Today was my last day of being 39. But I haven't had much chance to notice, really. Spent the morning being a dog transport service for my in-laws; came home and found exciting pile on doorstep of a) organic vegetable box - I thought I'd try getting vegetables delivered again - this firstly keeps me from buying useless things in supermarkets, cos I'm not going into them, and secondly means we will hopefully eat more green things: we'll see how it goes, but box looks nice so far - and b) very nice bunch of flowers. I did think, for one wild moment, they might be from my husband, but actually they're from his sister. The last time I had flowers sent through Interflora was when our younger daughter (who'll be 7 next week) was born. So I was really happy to get these.
Just as I was peacefully putting said flowers in a vase, the phone rang: it was the school, telling me that 6 year old had run into another child at Judo and needed to be taken home with a black eye. I turned up at the school and found E and her adversary sitting together on a beanbag, each holding an icepack to her eye - opposite eyes for the two of them - and both with huge shiners developing under the icepacks. they looked like two sad little bookends. Mind you, I was impressed with the school's efficiency, having ready-chilled icepacks - three of them, apparently.
Anyway, I took E home, and at 7 pm, as arranged, went to collect 10 year old from a friend's house - but she wasn't there: father informed me that she, plus friend and friend's mother, were still in town at book-signing. So I went back home to wait.
J and her friend had begged to be allowed to go to this Jacqueline Wilson booksigning. JW writes extremely popular chick-lit for 7-10 year olds. Extremely popular. They queued for FOUR HOURS to get her signature, and came home delighted because JW, though apparently white with fatigue, had bothered to talk to them and thank them for coming as she signed the books, even though it was by then 8.30 pm and she'd been meant to finish at 5.30. You really have to admire someone who is prepared to put that amount of effort in with the fans. A lot of the writer's blogs I read talk about book promotion, and signings where nobody bothers to come, and so on, so I suppose that it's rare for an author with that sort of fan base to bother to do signings at all. I'm glad she's such a nice person, as we have bought just about everything she's written (which is quite a lot). Interesting sidenote: friend's father had never heard of JW. How can this be? I bet no mother would be quite so removed from the everyday details of a child's life. And another interesting sidenote: several of J's other friends wanted to go to the signing, but weren't allowed to because of after-school activities, apparently. Poor children. If their mothers can't remember how important something like that is to a 10 year old, then they ought to think a bit more carefully.
Anyway. I feel guilty that I escaped without the four hour thing, but, given the black eye, it's probably just as well.
And now it's 11 pm, and in an hour's time it'll be my 40th birthday. I'm looking forward to it. No writing tonight, though, other than this. Tant pis.
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