Fireworks and afternoon tea

On the very full train last night, coming back in the dark from London. We were treated to fireworks all the way home. Every town had its own displays, flaring here and there, making tired Friday commuters shout out happily as we blazed past. We were on the tilting train that takes two hours and mercifully it doesn't make me queasy anymore.

I'd had a lovely London trip, dashing here and there in less than two days, all under the new Christmas lights. One of the highlights was, of course, afternoon tea on the terrace at the top of Harrods. It was June's idea to gather us there, for a few hours of lovely talking and dainty cakes. We were joined by Katy and David - Iris and Panda respectively in our Big Finish 'Iris Wildthyme' audio series. All around us the staff we working to turn the place into the Emerald Palace from the Wizard of Oz. That somehow fitted in with our fairytalelike congregation. There was some kind of celebratory ball about to begin. We ducked out just in time - finding ourselves leaving via a yellow brick road through the parfumerie. Lots of intense and colourful chat between the four of us - stories and ideas about projects old and new.

Other things I did while I was south - a great night of Guinness and masses of chat with a gaggle of mouthy writers from my favourite mailing list in a pub on Tottenham Court road. Signing hardbacks of 'Hell's Belles' at the Headline office for my brilliant publicist Maura Brickell. Popping into Goldsboro books, as I've done for a few years running now, to sign hardbacks for the lovely David and Daniel. What a shop that is! Like a treasure trove, perfect-bound, tucked into that arcade of swanky bookshops on Cecil Court. I was paying particular attention to the bookshops round there, this time - mental note-taking for something I'm planning to write next year, if all goes well.

Yesterday I spent in a meeting in various locations all over the South Bank. A very intense and creative day indeed - and all planning another new thing, another v exciting project, and one that will take up a goodly chunk of next year. Keep me out of mischief, keep me inventing. Bliss to sit outside Pain Quotidien with milky coffee, covered in pastry crumbs, talking about writing plans, watching the river with people streaming past onto the bridge, on their way to more immediate work situations. I love this time between books and scripts, with a gap of breathing space - a tiny gap - for making new things up.

The only note of discord in the whole trip were the gobby women sitting at my table all the way down to London. Two of them, in advertising, and they couldn't shut up about work all the way there. Cudgelling their brains for slogans for a campaign - a campaign seemingly advertising some kind of legal drug for making kids behave in a particular way. I was trying to read (David Baldacci's 'The Christmas Train' - which was okay, I suppose. I fancied a Christmassy book. It wasn't bad. Just a bit swagged with research-heavy tinsel and dangling with shiny cliches.)