Drivng Diaries pt 1

I was a bit nervous about driving a tank round a far away spa town with a one way system designed by evil driver-hating trolls (otherwise known as town planners)

When the volunteer coordinator - the legendary Ricky Kane phoned and asked if I’d mind being a driver, I though “No! not really.” But, of course, it came out as “Yeah, no problem! Fine.” Then when he then said I’d be driving a 9 Seater mini van I thought “Oh fuck, no!” but again, it came out as: “Yeah, fine, no problem.”

I had visions of seeing the headline “TOP SCREENWRITER KILLED BY BUFFOON IN MINIVAN” But I managed to avoid killing anyone, or even crashing the van. Which was nice.

I got used to the beast fairly quickly in the end, and I got used to Cheltenham… eventually. Mainly thank to the wonderful Isobel TC, who took me round Cheltenham on the Monday - but more of all that in the next post.

It turns out driving was the best job in the world for an aspiring writer. Getting to spend some time alone with top industry pros, like say Bill Nicholson or David M Thompson, in a situation where they thought I was doing then a favour, that’s something that money can’t buy.

I also had that Ashley Pharoah, Ed Blum, Jake West, Peter Carlton, The Slovos, Anthony Horowitz, Kate Leys, Kate Rowland, Brian Ward, Rachel Holroyd, Rob Kraitt, Alison Owen, Kate Butler, and many, many more in the back of my van.

So I’ll post (what I can remember) about them over the next week or so, as it begins to come back to me!! (Ok I know I said in shooters I'll try to post everyday, but that was just a lie!)

I won’t blog about any of the actual sessions, I’m sure they will be well covered in the blogosphere -I know Danny Stack has already posted about it - but if you went and blogged about it email me a link and I‘ll put it up.