i remember something else that eejit of an interviewer asked; 'coming from an english lit background, i have to ask, are you just really trying to annoy people by having eight pages of pi in the middle?' Well let's spell this out with claps shall we? i-r-o-n-y. it was one of the funniest parts in the novel. i laughed and laughed. it's an email that one pod member sends to everyone else. there's one digit incorrect in these pages of pi and the first one to get spot it wins the opportunity to get him to sing something karaoke for them. it's a whole black humoured thing of spam emails, the fact that they compete, the fact that a canonical author can give over that space to numbers (he's part of the modern canon right?). i just loved the double irony that there is a character called Kam in there who has zero sense of humour or understanding of irony. uh huh. ooh i'm spotting a modern day parallel! shall i stop obsessing about this guy now.

mole, don't laugh but he taught on arvon!!

I get to meet the man!!

lovely loughboroughites

a nice man from loughborough found my phone on the train and is sending it back to me :)

the good, the bad & the ugly

and in reverse order...

The ugly

Mother of pearl, that interviewer was awful. (we're talking the douglas coupland reading and interview in nottingham this evening) Rules of interviewing must surely include not trying to wangle your own achievements into a conversation with someone who outclasses you. also, pulling your interviewee up on little details so you look cleverer is also not a great trick. best not to look confused when given an answer you don't think suited your question and then following it up with 'yes but the question i asked was...' He made too much of himself (as you mentioned i am an author too i didn't notice it being mentioned apart from by himself), he tried to make in jokes (don't you think it would be a good idea to explain what jpod is) and he also called the audience stupid at one point. i think it was about his references to pi but i'm not entirely sure. also he name dropped some other Canadian author and told Doug to 'tell the audience about them cos i'm sure they won't know anything about him'. He was a disaster of an interviewer and hopelessly smug after he'd asked every question that he obviously thought was an absolute corker. "I have to ask Doug, what do you think of the latest Morrisey album" the reason we discover he 'had' to ask that question was to get in that he had burnt a copy of it for Doug. >gag<

By the way the latest Morrisey album is great.

the bad

i lost my phone at some point today. so if you're reading this and you're a usual texter then i'm sorry i have no idea where it is and i'm really cross with myself. someone has found it for sure because as soon as i got in i gave it a call and it had been switched off. thankfully i'd just erased all my text messages the day before. but all my photos on there..... man, there are some i can never get back... the explosion at Buncefield, Bryan Robson signing at work, parties, people i worked with years ago. Not to mention all those numbers i have to find again. grr.

the good

well, here was going to go a picture of me and Doug but I've tried twice and blogger doesn't wanna know so i'll try again later.
Anyway, he was surprisingly nervy. Apparantly the last time he came he sat in the green room then ran away he was too nervous! At least this time he came out. He obviously does this a lot and told us he loved doing it but he didn't seem a natural public speaker. He was funny and likeable though and manoeuvred his way through a minefield of questions already detailed above. He read quite a lot from JPod which was enjoyable even though I had just finished it on the train up. He ambled through his talk, getting distracted along the way and picking up where he left off which was fun. I'm sure I'll add more soon but I'm getting fed up with the pictures not working now so here I post...

boing boing

and i also got to meet bryan robson today which was pretty cool. nice chap. had an abrupt introduction when his publicist hands me her mobile and says 'he needs directions'. so i'm talking to bryan robson with everyone (staff, crowds, manager, book rep etc etc) looking eagerly at me to be the first to know where he is and how long he'll be. as for me, i'm thinking, i know nothing about giving directions to where we are if you're gunna say i'm on the A54321xyz and i've come to a roundabout. as some point he mentions a landmark i know and we're in business.

it was a fun afternoon. only one lunatic shouting BRYAN ROBSON!! in his face to get him to look and have his picture taken. and one woman who said 'i've waited 20 years to kiss you' and planted a smacker on him! lots of people with shirts and old football programmes for him to sign. then he sat in my chair in the office signing a load more stock.

just as we're calming down after the fun, harlen coben walks in and offers to sign stock for us. not bad eh?

but tomorrow it will be my turn to be the token nutter shouting DOUGLAS COUPLAND!!! I'VE WAITED 20 YEARS TO MEET YOU!!!

life after Doug

i'm going to meet my favourite living author tomorrow and i'm beyond ecstatic.

computer ill

so far can still get online but excuse me if i disappear for no reason while we try and get rid of some nasty bugs.