Q&A’s
Image by Andrea Blackie
I’ve been sleeping well these last few months, generally only waking with the dawn chorus. The sound of the birds announcing a new day also wakes up our cat and, with a lazy miaow, I hear her jump down from her cat tower, patter upstairs to our bedroom where she jumps up on to our bed, does a pirouette around my head before falling asleep again beside me. This arrangement suits us both as I too like to snooze for a further hour or so.
It is during this period that I have my most vivid dreams. Or at any rate, dreams that I subsequently remember, not that they’re worth remembering. This morning I dreamed that a friend of mine suggested we get married. Already happily married these last six years - and my friend in a long term relationship - this would have proved awkward for both of us, but since I was frantically looking for somewhere to lock up my bike, I just said yes, worry about the consequences later. Then it was a rush to meet Brian Cox for afternoon tea.
What Carl Jung, Sigmund Freud or Ann Faraday might have made of this, I know not, but I don’t think there’s much interpretation required here. 1) F. and I did go out together for a short while 40 years ago, but we still keep in touch; only last week she texted me a question about the retrospective revaluation of fixed assets in a charity’s financial statements, that’s the sort of relationship we have thes days. 2) Tomorrow I’m planning a bike trip to - yep, you’ve guessed it - North Berwick. 3) Last week I saw Brian Cox at an event as part of the Edinburgh International Book Festival.
I should like book events, where authors appear to talk about their latest publications. I read enough books, I’d go as far as to say reading is my major hobby. The format of these affairs is fairly standard, someone - maybe from the bookshop, or themselves a celebrity - chat with the author for 40/45 minutes followed by a further 20 minutes or so of audience questions. The first part can be interesting although it kind of depends on who is doing the chatting up. Good example: Frankie Boyle speaking to Tim Key recently on the launch of the latter’s L.A. Baby! It was clear that Boyle had read the book, had prepared questions in advance and was able to adapt to the flow of the conversation. Bad example: Toppings bookshop last October, renowned historian A.N. Wilson was there to talk about his biography of Goethe, during which the host of the evening was constantly checking his phone.
But apart from the quality of the interviewing, I get increasingly anxious during those first parts at the thought of the upcoming Q&A’s. It’s not so much the idiot questions, “Where do you get your ideas from?”, or the non-questions “I’ve always been a huge fan of yours. I just wanted to say that.” But the show-off questions.
Queens Hall, Edinburgh, image by author
Kevin Rowland was at Edinburgh’s Queens Hall a few weeks ago to promote his 20-years-in-the-making autobiography Bless Me Father. I was there too.
We were 20 minutes into the Q&A when comedian Stewart Lee, who had done a fantastic job hosting the evening, encouraging Rowland to speak openly after an initial reluctant start, said that we had time for one more question from the audience. My stomach lurched when a voice from a few rows behind started to speak, “This is actually two questions …” In fact, it was three. One, he’d read that the forthcoming album was to be released under the name Dexys Midnight Runners as opposed to Dexys, could Kevin explain? Two, would Big Jim Paterson be involved in the new album (Kevin had already talked about this). His third question was to ask Kev what his opinion was of the current Labour government’s policy on Palestine.
Tactfully Stewart Lee then suggested that we should perhaps have one final question. The bloke next to me got the microphone: “I’ve always been a huge fan of yours. I just wanted to say that.”
At the EIBF event last week Brian Cox was joined by Kate Dickie (Red Road, Dept. Q, Game of Thrones) and Michelle Gomez (Doctor Who, Green Wing). Host - film critic Mark Kermode - kicked off proceedings with the earth shattering announcement that there would be no audience Q&A’s.
It was the best book festival event I’ve ever attended.
