REALITY STREET

That was the hardest week I can remember for a long time, including the time I had a day job too.

It started on the weekend of 17/18 September with two Moors gigs - one a wedding in the heart of the Sussex countryside on the Saturday night and the other a Sunday afternoon performance in the open air at the Hastings Seafood & Wine Festival on a tiny uncovered stage where I feared we would have been both electrocuted and swept away had the rain and wind persisted (but fortunately the sun came out just on time).



Then it was off to Norfolk for five days to deal with a family bereavement, followed by a dash from there to London on Saturday (24th) morning on a train that kept stopping and was finally taken out of service. So I was late to the Poetry Book Fair at Exmouth Market, but I'm glad to say Reality Street was amazingly successful, with a lot of interest at our stand and regular sales. The question I was most often asked was: when will there be more poetry from Denise Riley? The answer is I don't know. But Selected Poems is still, after eleven years, the press's best-selling single collection.

The book fair was generally lively. Michael Horovitz opened it with a half-hour reading and rambling talk. The kazoo figured prominently. It took me back to an earlier, perhaps more optimistic age. Kudos to Charles Boyle for organising it, and I hope we get another next year.

The tubes were all up the spout and I couldn't at first figure out how to get to a railway station to catch a train back to Hastings. At least my bags were a bit lighter, but my left ankle is still learning to walk, so in order to avoid doing much of this I hailed a cab (flourishing my walking cane!). Thirteen quid to London Bridge station - blimey.

But I got home, and today I'm idling. Getting Richard Makin's book to press will be my priority this coming week (apart from the physiotherapy). Then, with Johan de Wit and Leopold Haas, we will have three extraordinary narratives lined up to publish in the autumn.