Trip to London Book Fair is off. All flights have been canceled at least until Wednesday due to the volcanic particulate in the air. And I’d been practicing my mid-Atlantic post Material-girl accent all week. Canceled all my publishing appointments, tea at the Savoy, dinner at the Ivy, the old Tate, the new Tate, the Old Vic, the New Victory. Well, I had planned to write that I would be on blogging hiatus for the week, and now you’re stuck with me. Or I’m stuck with myself. However you look at, check back on in Monday for some great new letters from readers and more wanton vulgarity. Until then, as my British agent always says, I love you and leave you.
Filed under: The End of the World as We Know It |
Betsy Lerner 
If I put this in a book it would probably get thrown out by my agent for being un-fucking-believable. But here we are in the midst of some amazing chaotic meltdown and all I can think is, this would be great as a plot device …
Probably for the best. Just think of what your commenters would have got up to in your absence!
I have a friend (whom I don’t care much for) who wrote the most dreadfully boring and self-absorbed book about the murder of her friend when they were all teaching English in Korea. Trust me, I couldn’t finish it. And she now has an agent team (team! team?) representing her in Singapore who are/were poised to pitch her dreadfully boring book at the London Fair.
(I read the synopsis they asked her to write for them to pitch and it was mind-boggingly boring, too.)
So I, for one, am in love with that fucking volcano that I don’t have the patience–or facility–to learn how to pronounce. And I hope the whole fucking London fair is off.
Because this “friend” had the fucking gall to write and finish a fucking dreadfully boring and self-absorbed novel while I’m struggling for days to write a fucking single sentence. One fucking single good sentence. (That is, when I’m not trying to slowly kill myself with bourbon and cigarettes.)
What an amazing image. The best laid plans…
You’re the first person I thought of when I heard that flights were being cancelled. Sorry, Betsy, but glad to have you here. Tea at the Savoy is a tough one to miss…I’ve had tea there myself, very Oscar Wilde. I could live without the new Tate…I never get tired of the Turners in the old.
I too was thinking of you as the news of the particulates — and the particulates themselves — spread. Sorry you’re not able to go, but anonymous’ comments make me glad that maybe this other person won’t get to go, and SpringChicken has a very good point!
bad news …
… but that photograph is stunning.
hmmmmmperhaps some agents now grounded can spend some time catching up on their manuscript reading. Some os us have been waiting over three months….yes, yes, I know, three months is the standard for a full. I’m sure many deals will be done on the phone…unless, oh, did the cloud in any way disrupt the international cell phone systems?
Good reading, agents. catch up. Don’t cry. for me Argentina…
What really sucks about this is that you probably already went through the packing ordeal before getting cancelled. Never mind the pain of being loved and left.
I was in London last spring for the Book Fair; almost went again for this one to meet up with a Scottish friend of mine who lives in Australia but was visiting Edinburgh.
She’s stuck there now, can’t get back to Sydney, at least not for a while.
Glad you weren’t visting London early enough to be stuck there yourself. Not that being stuck in London is a bad thing; I love it there, but still.
Better tea at the Savoy than a martini: they make the worst damn martini’s IN THE WORLD at the Savoy. They actually measure the gin from one of those teensy airline-sized bottles to make sure you don’t get more than 50cc and then they pour it into a shitty little PARFAIT cup. It’s dainty, and it’s insulting. And expensive. I hate the Savoy.
The Dorchester has excellent martini’s and a much nicer bar. It’s a far better place to drink dinner than the Savoy.
Vivian, it’s the law over there that they have to measure their shots. I used to see them do it with my Jack Daniels. They probably give a double shot at the Dorchester. When I learned this, I always ordered doubles…and put them on my credit card.
Gorgeous photo but it would scare the hell out of me to see a cloud like that coming.