blah blah hello

1) I have some really, really nice friends. When I first started the website for the book asking if I should go ahead and publish, I sent an email to all my good friends and colleagues. They passed the email on to all their good friends and colleagues. And before long I was getting hundreds of votes. I am continually amazed at how supportive and kind my friends are. Thank you.

The meerkat has more fans than me. But he spent much, much more on advertising

2) never underestimate the power of Facebook. It brought me fans from all over the world. I may not have the pulling power of that meerkat, but I was still surprised how quickly people joined up to the Cows facebook fan page.

Maria in the white hot heat of creativity

3) that if you think an artist is brilliant and you want to work with her, it’s worth asking – she might turn out to be as friendly and lovely as Maria Smedstad of Em fame.

4) that the printers at Information Press are lovely, and professional to the last drop

5) that if you walk into a bookshop and ask them to stock your book, they will, astoundingly.

This is the picture on his badge

6) that my parents are secretly proud I wrote about them, even if they grumble about it on the surface. My dad now permanently wears a Minima badge on his lapel. ==>

If you voted, bought, wrote a review, suggested a way I could promote the book, sent me a nice email or recommended GYOC to a friend, I really am grateful. I love the internets.
Reb

Limited Edition. Very exclusive

They’ve decided to run it THIS week. First week in January. Thanks, Oxford Times.

Still, better than a slap in the face with a wet kipper. If you want to read it – and see my ugly mug in real life – click through to the article here.

I met the rather nice Garry Richardson, the sports blokey from radio 4, who has a very strong Berkshire accent when he’s not on air.
And I met Sandi Toksvig, who is not small at all.
And I met the poetry lady who had a big red woolley jumper on.
And I met Fi Glover of course who was very nice.

So I nattered and nattered, I told the story of my dad, the bee and the underpants (see picture)

Bees always walk upwards

Am going to go away now and hide under the duvet. I’m an idiot idiot. If you want to Listen Again, it’s on the Saturday Live site. If you want to lobby them to link to my site, then bless you bless you, please please do.

PS I’ve got a book out you know. Grow your own… oh, never mind.

Saturday 19th December.

Getting up very, very early in the very, very cold morning.

It’s amazing how many of my (male) friends have a big crush on Fi. It’s that slightly sardonic posh accent I think. Will blog again when I find out what she’s like in the flesh. Control yourselves.

Here’s Fi for you to look at while you listen.

A little picture of Fi

The very lovely Jo Thoenes

I did talk too fast though.

If you want to hear the show and find out what I said about my dad and what he did with a condom at the dinner table, you can for a limited amount of time on the 24 November Listen Again feature. If you want to skip straight to the interview, it starts at 09:17.

A condom for Drayton, who wants more pictures in the blog

Gulp.

Will blog about it afterwards. If I survive.

They didn’t!

They took them! Here is a list of places that now stock the book.

They were even quite nice about it. This is how it went:

Me: hello, do you ever take books by local authors?

Bookseller: (sceptical look)… mmm…. yes…
Me: Well here’s my book! blah blah… Good Life… blah blah… Cow in the garden… blah blah

Bookseller: (sceptical look)… yeah…

Me: have a look at the blurb

Bookseller: (chuckles)

Me: so…?

Bookseller: ok. I’ll take 6 copies.

It was that easy. I was very proud of the blurb. If you haven’t seen it, here it is….click to see if it makes you chuckle.

Does it make you chuckle?

For a start, I was terrified in Oxford. I had to stand up in my local, in front of my friends, and say ‘here’s my book. I hope you like it.’ I thought it would be more comforting in my own home town but you know what? it really wasn’t. If it had all gone wrong, I’d never have been able to drink in the Far From again.

So I set off to the London launch safe in the knowledge that if nobody turned up, the only people who would laugh at me would be the manager of the Barrowboy and Banker, the ominously named (but very nice) Cassandra.
The other thing that kept my mind off it all was the gigantic box of books on my back. I ended up lugging a box from the Strand, where my bloke had been keeping them safe at his work, to London Bridge.
(I did this journey by bus. Those of you who know London buses will be able to guess how I did it. Those who don’t, click here. Those who don’t care, just read on.)

The thing that really made the London launch, though, were the punters. As with Oxford, a lot of very good friends turned up who were incredibly supportive and nice. But unlike Oxford, where most people were mates, in London there were a whole load of people who I had never met in my life before. There were people from the Facebook fan page, there were people there who’d read about it on various blogs, there were people who’d seen it on Twitter; and there were lots of people who just wandered up from the bar and started reading the book and decided to buy.
And there were at least two people who are such fans of Em that they’d come to buy the book purely for the illustrations, and I can’t say I blame them.

One of Maria Smedstad's wonderful illustrations

So anyway I am ludicrously grateful to everyone who came – you are all lovely – and grateful to everyone who tweeted, joined the facebook page, blogged, and generally spread the word.

No more chance for a discount copy now, sadly, but you can still buy on Amazon.

More soon, cow-fiends.

The people at the Far From were great. They’d covered the walls with GYOC flyers – there were even flyers on the toilet doors – and they provided a PA system so I could address the adoring masses. Well, address the drunken bunch of lovely friends who were, thankfully, buying the book for every relative they could think of.

My long-suffering dad, who features large in the book as an odd sort of eccentric hero, made a guest appearance, one of my friends had created little badges of the illustrations from the book, another friend rose magnificently to the occasion to announce the event to the pub, and most of my street turned up in support.

I did a reading about the less-than-romantic way we had to get our cow pregnant, which meant I had to use the phrase “cow’s minge” in front of my dad. I think at least one person bought a copy of the book out of sheer admiration for that alone.

And Amazon has just put in another order…

You can still register your order… but if you prefer and you can get to either Oxford or London, come to the Book Launches. See more on the site: Grow Your Own Cows.