Weight actually. He looked very svelt, fit and tanned in the Green Room at Hay last Monday. And unlike me didn't have to worry about winning anything. We were there for the Wales Book of the Year Shortlist announcement from judges Mike Parker, Tiffany Atkinson and John Barnie. For those who don't know about this prize it's a kinda Heptathlon for the current year's books. If you've got a book of short stories out (as I have) it competes with all the other wonderful literary output of Wales from this last year. Perfectly formed poetry collections, forensic literary criticism and biographies, travel writing and of course the fictional hammer throwers, the novelists.
So to find myself on stage in the final three had a lucid-dream quality to it. Was it real? Deborah Kay Davies and Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch were with me- I knew though if I caught sight of the Queen, say, and Lady Gaga sharing a joke in the front row this wouldn't be a good sign. But no- it seemed to be kosher- we seemed to be the shortlist. I have some memory of talking about my book (sadly not too lucidly) and actually heard myself saying 'of course I left Flintshire when I was eighteen.' I think someone hissed. Sad when Blood, etc is pretty much a celebration of the people I grew up with. And why didn't I add what I always do at this point? That my house is a single field's length over the border and though I may sleep in Cheshire I'll always live in a Wales of the Mind? That's the trouble with dreams though. Weird stuff happens. Should have asked either the Queen or Stephen Fry to pinch me.
So to find myself on stage in the final three had a lucid-dream quality to it. Was it real? Deborah Kay Davies and Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch were with me- I knew though if I caught sight of the Queen, say, and Lady Gaga sharing a joke in the front row this wouldn't be a good sign. But no- it seemed to be kosher- we seemed to be the shortlist. I have some memory of talking about my book (sadly not too lucidly) and actually heard myself saying 'of course I left Flintshire when I was eighteen.' I think someone hissed. Sad when Blood, etc is pretty much a celebration of the people I grew up with. And why didn't I add what I always do at this point? That my house is a single field's length over the border and though I may sleep in Cheshire I'll always live in a Wales of the Mind? That's the trouble with dreams though. Weird stuff happens. Should have asked either the Queen or Stephen Fry to pinch me.
