"The greatest joy in life lies in doing those things that you have been told you cannot do."

On Wednesday I skibbled down to London to listen to Nick Harkaway, Anna Smaill, and Helena Coggan converse about writing in general and their latest books in particular. Harkaway's eyebrows stole the show. If they hadn't, his suit would have. Together they almost completely distracted everyone from the fact that Coggan is fifteen years old, a fact which I'm hoping will deflect some of the age-related side-eye I've been getting and will probably continue to get for a while. I don't know where this pressure for precocity comes from, but I do wish a bit that someone would hook up sensors to a pregnant woman, transcribe the fetus' brain waves, and publish the results as the novel written by the youngest author ever so we can all stop worrying about age - until someone figures out how to get electrical readings off a zygote, that is. No one has any control over their age, so it baffles me a bit that we make anything of it. But then, there is still a part of my flinty heart that longs to be the youngest winner of the Booker.

While in London I dropped in to see Jason and Anna and all of the wonderful people that get to work in the lovely book warren that is Random House. They had been expecting a box from the publisher, which the publisher insisted had been sent and the RH post room insisted had not, and at the end of the day it turned out that the box had accidentally been mixed in with some trade paperbacks in the publisher's warehouse.

Which is why I had a packet come in the mail this morning:

I give you: hardback!

I had copies of the proof to throw around, but they only show so much of how the book will look when it's done. For instance, I didn't know it was going to be purple. Ok, technically, it's mulberry. Which makes me happy because I love purple and I spent just gobs of my childhood getting mulberries into my face as quickly as humanly possible.

I have read so many books with that windmill embossed on the front. 

Joyously and surprisingly enough, some of the people to whom the proofs were sent actually read them, and read them in time to have an opinion. And then were kind enough to provide that opinion:

And while they are all very nice quotes, one in particular made me completely and utterly lose all composure:

When I asked them to send a proof to Maureen Duffy, I didn't imagine she would actually read it.

So there was a moment of joy and satisfaction, but as I was paging through - not looking too closely, because I know that if I do I will find a mistake - the thought crept into my head: I was twenty-two when I wrote this book. I bet I could do so much better now... 

Oh dear...