This time it was my publisher, Nat, calling to say I’d been invited to talk at the Hay Literary Festival. She went on to enumerate the advantages for a writer of appearing at this gathering of book folk on the Welsh borders, but my mind had begun to drift. I was recalling the time when I’d stayed on that hill-farm in the Black Mountains and first learned how to shear sheep. ‘Of course I’ll come, if they want me,’ I enthused at once. ‘The countryside around Hay is as nice as it gets, and I could look up some old friends? Nat seemed relieved and talked on matter-of-factly about what a pleasant break it would be; she and Mark, the other half of my publishers, would drive down and meet me there. Then by way of parting she added that I shouldn’t worry at all about reading from or discussing my book — ‘just be yourself,’ she said, ‘and you’ll be fine? That’s when the nostalgic sheep-shearing images evaporated and the realisation dawned that I was to address a literary audience.
What do You think about Parrot In The Pepper Tree?
