Saturday 30 April 2011

1 minute, 2 minutes, 3 minutes, 4 minutes, 5 minutes - STOP!

I've been putting this off - but it's time to face the page and read The Swimmer aloud to myself to see how long it takes. I'm reading at the launch of Best British Short Stories on Tuesday and I have five minutes. And I ideally should stop reading at a point which will send the crowd (crowd?) into a frenzy of dissatisfaction so that every one of them rushes to the table at the back to buy a copy.

In fact I'm less nervous of the reading than of the mingling before and after. Will there be anyone else there willing to confess that - while they read obsessively - they can rarely remember the plot or characters of anything they've read?

Or that while they were out for a walk this afternoon they experienced a sudden and disconcerting urge to reread Tales of Brambly Hedge? Where did that come from?

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