Give up on trying to sleep as is total waste of fucking time. Get up. Drink rest of Evian. Take more ‘Fizzy Make Feel Good’. Shower. Dance about hotel room in the altogether, scaring the pigeons on the window ledge (not really, I just thought it sounded fun). Go out to find greasy spoon-style café and eat much fried things.
The café is a reminder of just how multicultural London is. My classic English eatery is run by an Iranian chef with a Portuguese assistant and a clientele from Eastern Europe, France, Germany, and in my case, Scotland. Good fry up too: Egg, sausage, bacon, beans, mushrooms, toast and a big mug of tea. The only down side to the place is a woman in the corner smoking nasty little roll-up cigarettes while everyone else is eating, and talking loud French into a mobile phone. Dirty – and not in a good way.
The main point of this little jaunt to London is today’s meeting with Sarah from HarperCollins. Which involves hearing about the marketing campaign for the Cold Granite paperback (January) from Claire, presenting the plot plan for Book Three, and having a chat about the last bits of page proof editing on Dying Light. I bring donuts.
And then it’s off to lunch! Mmm, Snow’s restaurant. Very posh and swanky. Very nice food. More industry talk, some gossip, and then Phil and Sara do a sort of ‘Tales From The Dark Side’. Publishing, agenting and editing horror stories that are by turns scary, rude, and funny as hell. But completely unrepeatable.
After that, nothing remains but to trundle back into central London to pick up somethings nice for She Who Must Be Bought Presents Or There Will Be Violence, and trundle back to Heathrow. Where BMI will know mine wrath: I’ll teach them to stop serving complimentary gins on the way back to Aberdeen! I’ll freeload in the Business Lounge until there’s gin coming out of my ears (discovering a new cocktail while I'm there – vodka, splash of Tabasco, and tonic over ice, spicy, but not as claggy as a bloody Mary*).
On the way back I have another pee over Birmingham. Nothing personal, that’s just the way it works out. All that free gin had to go somewhere ;}#
* or even a sodding Susan.