The Grubtown Daily Herald

I went to the Towngate Theatre in Basildon yesterday as part of the Basildon Children’s Book Festival. Nice organisers. Nice theatre staff (particularly the chap who sat in the front row and laughed his head off). Nice sandwiches. (Thank you.) VERY nice audience . . . But no books for sale. OOOPS. Literary festival. No books. Hey ho! A problem between Waterstones and the publisher apparently. Don’t look at me, I just write the things. . . Which reminds me, I should be doing just that. Bye!

The following appeared in yesterday’s BOOKSELLER:

Ardagh to pen series for Faber

Children’s writer Philip Ardagh is to write a new series for Faber Children’s Books. ‘Grubtown Tales’ launches in May 2009 with the first two titles ‘Stinking Rich and Just Plain Stinky’ and ‘The Year That it Rained Cows’.

Ardagh has also been selected as a World Book Day author for 2010, and will write a special ‘Grubtown’ tale for the promotion. The new story will paired with a brand new ‘Pongwiffy’ story from Kaye Umansky (Bloomsbury) for a 2010 World Book Day flip book.

Ardagh’s new series is aimed at 7-9 year olds and Faber will be publishing further ‘Grubtown Tales’ in September 2009, February 2010 and May 2010.

Julia Heydon-Wells, Faber’s head of children’s fiction, said: ‘Faber Children’s Books has a dynamic, unique list for younger children and no writer better represents this than Philip Ardagh in his new series Grubtown Tales. Philip is a much-loved, master story-teller who has written a funny, utterly original, larger-than-life series that will introduce him to a new, younger audience. I am extremely excited about the launch of this series and delighted that it has already been chosen as a World Book Day book for 2010.’

Stephen Page, Faber chief executive, added: ‘Philip has been at the heart of the growth and revitalisation of our children’s publishing over the last few years and with this hilarious and brilliantly imagined series we will be looking to create an even broader readership than he already enjoys around the world.’

. . . Which was nice. It was brought to my attention by John ‘The Boy in The Striped Pyjamas’ Boyne, who sent me a scurrilous e-mail about it. He’s probably written another full-length adult novel since then. He’s like that.

I may not have had a bath since my last journal entry — ONLY JOKING — but I have been to Bath and back. (The city famous for its beautiful buildings, its Roman baths, and its buns; not necessarily in that order.) I was at the Bath Literary Festival, not to be confused with the Bath Children’s Literary Whatsit which I’ll also be attending later in the year for a ‘Grubtown Tales’ event.

I stayed in a very nice hotel in a ground floor bedroom which wasn’t really on the ground floor. No, I know it doesn’t make sense, but it’s true. I didn’t have to go up any stairs to get into the room but, when I looked out of the window, there was quite a long drop to the ground below.

I suspect that this had something to do with either magic, or Bath being quite hilly . . . or something. Or maybe they were just trying to mess with my mind. (And, no, I don’t know exactly who ‘they’ are either.)

It turned out to be a ‘dry hotel’ which doesn’t mean that it’s flood-proof or that nothing happens when you turn on the taps — which is lucky because I did have some baths in Bath — but that they don’t serve alcohol. This meant that if I woke up in the middle of the night craving a three-litre bottle of cheap red wine, I’d have to have smuggled it in myself. At home, of course, I can simply ring the little glass bell on my bedside table and Rickets (my faithful retainer) will come running; or I can simply kick Toto (the houseboy curled up at the foot of my bed) and he can leap up and provide my beverage of choice.

As it was, I slept like a baby — big nappy, waking for feeds every three hours, etc. — so this wasn’t necessary.

Sunday 8th March
DOING MY STUFF, AND QUALITY TIME WITH THE WILSONS
On the morning of my event, the weather was very changeable; one minute sunshine, the next minute wind and lashing — and I do mean LASHING — rain. Some people (naming no names) got SOAKED. I simply lifted my beard over my head, used it as an umbrella, then rung it out at the venue.

Sadly, not everyone who bought tickets to my event actually made it to the venue. Perhaps they were put off by the weather (or the thought of actually seeing me in the flesh) but I certainly enjoyed myself! It was lovely to see a number of fellow children’s authors in the audience, who were there OF THEIR OWN FREE WILL. Remarkable.

