"...She reads a lot of books"

Jasper Fforde's The Eyre Affair is one of my favourite books. I've read it about four or five times (very unusual behaviour for me as an adult) and given it to a dozen or so people as a present. There's a scene set a theatre that makes me guffaw with laughter every time I reread it.

At one point in his early days as a published author I corresponded with Fforde. If you ever hear him say in an interview that his genre is "fiction fiction", let it be known that I was the one who suggested this to him. I have a postcard from him thanking me for my great idea.

Anyway, I was delighted to see this quotation from The Eyre Affair adorning a deckchair when I turned up at the Edinburgh Book Festival this evening to hear Susan Greenfield speak about her new book Mind change. I really enjoyed the talk , but was disappointed that there was a ban on tweeting it. I like to tweet this kind of event to share the ideas expressed with a wider audience, and to create notes that I can use with the tweets of others to blog my learning afterwards at hazelhall.org (when I have time. This doesn't always happen).

Exercise today: just one hour walking. This would have been two had I not got mixed up over the time of a meeting this afternoon. I left the house an hour later than I should have done. I realised about 5 minutes into my walk to work. There was no option but to hail a taxi and shell out £13 (for a journey that normally costs £0, or £1.50 on the bus), but at least I arrived only 6 minutes late (as opposed to one hour late).