Thursday 1st March was a beautiful blue-sky day. It seemed like the first burst of spring sunshine after a bitterly cold winter. There's a nice poetry to that idea, but I'm pretty sure it's true anyway...
That evening I was bound for The Gay Hussar - a long standing institution and brilliant Hungarian restaurant in Soho - for a celebratory dinner, organised by the loveliest of all publishers, Headline. There was the dream team of Leah, Vicky and Ben from Headline and my agent Rowan, and some lovely journalists (Cortina from Book Brunch, Debs from Heat, Charlotte from The Sunday Express, and Suzi who reviews for the Indy on Sunday, FT and Time Out). It was a night filled with chatter, laughter, and that wonderful Magyar speciality, cold cherry soup. Here we all are...
Rowan and I, almost a year to the day that we first met...
The next morning - ever so slightly woozy-headed - I braved a book shop, to see if I could spot The Book of Summers. Once upon a time I used to work just off Oxford Street, so it seemed fitting that it was Oxford Street that I returned to, on an altogether different kind of business. This was the sight that greeted me... wholly unexpected and all the better for it...
Move closer...
Closer still...
There it is. Great, great joy.
I wound my way back to Bristol, my arms full of flowers from the night before, and the broadest of smiles on my face. It was a pretty perfect first publication day, and launch parties with friends and family still await... I'll be walking on sunshine for a while yet.