Lari’s Writing blog

AAAAARGH! I’m normally a fairly confident person, but for 10 minutes yesterday I felt like a spotty teenager with everyone staring at a ladder in my tights.  Really embarrassed and self conscious and wishing I was invisible.  I was on my way back from a book festival in Hexham and I was sitting on the train beside Philip Ardagh, who had also been talking to local kids about his books.  Philip Ardagh is a very well known, very well respected, very successful writer of very funny children’s books. He is also extremely tall, with an extreme beard.  The train was crowded, and we were sitting beside each other to chat about writery sort of things, which was lovely.  Then he asked if I had any of my books with me so he could have a look at them.  (I didn’t have to ask to see his books.  I see them in Waterstones all the time…) So he got my rucksack down from the luggage rack, and I pulled out the bag of my books that I show to kids, and I sat there on the train with the rucksack between us, my briefcase on my knee, crushed up against the window, while an writer I admire (who is also HUGE and scary) glanced through my books.  And commented on them.  He even read one of my picture book BACKWARDS.  Why would you do that?  I felt like making excuses for them.  I felt like hiding INSIDE the rucksack. I wanted to go for a wander up the train and not WATCH him read them.  AAAARGH!  But he was really nice about them.  About the first line of Rocking Horse War, about the dramatic description of Yann at the start of First Aid, about the pictures in The Mountain’s Blood (yes I know I can’t take credit for those, but when you’re squirming, you take anything you can), and just generally about the concept of Bottoms.  So, that’s alright. Praise from high places (and that’s just where his beard is when he stands up). But goodness me, I’ve never felt so squashed and embarrassed.