The Word Cloud

DISCLAIMER: No penguins were harmed in the making of this blog. Largely because it doesn't feature any. But don't you just love 'em anyway?

SATURDAY NIGHT, AND AFTERWARDS...

One of the Festival Organisers (who shall remain nameless!) greeted me with horror. “You’re not dressed! Where’s your suit?”
I was tempted to explain that for most of the last week I’d been wearing jeans in which an unfortunately placed hole allowed my testicles to dangle out. I considered it lucky that my fellow conference-goers didn’t have to witness that spectacle whilst dining. Instead I just endured the abuse in stoic silence. Which was probably best.

A crowd of beautiful young woman cheered when they saw me and beckoned me over. It made me feel a bit like Justin Timberlake (except that my IQ remained above forty). You know what? This is why I actually came to the Festival. For the chicks. Bollocks to the writing.

There’d been a little gap before dinner where the shell-shocked could attempt to get their breathing under control. Can’t have people choking on their entrees. But writers are unpredictable people; it’s dangerous to sit at a table with eight of them and try to eat. You never know when a witty remark will cut the air, causing you to bark into your smoked salmon mousse, inhale half of it sideways, then snort and spray the runny bit across the diners opposite. My apologies to the other members of my table. I’m fairly sure it washes out.

Every table in the dining room was piled with a dozen copies of the same two books. It looked like a staff party at The Works. We looked in awe at them for a few minutes, then looked around the floor for anywhere to put them when the main course arrived. My suggestion that we build a tower and play Giant Jenga was politely ignored.

The rest of the night was a blur. There was good booze, great food and even better company. I kept to myself, a little ocean of calm in the midst of the whirlwind. Or at least, that is what I told my folks back home. No, they didn’t believe me either. Suffice to say that fun was had by all, but for the reasons of decency I can relay almost nothing. Oh, and for reasons of copyright; my next book will be about writers at a conference, true stories revealing what happens when you stress them to the maximum, then pour in alcohol and shake. I’m calling it ‘The Orgy On The Cloud’. For expressions of interest by agents, or to file a lawsuit, please visit my website.

It was a messy night. I stayed up late, then later. I was kicked out of the bar, but the party carried on. Finally, I was the party. And I was dribbling. I found my bed at 3:30am and just remembered to put my watch forward to 4:30. I had a feeling I might not make breakfast.

In fact I barely made my bus at ten. I still couldn’t see properly. I knew I’d made some mistakes in my choice of drinks the previous night, but was this much discomfort strictly necessary?

The bus arrived at the train station and I fell out of it. A woman with a wheelie suitcase accompanied me across three lanes of cars, just down from a crossing that neither of us could be bothered to walk to. We made it to the station entrance when she stopped abruptly. “Shit! My bag is still on the bus!”

We both glanced back. The bus hadn’t managed to pull out yet. I had the sudden thought of springing gallantly to her aid and charging back through the traffic, rescuing her bag single-handed. Even having the thought hurt. So instead I slunk off, head down, shoulders straining to haul the rucksack stuffed with hardback books, whilst the woman sprang to her own aid.

In the station was a Burger King. Not normally my breakfast establishment of choice but penniless writers can’t be choosers. (We can however moan about it in blogs.) The queue was already six deep. Most of them looked like they did make Burger King their breakfast establishment of choice. 

As I considered my options a plague of fat midgets swarmed around me. (I’m not sure of the collective noun for fat midgets so I went with plague). They appeared to be survivors, either of a major natural disaster in the vicinity or of a seriously traumatic night out. One of them was wearing pyjamas. If my drinking session could have been called heavy, theirs must have weighed like planet earth.

Every member of the group was female, about three and a half feet tall, about three feet wide and extremely vocal. I waited behind a pair of them while they individually ordered enough breakfast for the whole group. Then more swarmed in to take part in the purchase. Suddenly I was waist-deep in bright pink suitcases and last night’s hair-do’s.
“You pushed in!” One of the midgets proclaimed to her friend.
“Oh yeah!” She replied. “Sorry.” She grimaced back at me. And made her order anyway.
“Bacon double cheeseburger, a meal,”
There were two tills at that counter. This woman comfortably bridged the gap between both of them. By contrast the girl serving was tall and slender and kind of pretty.
“Xtra large love?” she asked without a trace of irony.

As I bit into that hot breakfast muffin I felt normality beginning to reassert itself. “Ahhhh!!!” I wanted to say. But I daren’t, because around me the station was starting to come into sharper focus. Reality, at least on Sunday morning in York train station, was bloody ugly. The next thing to recover was my writerly instinct. Must get this down, I thought, reaching for my beloved Macbook. I opened my bag. Inexplicably it was filled with cheese.

One of the guilty pleasures of travel on a miniscule budget is fast food. Sometimes it’s all I can recognise. Often it’s all I can afford. But I quite enjoy it - in moderation. Two hours after breakfast my coach pulled into the services and I bought a Big Mac.

A rather less pleasurable aspect of travel is toilets. I have a rule when travelling long distances by coach - use the toilet, but never take a shit; if the driver turns suddenly, you’ll be wearing it. But the services, though stable, were crowded. Queue for the loo. Seat still warm from the bare buttocks of the hairy truck driver who just vacated it. It’s times like these that I long for home. Alas, seven hours of public transport still lay between us.

It was dark when I arrived in Somerset. My girlfriend had come to pick me up so I let her wrestle my bags off the coach.
“How was the festival?” She asked.
“AWESOME!” It was the only thing I could still feel enthusiastic about.
“And how’s your book?”
“Ah. It, um, needs some work.”
“Oh! Sorry love. Nice to have you back though,” and she pulled me tight against her. Then she stepped back and beamed at me. “Tell you what - let’s go to Macdonalds!”

