On Monday I skittered to London, first to sit down with Carrie Plitt and Octavia Bright in the Conville and Walsh office to record a segment for Literary Friction, a monthly conversation about books that airs on NTS and that you really should be listening to, then to Foyles to have a chat with Andrew Holgate ahead of the evening's readings. The turnaround between the judges selecting the winning book and the book being announced in the Sunday Times is apparently a hair's breadth, so he interviewed all four of us with the aim of being able to pop out a write-up of the winner in that gap - respect due for journalistic integrity, but I do not envy him.
Three previous winners of the prize came to speak before the shortlistees, and I just barely managed to not embarrass myself by fawning all over Helen Simpson - "Diary of an Interesting Year" was both an influence for The Shore and used to scar my writing students; "Hey Yeah Right Get a Life" scarred me when I was a student; her stories have been my company back and forth across the ocean and in the darkest parts of sleepless nights - who I never thought I'd have the chance to meet. Andrew Cowan, who I haven't really spoken to since he supervised my MA dissertation, was also there, which was a little odd since I remember exactly nothing from that year and he appears to retain a crystal clear recollection of every moment, which is not a dynamic one wants to have with a director at one's university.
The actual event went well, but the evening ended with Andrew and I running across London and through the underground in an effort to get to Liverpool Street Station in time for the 22.30 train back to Norwich. We made it to the station at 22.27, winded and sans dignity, to find that the train had been cancelled and the next one left at 23.30 and would take three hours to arrive owing to leaves on the track. To cut a long story short, I made it home by 3 AM having shared a drink, a train carriage table, and a taxi with Andrew, and now know far more UEA gossip than I'd thought I ever would.
On Tuesday I woke up with the sudden realisation that, if I wanted to get to London on time for the Guardian ceremony on Wednesday, I'd better leave that afternoon. Autumn is the season of cancelled trains in East Anglia, and I've missed too many important things due to being stranded before. So I dragged myself up to pack, deal with the contents of the refrigerator, do the dishes, put in some laundry, and all of the other little things a body has to do before they leave the house for a week.
Given how little sleep I'd gotten, I was a bit shocked that I managed to get myself in gear and out the door in time to catch the 15.30 train. Which was cancelled. But that was a good thing, because I found when I got to the station that I'd lost my railcard the night before. No one had found it, but they could make me a new one if I could get my hands on a passport photo. So I ran with my suitcase across the road to find a photo booth, cried just enough that the lady at the counter accepted my student card as proof that I was a student, and got on the 16.00 train just before it left. And then realised that I'd left my rings on the counter of the kitchen that my housemate is inevitably going to destroy this weekend, and if he can make tupperware and five gallon slow cookers vanish then a few bands of silver have no chance.
That train was delayed, so when we finally got to London I had to fight my way off against the tide of people trying to get on, even though they had fifteen minutes before the train left to go back to Norwich. I spent twelve of those minutes in the station trying to find dinner before I realised that I'd left my suitcase with all of my work in it on the train, one minute panicking, forty-five seconds sprinting from one end of the station to the other in the hope that the train hadn't left yet, and thirty seconds babbling at rail workers in a panic as I sprinted down the platform, leapt into the carriage I'd ridden down on, ripped the damn suitcase out of the luggage rack, and fell back onto the platform a few seconds before the doors were due to lock.
The next ten minutes were spent in the fetal position on the platform.
So on Wednesday, when nothing happened to prevent me from getting to Blackfriars Bridge to meet Lucy in time to walk over to the OXO building for the Guardian party, I was nothing but relieved. And when we were standing on the stairs waiting to get into the party and talking about who we thought was going to win, all I wanted was to not win because I couldn't scare up any more nerve. And when it came down to it, I knew what book was going to win, because you don't announce a shortlist with "Book of poetry on shortlist for the first time in forever! Oh, there are these other five books, too" when the poetry isn't going to win. And then when it was announced that Physical was the winner I was far more satisfied than I should have been because I'd guessed correctly.
It was an absolutely fantastic party, made just a little bit more fantastic by the fact that I (purposefully) look nothing like the one publicity photo that exists, so I got to spend the first half of the evening chatting with my publishers and my spouse-thing and taking unabashed advantage of our proximity to the door whence the food was issuing, while people who were meant to pin me down for a picture or a chat walked right past holding a reference photo taken when I had red hair. Dave gave the game away when a woman with a massive camera and pictures of all the long-list authors came up and asked him if he was Peter Pomerantsev; it then took him an embarassingly long time to convince her that I am me. At which point I had drunk enough that talking to people wasn't scary at all, and I had a good long natter with several readers and quite a few industry people. I also at that point had no shame. Book events tend to be decorated with books, so several copies of the shortlist books were scattered tastefully around the room; this may or may not bear relationship to the fact that when I got home at 2 in the morning I somehow had the entire shortlist under my arm.
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And yesterday evening I had Thanksgiving dinner with my alma mater's study abroad group, caught up on the gossip back at home campus, gave out their class rings, and may have broke down sobbing when we sang the school song at the end of the evening.
So today is, technically, the first day this week that I've got any hope of getting actual work done. But then, the kitchen cabinets could always stand to be alphabetised...
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