Donna Tartt, St Anne’s

What can I say? It was great. The church itself is lovely – I’d never been inside before, but I now want to go back, and take some photographs of the interior. The lighting wasn’t good enough today, due to the timing. It’s a stunning place, and the stained glass windows are absolutely beautiful.

Donna Tartt was obviously feeling under the weather – she did say she had a cold, and she was quite obviously nervous to be doing a reading to the gathered 300-400 people. I can understand that – in a similar situation I know I’d have been in a far worse state. Because of her nerves, the reading (the prologue to “The Little Friend”) started off in a very stilted fashion, but as she relaxed it became far better. Once it was done, she took some questions from the audience, but again that was cut shorter than usual because of the sheer number of people.

All in all, it was an interesting hour or so – and I managed to pick up a hardcover edition of Secret History, which is now also signed. Makes it worth the £3 ticket price, particularly as the price is refunded against the book purchase price.

Poodle?

So, according to Tony Bliar (intentional), the UK isn’t America’s poodle. Apparently the UK went to war in alliance with the US “to make our country safer”. Yeah right.

To be fair, I’d agree that we’re not the poodle to the US. I was thinking more that we were the Andrex puppy. (NOT a site for the faint-hearted or diabetic, I should point out)

Readings/Signings

Yes, tonight I’m seeing Donna Tartt doing a reading/signing for the paperback release of “The Little Friend“. It should be interesting – rather than the more normal location, of within the Waterstone’s store, this one is to be done in St. Ann’s Church, which I’ve never been inside before. All in all, it should be interesting. It’ll also give me an opportunity to see if the camera on the new phone is any good, which is a bit geeky, but there we go.

Fucking useless bastards

One day – one fucking day – BT will be organised, efficient, and able to communicate. Unfortunately, that day wasn’t yesterday, and won’t be today either. The cunts.

No, the broadband wasn’t installed – well, they don’t think it was. They’re not sure. One system is saying that I somehow managed to order ADSL and cancel it on the same day, one is saying it was installed yesterday, and one’s saying it was uninstalled. As per usual with BT, no-one fucking knows. I compounded the problem, by wanting to be awkward and keep the same phone number I’d had before. Big mistake. Huge, epic, ten-commandments-level fuck-up. Never again. Because the number had ADSL on it through a seperate supplier, and I’d wanted to move everything over to BT. So I organised with Zen to remove the ADSL – which they did on the 25th, no worries. However, that appears to have crossed lines with the system for installing ADSL, so it’s now saying that the BT order for ADSL was uninstalled, and is thus complete. I despair.

I’ve got to call them again today, find out what the fuck they’re playing at. I could cry.

Broadband

With luck, by the time I’ve got home BT will have finally pulled their finger out and connected my number to ADSL (although this time on BT Openworld) again. I haven’t heard any confirmation of this yet, but still, fingers crossed.

Scary Twunt

As exclusively revealed in his comment here Scaryduck is going to be cashing in on his own infamy launching a mini branding exercise with mugs based on the design I re-did for him. And I have to say that I’m deeply chuffed that he liked the design, and I’m on the “definite purchaser” list already.

Ah, vanity vanity. Help him cash in Order the merchandise (when it’s been costed) on on Scary’s site.

Return

Note to self : Never trust people who use a bus service. When they say “Oh, don’t worry, the last one leaves at seven o’clock on a Sunday”, this (naturally) means that the last one runs at six, and you’re then stuck in the arse of beyond ’til morning. Hence a disappearing Lyle. And even with a 3G phone, it’s still hard to blog when you don’t know the web-address for a mobile-compatible blogging service. *Sigh*

I’ll figure out all this extra tech soon, I’m sure.