Bookwitch

There was a beautiful irony to it. As we approached St John’s College we happened upon Philip Pullman and his wife Jude, parking their car. Son, being Son, couldn’t resist, so hailed them and said “Mr Pullman, I couldn’t help noticing that the last three letters on your car registration plates is the Swedish word for God.” This might have been a first for Philip, so he nearly apologised,and said it certainly wasn’t intentional.

After this we followed the Pullmans at a discreet(ish) distance, thinking they’d know where we were all going. It was a fairly major “orienteering” course through most of the college. Philip was swept off by David Fickling, while the lowly witch was sent in the opposite direction.

The day before I’d been encouraged by David Fickling to come up and say hello, so I hailed him as he ran past, and introduced him to Son. Son has now joined the David Fickling Fan Club. We kept bumping into David, and he kept remembering who we were, and he was nice each time. DF rocks!

Once in the wonderful auditorium David chatted to Philip on stage. David looked lovely in red bow tie and red socks (and suit and shirt, of course), but Philip outdid him with pink dayglo shoelaces and multistriped socks, along with the trademark sand jacket and sand coloured shoes.

David pointed out he would have been a complete idiot if he hadn’t published Ruby in the Smoke when he was first sent it many years ago. And from then on David and Philip have worked together on the books. Asked what he thinks of his editor, Philip joked and said “frankly, he’s over the hill”, and later referred to him as “old Fickling”, but they clearly admire each other tremendously.

A lot of care had gone into putting together good questions, and David had help from some of the Pegasus children. Son managed to get a question in on the filming of The Butterfly Tattoo, which Philip is very positive about.

As a special treat Philip read from his next book, Once Upon A Time In The North. He reads so well, and even his Texan accent is better than he said it would be. As befits a good read, he stopped just as we were getting on very nicely. It seems David Fickling wants to sell the book, once it’s out in the spring. But for a world premiere it was excellent.

After the talk and the reading Philip was interviewed again, by some film crew or other, before making his way to the signing table. Good long queue and people had bought plenty of books. We all got a brief chat with Philip over the signatures, which was nice.

We managed to retrace our steps in the dark through St John’s, and emerged unscathed into St Giles, which is a fitting place to end this tale.

I’ll post a longer piece under interviews some time. Soon I hope, so keep looking.