After signing a few books, I was whisked away by author Anna Wilson (and her two children) to a local carpark to spend the afternoon playing ‘Now where did they park the car?’ (stopping only to buy some wine from Waitrose, in case the Wilson’s house was also ‘dry’). Once the car was found — I think, by young Master Wilson — we headed back to their place for a most pleasant afternoon and evening. The Wilson family have a lovely cat and one of the best behaved dogs I have ever met. It hung up my coat for me, showed me to my room and jotted down my breakfast requirements, all within the first ten minutes. We all enjoyed the roast chicken supper, except perhaps for the poor chicken, which made no comment.

Monday 9th March
KING EDWARD’S SCHOOL (and forget the potato jokes they’ve heard them all before)
After a restful night in Anna Wilon’s MANSION — I am not jealous. I am not jealous. I am not jealous — she drove me to her children’s school where I did another SUPERB event and a couple of workshops before heading for home. Everyone was so wonderfully welcoming, I suspect that they were, in fact, paid actors.

The train journey home from Bath to Tunbridge Wells was uneventful, except for the fact that I caught the Hogwarts Express by mistake and ended up having an arguement with the Sorting Hat. . . or, perhaps, it was all a dream. Rickets was at the station waiting for me. The car is still at the garage, so he gave me a piggyback home.

I may not have managed to get to my event on World Book Day proper, but I had a fun day at Waterstones in Watford on Tuesday. I asked someone to meet me at Watford High Street Station because, although lots of venues tell you that they’re ‘just around the corner’ or ‘only a five-minute walk away’, that’s often what we call in publishing ‘a whopping great LIE’. So there was a kindly member of staff there to greet me… even though the ‘W’ of their Waterstones was within view just half-a-minute later.

I was also mightily impressed that she’d checked me out on Wickipedia (however you spell it) — even though it too is inclined to tell lies — bcause she knew that I’d been to Watford Art College a zillion years ago. Before you get the wrong impression that I was all arty in my youth, I should explain that in the 1970s/80s, it was the only college in the country that had an advertising copywriting course… which is how I came to write advertisements in a London advertising agency in the 80s.

The Watford store has a great space for holding events, and I did two in the morning and one after lunch (which we had in the Cafe Nero over the road). The children were really engaged and laughed in all the right places and I certainly had a good time!

There was a slight delay getting home, with part of the Bakerloo line closed because of ‘a fire alert at Charing Cross’ but it wouldn’t be a trip to London without something like that happening.

Rickets was there at Tunbridge Wells Station to pick me up, and all was going fine until we encountered the gritting lorry…

I got up at just gone half-past five this morning and was dressed and ready to leave the house by 6.30. (Yes, I do wear clothes when I set foot outside.) I was going to get Rickets, my faithful retainer, to run me down to the station but he’s currently ‘helping the police with their enquiries’ following an unfortunate incident with a gritting lorry and missing pearl necklace… so I took a taxi instead. Once I got INSIDE the station, I wish I’d stayed in the taxi.

According to some poor bloke who’s probably had to say the same thing heaven-knows-how-many-times (and is probably still saying it now), because there are fourteen trains broken down across the rail network, one of which has been stuck since 8.30 last night, all train services are delayed, and the earliest any trains running from this station will be at 9.00am. But no guarantees.

Today is World Book Day and I was supposed to do an event at Cheltenham College — who’d invited along pupils from Richard Pate, Leckhanpton and Naunton Park schools too — and is, as the name suggests, in Cheltenham. Unfortunately, this is not to be.

With no trains running, Rickets banged up somewhere and every taxi already jam-packed full of desperate commuters making desperate plans, I was stuck. And cold. In the end, I made the extraordinary decision to walk home. I’ve seen other people do it: it’s that funny thing you do where you face the direction you want to go and then keep putting one foot in front of the other until you arrive. I managed it, but I really can’t see it catching on. (Despite the cold, I’ve ended up extremely s-w-e-a-t-y.)