DISCLAIMER: None of this really happened at all. I made everything up - especially the people. And the venue. York isn’t even a real place. Please don’t sue me.)

FRIDAY

After spending the last two weeks in Jordan (the country, not the pin-up girl) I’d flown home for the Festival of Writing. This was it - my chance to impress agents with witty tales of derring-do, to storm the gates of Castle Publishing and emerge a rich and successful writer. It was finally within my grasp, all of it: fame and fortune and a side order of hot chicks.

So, I bought bananas from a neo-nazi near Birmingham bus station - like you do. It was a simple misunderstanding; with a mass of muscles and tattoos where his sleeves should have been, a shaved head and kick-yer-face-in boots, I thought he was the most terrifying person I’d ever seen. And he was about to beat the shit out of me. He bawled something incomprehensible at point blank into my face, which my panicked brain interpreted as “You’re gonna die you fuckin’ little turd!” (but which, on reflection, might have been a sales pitch for bananas). I raised my hands in self defence and he slapped a bag of bananas into one of them. It seemed like a good idea to pay him after that.

Unfazed by the attempt on my life I made it to York in high spirits. Ah, York! It’s a magical place, the clear, sparkling river winding past ancient town walls and BLAHBLAHBLAHBLAH. Whatever. I had to quash that writerly instinct within me, that one that sought to constantly narrate my surroundings in lurid prose. No, there was no concentration to spare for creativity at the Festival of Writing. Agents and publishers would be guarding those gates; armed with lethal invective, their razor sharp comments could cut down distracted writers mid stride. Truly, I was going into the belly of the beast. Only the Gods knew if I’d be coming out again.

As my coach surged through town I caught a sign in the window of a pub: 2 meals for £19, it promised. ‘Good Value!’ it added underneath, which was quite obviously a lie.

I caught a local bus to the University. “A writer eh, going to a writing conference?” The bus conductor was in a talkative mood. I felt I’d given him fair warning, and that if he wanted to say anything stupid it was mine for the documenting.

“We get a lot of conferences there,” he told me. “Them Samaritans did one there. They were nice people, them Samaritans.” 

I had to physically restrain myself from doing a face-palm.

I arrived and checked into my room, in the process breaking the door handle. This is why people don’t invite me to their houses. I stripped off and had a shower, delighting in the heat of the water as it removed nine hours of travel on two coaches, one bus, two cars and a unicycle. That’s the last time I hitchhike past a circus. Steam rose and I luxuriated in it, right up until the point where the shower curtain adhered itself to my naked back and bum cheeks. I tried not to think about the last ten users of the shower suffering the same indignity.

At dinner I was reunited with my friends from the Word Cloud whom I’d met last year. At last I could feel comfortable, for here were people who wouldn’t judge me. I opened my bag. “Anyone for a banana?”

I picked a table at random for the Literary Networking event and listened carefully to the instructions. Ten minutes then change - imagine all the agents I could meet in an hour. Though I didn’t have a star on my badge, so I would be staying at this table. This was where it could all happen, I told myself. After a brief awkward silence I encouraged the old dear ext to me to speak first. “Well, my book you see - well, it’s a novel you know - it’s about a young lady, from olden times - well, it’s historical you see. Historical romance. Yes, that’s it. It’s about this young woman, and her sister - only her sister doesn’t come into it until later, because she married a man who... well, her husband, in the beginning was a...” I glanced at my watch. Five minutes gone. The woman continued to ramble at great length and by the time the bell rung to change seats she still hadn’t made any sense. In my head I was no longer referring to her as the ‘old dear’. Four new people dropped into the seats around me. The Old Dear remained motionless. As the room settled down once again, she cleared her throat. “So, I was saying, my book is about a young lady...”

It was the third session before I even got to speak. By that point we were supposed to be discussing literary works of the 19th Century. The oldest book I’ve ever read is Lord of the Rings. I went blank for a few moments, then was struck by a flash of brilliance. “Has anybody read ‘Pride and Prejudice... and Zombies?”

Authonomy Live was a potentially great event, fatally flawed in one way: It’s distinct lack of me. Still, the winning piece included the word penis so I felt I’d been morally represented. Exactly as happened last year, the writers at my table listened intently to every reading. Then they conferred with each other. Then they asked me what it had been about. I gave them the gist and there was much nodding. I made a mental note to suggest a better microphone for next year.

About the co-ed bathroom in the Roger Kirk Centre, I have only one thing to say. Sorry! I mean that. Maggie and Barbara, thank-you for understanding. In my defence I’d like point out that thing does look exactly like a urinal. I only hope no-one was scarred for life (as I nearly was when the motion activated red-hot water sprinkler came on).

That night there was drinking and merriment as I moved amongst the tables, searching for anyone with the power to alter the course of my life. Time after time I sought out influential agents, screwed my courage to the sticking point, sat down next to them and asked them one burning question; “Would you like a banana?” 

At one point I became entangled in a fierce debate on the subject of my genre. “I absolutely disagree,” said the gentleman opposite me. “It’s a genre with a very high degree of literary talent. To call those books boring  shows a total lack of appreciation for writing of any kind of quality.” 

I conceded that my point may have been a tad disrespectful, and glanced down at the man’s name badge. “Well, we can chat tomorrow,” I told him, “I’ve got a one-to-one with you.” 
His eyes rolled.

Saturday morning came far too soon... (to be continued)