I Wake at  7am and by 8.30am I am on my cycle spinning through the canal towards the south bank centre.  I have meeting with Gauri Sharma at Southbank centre.  At 11.30am I leave and pick up a car from my regular car hire people. They’ve given me a gorgeous Audi. It’s very fast black and sleak. Your thinking the same thing as I am aren’t you.

It needs to be cause I am late.  I sling my bike into the back  and travel  home to Hackney then to Bracknell.  It takes three hours because of  bad GPS  on my Iphone. But the sun was out and the ipod on.  I arrive to see and laugh with   Arthur smith Hattie Hayridge and Carol Grimes.   We were at a theatre inside  South Hill Park on a gorgeous early summer evening.

In no time I’m on stage. Afterwards  I sell all my books and sign them for folks .  Great gig.   I’m  Shattered by  9.30pm.  But it wasn’t over.   Then I drove through the night for a further three hours  to The Hay Festival  for a radio programme called Up All Night.   But what an incredible drive through the Brecon mountains by night. Through the mist, swerving round bendy relentless country roads cupped in spooky gothic ovals of gigantic old trees..

 I
arrive in Wales  an  whole other country .  It is dark and Hay is empty of people but lit up in a field like a space ship has arrived. My car curls to the security gate  for 12.30. Bang on time.  Antonia Trunbull who booked me on the show is smiling. It’s a ncie sight to see at the site. The security guard takes my car and drives it into its place and antonia takes me to the studio set up in the hallowed confines of the most succesful literary festival in Britain.

I shall now be on the radio  most of the night. That’s  two performances, a book signing, five hundred miles and six  hours travelling, two countries and one meeting in a  seventeen hour day.  Done.