Back home — with my assistant Dotty Hendrix refusing to come out of the stationery cupboard until 9.30 when she’s ‘on duty’ — I’ve been making frantic phone calls to those nice people at Waterstones Cheltenham who’ve been arranging all the books, etc., and to the college where I’ve left garbled messages on their answerphone. (It later transpired that I’d left the message on the ladies college rather than plain-old college answerphone, so a rather puzzled woman phoned me back wondering what on earth I was talking about!)

I imagine that, of course, the children will be heartbroken. I suspect the vast majority of them will be wearing black armbands to mark my absence and there’ll be much weeping and wailing. I suspect that some might even throw themselves from the highest window in utter despair. Put yourself in their shoes: one moment you’re being tantalisingly offered the delights of — er — ME, only to have me cruelly snatched away at the last minute by the evils of Network Rail… I’m sorry. I can’t go on…

I had a really nice trip to Sheredes Primary School in Hoddeston near the end of February. My visit came about as a result of my having done a ‘Books for Boys’ event for the Hertfordshire Schools’ Library Service last year, which the assistant-head of Sheredes had been at. Anyway, the audiences were great and the staff were extremely friendly. (Not one single teacher asked to borrow money.) As if that wasn’t reason enough to mark the day down as a success, the various trains I had to catch and connections I had to make all ran smoothly AND I met a blast from the past.

There I was minding my own business, when the IT manager turned up to make sure I could project many a beautiful picture of myself during the talks. He looked exactly like a slightly older version of someone I knew back in the 1980s when I was thin and clean-shaven young advertising copywriter (one wot wrote the ads).

‘Did you used to work in advertising I the 1980s?’ I asked.

‘Yes,’ he replied.

‘Was it in the video department?’

‘Yes.’

‘Is your name Roo?’ I asked.

‘Yes,’ said Roo.

‘Don’t you recognise me?’ I asked. He looked at the ‘large’ (f-a-t) bearded man in front of him. ‘Philip?’ he finally said in disbelief.

‘Yes!’ I replied, because I AM Philip. And the weird thing was that a million memories (well 740,000, actually) came flooding back — memories usually flood in clichés — and I found myself remembering stuff that I didn’t even know I knew, let alone had forgotten.

When I told Dotty Hendrix what had happened, she said: ‘This Roo must have been thrilled to see you again after all of this time having thought that he’d never have to look at your face again.’ I thought this was a rather convoluted way of saying, ‘that’s nice for him’, but the way she said it somehow suggested that Roo might have been happier if there’s been a death in the family.

She can be funny like that. The other morning she didn’t want to collect dew for me from the wood opposite because it was ’still dark out’. There’s no pleasing some people. I just wanted to give her a sense of purpose.

Oh, well, ‘Happy March!’

One of the things about writing so many books in 2008 — quite apart from not seeing daylight for a year — is that you get a whole host of printouts and proofs to check in 2009.

…but things are looking good!

Rumour has it that my supposedly rushed-off-her-feet personal assistant, Dotty Hendrix, has joined Facebook of all things! Dotty who — as she keeps on reminding me — will be 70 this year, is always moaning on about my giving her too much to do. (Do you think she’s angling for a special present? I’ll probably give her a rare foreign edition of one of my books. I do that each year and, with over 30 foreign editions, I should be able to carry on that tradition for a good many years to come!)

The other day when I was asking her to chop firewood she was complaining about having “”all that typing to do”". I’d happily have chopped the logs myself but:
(a) I have a poorly thumb at present; and
(b)Because I’d just had her shovel the snow, she was still in her outside clothes whereas I wasn’t even dressed yet.
Amyway, the upshot of it is that she’s always telling me that she’s working her fingers to the bone — which is why I provide free plasters (well, deducted from her wages) — yet here she is with time to do whatever it is those hip-young-things do on Facebook.

When I confronted her just now and asked her what she would use it for, she muttered something about, “”telling the truth about working for YOU”". That makes a kind of sense, I suppose. I am extraordinarily interesting chap, and I’m very private about all my charity work…

I’d take a peek at her Facebook page but, apparently, she has to let you be her ‘Facebook Friend’ before you can do that. When I raised the possibility of such a friendship, she muttered something suspiciously like, “”Not on your nelly,”" but I suspect I misheard her.

It’s obvious that she adores me.