Hay Change

A message to any sad cases who might have made a note in their diaries for my Hay Festival appearance: "The date has changed."

Also it turns out I'll be appearing alongside James Hawes* and Robert Lewis**.

Yes, the organisers have correctly identified our event as the main draw for the whole festival, and have been shuffling everyone else around (Elvis Costello, Spike Lee, Jane Fonda... etc. Some writers too, I think) to give us the prime time slot - 5pm, Wednesday, June 1st. I'm told the event will be at a place called "Four". All I know about "Four" is that it is not "One", "Two", or "Three" (which has got to be good, right? I mean, would you rather have one cake or four cakes, if the cake man was handing them out for free?) Mind you, I've asked around and all I can find out about "Four" is that it's "the patch of dirt behind the gents' at the Bull Inn. Watch out for the dog - he's blind in one eye and if you creep up on him, he'll go for you." But that can't be right, can it? No, no - it will surely be a nice plush festival building, or a big marquee with state-of-the-art multimedia. Yeah.

* James Hawes, of course, was meant to be at the Bath Lit Fest with me and Griffiths and Barry. I'm chuffed to get a second chance to meet the guy (A WHITE MERC WITH FINS - one of my fave debuts... SPEAK FOR ENGLAND - superb piece of satire/nostalgia/fantasy/politics. He wears JG Ballard and PG Wodehouse hats simultaneously and actually pulls it off, to which I say: "Fair play to you, Hawesy").

** Robert Lewis - new Serpent's Tail author with the excellent, booze-drenched THE LAST LLANELLI TRAIN. Is there such a genre as "pub fiction"? If so, slot this effort near the top of the cannon. It's a PI novel (set in Bristol), definitely in the Bruen "Jack Taylor" tradition of heroic fuck-ups (the protagonist, not the novel.) I'll blog more about it later, but suffice to say it's marvellous. I'll also be reading with Rob at The Dylan Thomas Festival in Swansea.