Simon Brett began his speech at the Crimefest Gala Dinner with a line that ran something like, ‘It’s very exciting for a writer to be in a room with more than one person in it.’
How true. Having spent the weekend in a perpetual state of excitement, I now feel the need to lie down quietly in a darkened room for a considerable length of time.
Crimefest was entertaining, educational, and overwhelming. I have a strong suspicion that by the end I was talking complete rubbish, so apologies to anyone who thinks the same thing. With luck I’ll recover the power of coherent speech in time for the Historical Mystery Writers panel at the Steyning Festival on 28 May.
Ruth Downie 
Will want thorough description of all that went on. Please! : )
You mean stuff like Simon Brett being interviewed by Gyles Brandreth (extremely funny), that nice Andrew Taylor being interviewed by Peter Guttridge (such a relief to know that even great men get stuck with their novels sometimes) or the discovery that there really is a funny Swedish crime novelist? (Hakan Nesser. Sorry I can’t type the little circle over the first ‘a’. Perhaps you know of others?)
Or do you mean Caro Ramsay’s account of how she was once murdered on ‘Taggart’, or my (not entirely convincing) defence of Dan Brown?
Maybe you can explain the deepest mystery of the weekend, which is why the Co-op down the road stocks tea and drinking chocolate on the shelves but stashes the coffee behind the counter so you have to ask the staff to hand it over – just like alcohol, tobacco, tablets and glue.
Thank you, Ruth!
As for the coffee, my Spar is the same. But since I don’t use the substance, I’m OK. Addicted, are you?
There are ways to do å, but if you don’t have a Mac, I can’t say anything more useful than that.