Scatterbrain: a spring letter
London Book Fair; horses; general elections; I quit writing; a mixtape for you
Unagented wailing souls
London Book Fair is underway, and writers can be seen wandering through the Olympia in Kensington like wailing souls, so it must be spring.
Not that you’d be able to tell it if you looked out of a window. I say this because it’s only 13:54 and I’ve already got soaked riding my bike three times, and I might get soaked again, when I pedal back home. On days like today I wonder what the hell I’m doing on this grey island. Then, I read the news from Rosario, Argentina, and it’s all about narcoterrorism and corpse-messaging,1 and the answer to my question becomes clear. I’ve been twenty-two years here in London; I guess I need to get used to the possibility that I might be here till I drop. Maybe buying a rain poncho would be a good idea too.
Going back to LBF, to distract myself with things that happen in London, before I get depressed with things happening in Rosario: why do writers attend what is by all means a trade fair? Publishers, agents, book marketers, I get it. But writers? Do they go for the events? Do they go to scavenge free food? Do they go to find sex partners? Or do they fantasise they’ll bump into a deal if they hang out in the Olympia?
I’ve got no idea. And to be fair it isn’t all writers who end up there, but mainly the same kind of folk who suffer from online verborrhea. So maybe spending time in the physical realm in West London is an improvement over their typically solitary state. May they have a ball.
Horses
Cheltenham is on so it must be spring.