HobNobbing and Ginger Nutting with the rich and famous

Many hellos to you! Or should that be 'helloes'?  Hello's? Damn, now I'm caught up in the great tomato controversy - the greengrocer's apostrophe can only be seconds away... However, if we walk very quickly in this direction, I think we can outdistance it.  Follow me, everyone.

Good, you all kept up. Lovely. Right.  This week's news.

I am sorry to have to break it to you all, but I didn't win the Melissa Nathan Award.  All right, all right, you can keep the sobbing to a minimum, I am truly not at all unhappy about the result, for I was beaten by Jenny Colgan, for whom I have almost fangirl admiration.  In contrast to my 'diseased leg of pork' Jenny was wearing a long, pink, satin dress, the sort it's lovely to hold up against your cheek and sort of rub... and I manfully refrained from doing this, even when she hugged me, so I think I won overall, don't you?  And I met Jo Brand (who liked my hair in front of lots of people), and Helen Lederer, chuckled at me and patted my shoulder.  There were other people there too, of course, lots and lots of them.  Some of them spoke to me, some just pointed and laughed, but I am used to that kind of behaviour in my daily life, so I maintained my air of inscrutability (mostly by pulling my dress up over my head, balancing a glass on top and pretending to be a table).  So that was all right.

This is where I didn't curtsey or burst into tears.  Doesn't she look lovely?  

Me with the judging panel, receiving my runners'-up glass obelisk.  Which I have to dust, apparently. Huh.

So, anyway.  I came home from this Evening of Loveliness, and the following day (ish, I've rather lost track of time lately.  I must be the only person in the world who can get jet-lagged travelling from London to York), a very nice man in a lorry brought me a box.  'Aha', thought I, 'my genius has been recognised, and an enormous box of money has been despatched from the Royal Mint to reward me for my diligence and for remembering to wear clean underwear to all my Award thingies.'  Although it rattled somewhat, and the one thing I do know about boxes full of money, or at least the paper kind which, let's face it, is the only kind worth having unless someone gives you 40 million 50p pieces, is that it rarely rattles.  It makes more of a kind of dull thump, a bit like when you have a human head in a box, but it's usually less soggy.

Reader, I opened it.

And inside was something better than money...  No, not David Mitchell, who I am now only prepared to consider if he comes with pound coins taped all over him, and besides it wasn't that big a box.  You could only have fitted David Mitchell in if he was, sort of, dismembered, and he wouldn't be much use to me in that state, would he? Even if we eliminate the pound coins. No.  It was full to the brim with copies of my new book!

Shiny and glossy red, like a particularly nice peony, only with my name all over it!  Smelling of new book and paper and, slightly inexplicably, of Pop Tarts.  Look.

Here I am, in a representative sample of my garden, exhibiting myself.  It was a rare day, when rain wasn't falling from the sky, so I press-ganged a daughter into taking multiple shots.  Only later did I realise that this one makes me look as though I have dislocated my face.  But anyway.  This is how it looks without me in it..

And, if you hasten across to its page on the Choc Lit site... here you can read the first two chapters!  Go on, I'll wait.

Now that you have wetted yourselves...no, hang on. Now that you have whetted your appetites, you will have to wait a mere handful of weeks...less than a handful in fact, more like three fingers... for the book is Officially Revealed Unto the Nation on the 7th of August... when you will be able to read the rest! I know, I know, we spoil you, don't we? 

Oh damn, here comes that bloody greengrocer's apostrophe, go people!  Head for the hill's!