A Date for My Diary

 Went down to Dublin, yesterday. It was for the Irish book launch of The Coast of Everything by Guillermo Stitch. Hard to know what to wear - it was both hot and wet - so I plumped for a simple linen shirt and skinny jeans. Because that's basically all I wear now. I may have been overemphasizing the difficulty of my choices. I paint from a narrow palette. My chest hair poked through the fabric of the shirt like tufts of blanched grass. My tote bag was the Tarot one I bought in Harrogate. It contained a jacket I thought I might put on for photo shoots, my notebook, two pens, two copies of Spine and my phone. I didn't need the jacket as I didn't get my photo taken. 

I traveled down with Reggie Chamberlain-King, who was charming company, and put up with the two hours of my comic spiel with forbearance. I never saw him grit his teeth. Though he has a beard and anything could have been going on under there. The book launch was in prestigious Dublin bookshop Hodges Figgis, which claims to be Ireland's oldest bookshop and I'm not calling them a liar. But first we had to pick our way through Dublin. I always like being in Dublin. It's a proper city. It's in Europe still. But today there were more characters than perhaps I was ready for. I barely make it out of the house to Belfast anymore, as the buses are often on fire. I sit, instead, in the quiet of my office, watching rain fall on the shaggy green of my lawn in June. Occasionally, I'll listen to A Life (1895 to 1915) by Mark Hollis. Bumblebees bump into the window and drift off again. I hear the sounds of movement beyond the door. A kettle filled with a muffled blast. The flush of a distant toilet as the tea completes its refreshing journey. Quiet. Dublin isn't much like that. Strange figures, in peculiar costume, lurch out from every angle. People are asleep on the street, or they're frozen in the attitudes of statues. Faces are excitingly original. Unusual fashions are witnessed. I feel quite underdressed for someone sweating this much. 

It's not much like Mrs Brown's Boys. There's no cutaway to a laughing audience as Brendan breaks the fourth wall again. Dublin is disconcertingly real, if it's anything. 

We meet Guillermo outside the bookshop, and repair for a quick pint at Dukes before his ordeal. I say his ordeal, but really he has arranged the situation so that he has to do very little. He hates speaking in public, he hates reading. He hates showing up. He hates people trying to guess his real name. He has arranged a hype man, David Collard, to tell everyone he is the best writer since Joyce (its no coincidence we're doing this the day after Bloom's Day in Dublin. A James Joyce lookalike is in attendance). David and Guillermo will later perform their practiced set-piece where David answers Guillermo's questions about the book. He has arranged for the writer June Caldwell to do the actual readings. Guillermo is merely present, like Fantomas over the Parisian rooftops. The puppet master manipulating his mannequins. Svengali in the shadows.   

Over the pint, I discover what he's mainly feeling is relief. The book is finished. It is out in the world. He has one more book launch to get through, tonight's, and he's free. He looks like a bloke in an oubliette who has just found the emergency exit. Free! Free to do nothing. The book has been ten years in the making. I've followed, or rather not quite followed, its progress from the very first. Many's a time I thought he was, or I was, losing my mind, as the pieces of prose he was sending me bore no relation at all to the other pieces he'd sent me. Slowly, over years, it began to coalesce. I started to find my way. But I didn't really understand the epic scope of it until the book was in my hands and I was reading it for the second time. Over the evening, people report they read The Coast of Everything greedily - it's long, it's structurally complex, it introduces you to a lot of people - but it remains an easy read, and begs you, once you've finished it, to go back and read it again, just to see the bits the you missed the first time around. This is true. It has size. Its contains worlds. But you want to dive right back in again. Like me getting off the train at Connolly station. There are bearings to get. 

I will say this. It IS worth the hype. The Coast of Everything is an extraordinary book. It's so worth the effort. The effort isn't even effort, it's just time. This book will take you time. It's worth taking the time. 

After Stitch toddled off to do his soundcheck, I chatted to Reggie and Brian J Showers of Swan River Press, who is delightful. Then we hit the bookshop. It was a joy to bump into Jacob, Guillermo's (and my) publisher, whom I hadn't seen in person for four years. In fact the last time I saw him, I hadn't published a single book. I forget how quickly the books came out. Pow Pow Pow, one after the other. It'll be eighteen months between Spine and the next one, How Ghosts Affect Relationships. Maybe my poor, browbeaten public need the break. I met the lovely Ann Marie Hantho, who had done the covers for all my books, as well as The Coast of Everything, and she was charming as well. Everyone is so nice at this book launch. And we sat back and went through the necessary pantomime of launching a book that had been launched already in another country the day before. During the Q and A someone asked Guillermo if he felt he was an Irish writer. "I am today," he said, "for the purposes of marketing." 

I laughed. 

Ronan Hession was there. But I didn't bother him. I never bother famous people. 

Afterwards, I had a charming chat to Guillermo's wife, Katya, and we repaired to another pub for a quick beer. During said beer, I forgot the name of Ruddigore, the light opera that repeatedly mentions Basingstoke, was commended for my drawings (if not my writing) and had to listen to someone who claimed to be desperate to hook up with a Belfast writer, proffering all the usual names. When Jacob indicated that I was sitting right there, it was suggested it had to be a female Belfast writer. Okay. Fine. It was probably best that the last train from Dublin to Belfast leaves at ten to nine, as I was out of there. Another two hour train ride and then the bus home. Four hours journey time, four hours there. That's okay.  

On the bus back I got into a conversation with a very old man with very beige teeth. He was carrying a plastic bag and a bottle of whiskey. The bag contained, he claimed, thousands of pounds of his winnings, as he'd been playing the slots. "I've got thousands of pounds that I've just won!" he shouted down the length of the bus, while me and another guy urged caution. I hope he made it home. 

I've got physiotherapy tomorrow. Promises to piss down. Back to normality. Away from the the glitz, the glamour. The high kicking ladies of the Folies Bergere. Back to life.