Well, you missed a treat if you didn't go to the Good Housekeeping Book Day today. Sandi Toksvig a brilliant compère and chair - funny but also clever and interesting. And I haven't laughed as much for a long time as I did at Jilly Cooper and Joanna Trollope making a brilliant triple-act with her. Really interesting stuff about Hist Fic to follow - Tracey Chevalier, Sarah Dunant, Rose Tremain - and then Maggie O'Farrell and Deborah Moggach on writing about relationships. Lots of interesting people to talk to in the audience, and a real buzz. I couldn't stay for the last two sessions, but it was looking good...

They're hoping to make it an annual event, so I hope they do.

Emma

I hope they do, too - missed this year but hopefully the children will be able to fend for themselves by next . . . or I shall lock them in the cupboard under the stairs.

(It's ok. We don't have stairs.)

Aw, I love Sandi Toksvig. Her column in the DT's Seven magazine has me crying with laughter every weekend

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Just brick them up in the fireplace, Myrtle, and they'll be fine. ;)

Yes, tie them to the newel post, put food within reach, and come. And it does get better. These days all I have to say is, 'Lucie, you're going to school by bus. And coming home.' And block my ear to the slight whinge...

Sandi T. was so impressive because she was very funny, very sharp with witty repartee (those Comedy Store heckler-baiting years paying off, I guess) but unlike some such (Jonathan Ross et al.) never got in the way of the speakers and was always focussed on them.

Still cherishing Jilly Cooper saying, 'I used to be middle class but I'm not any more, I'm seventy.'

I must say, she doesn't look it.

Emma

Jilly Cooper is my best friend's father's ex-wife's ex-husband's wife.
So there.
Unless there have been some more divorces and re-marriages since then, of course.

Emma