scientist days. One in particular was someone I hadn’t liked at all. In the dream, I had that delicious thrill of Aha!….followed by hmmmmm…
I’ve forgotten all the details, except the faces of the scientists that I recognised.
That’s right guys. I know who you are. I’ve seen ya!
Ah, the lovely boys of Charanga’s front line. Cuba’s finest, playing for free in Southwark Park.
We missed them by two days in Havana…and also in Cancun. Well worth the wait…rumour has it they’ll be at the afterparty later tonight at the Colosseum in Vauxhall. This is where it really would be an advantage to be JK Rowling. People in their 20s adore her…they grew up on her books. Bet she’d get to dance with anyone from Charanga she likes.
Well I’ll still try my luck…
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