Coming up first is the Sefton Celebrates Writing Festival (22nd September – 28th September), boasting a line-up of top literary names. From readings by novelist Will Self, poets Carol Ann Duffy and Jackie Kay, to performance poetry by Luke Wright and the Potted Potter experience, there is something for everyone to enjoy. The festival also features a range of drama performances and free writing and publishing workshops within its programme.

Launching on National Poetry Day, is the new annual Chapter & Verse Literature Festival for Merseyside at the Bluecoat from 9th – 19th October (programme available very soon), featuring an exciting range of contemporary writers and performers from Merseyside and beyond. The Festival includes over 45 events and activities for lovers of words and the curious alike – from readings, book signings, talks, discussions, to performances and workshops – all under the Bluecoat’s historic roof. Amongst the writers appearing are: Tariq Ali, Jim Crace, Linda Grant, John Healy, Jan Morris,  Lemn Sissay, and Sadie Jones. Read more at ‘Poetry in the City’. The Reader Organsiation will be running daily ‘Reading and Discussion’ groups around the festival’s writer and book events; hosting poetry and prose reading ‘clinics’ to help solve life’s problems; and bringing stories to life in Children’s storytelling sessions.

From 6th – 24th October is the Shell Chester Literature Festival. Making the most of Chester’s myriad of small personable venues and spaces, the Shell presents an assortment of colourful and thought provoking events mainly within the city walls. Featuring an eclectic mix of national and local author events alongside innovative participatory activities aiming to capture the public’s imagination, headliners this year include Chris Patten, Esther Rantzen, David Owen, Michael Morpurgo, Martin Bell, Nicholas Crane and Ffion Hague.

 Manchester Literature Festival (16th- 26th October), now in its third year, attracts writers from all over the world and showcases plenty of local talent. With events ranging from Past Crimes to A Place for Romance and literature in translation to children’s fiction, the programme caters for all literary tastes. There are a series of readings, debates and workshops exploring the interplay between literature and science as part of the Big Science Read Weekend. The festival line-up includes: Patience Agbabi, Stephen Baxter, Ciaran Carson, Jim Cartwright, Mavis Cheek, Ramón Chao, Russell T Davies, Bernadine Evaristo, Laura Fish, Corsino Fortes, Jorie Graham, Adrian Mitchell, Jenni Murray, Sean O’Brien, Anne Perry, Posy Simmonds, Xinran plus many more!

There’s Shipping Lines Liverpool Literary Festival, held between 3rd – 9th November, brought to you by the University of Liverpool and organised by The Reader Organisation to celebrates Liverpool’s year as European Capital of Culture. The festival features some real movers and shakers from the local, national and international literary world: Philip Pullman, author of the astounding His Dark Materials, in conversation; Liverpool poets Roger McGough, Brain Pattern, Paul Farley and others for engaging and entertaining readings; novelists Malorie Blackman, Andrea Levy and Caryl Phillips who will read from and discuss their work; and much, much more. The official launch of The Reader Organisation, ‘Launching a Reading Revolution’ is being held at Bibby Line Group HQ on Friday 7th November. The full festival programme is available online and the paper brochure will be available from September 22nd. Email events@thereader.org.uk for more information. Or better yet, subscribe to our email update service to get up to the minute news and information direct to your inbox. Get Shipping Lines Liverpool Literary Festival news by email here. Or subscribe to the regular RSS feed here.

A brief mention of The Times Cheltenham Literature Festival though, seeing as last year it provided me with such delectable treats, a great deal of literary entertainment  and it’s also the place I call home. This year’s festival, held between 10th – 19th October does not disappoint with its array of award-winning writers, star names and celebrated thinkers, continuing to be recognised as the hub for literary debates and discussions. Janet Suzman, who is taking part in a panel discussion, ‘Becoming Cleopatra’, at the festival (Sunday 12th October), has an interview with editor Phil Davis in the latest issue of The Reader - it is honest and witty, revealing the core of reality that she brings to her characters. Normally wary of reading such things, we know that she is plased with it (and has enjoyed reading the rest of the issue - so there’s a celebrity recommendation for you!).

We’ll be bringing you select news and reviews from events across the North West’s literary festivals over the coming months. Of course, what Festival Girl wants to know is which one will have the best cake?

Posted by Jen Tomkins

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After covering writers’ block, aids to overcoming writers’ block (wine helps, apparently), the stature of Martin Amis and how to best keep crows off your land (Sting cds, particularily shiny and about all they’re good for), our conversation turned to poetry. In particular, the poetry of punk poet John Cooper Clarke. Enter Cathy Hopkins, author and wife of Steve. “Cathy, meet Jen, and please read us some of John Cooper Clarke’s poetry”, requests Steve. I had barely had a chance to say hello and Cathy hadn’t even sat down before she was reciting with great gusto poem after poem of Cooper Clarke’s. The three of us were laughing away, I was being educated about a poet who I knew little about (not being from that generation and all) and I felt overwhelmed at the fervour people to have to share poetry they love. I hold the Romantic poets in the highest esteem (you may have noticed from my choice of poems on this blog), so I wasn’t entirely sure that this was going to be quite my thing. Yet to hear words come to life and be conveyed so enthusiastically, I was reassured that the spirit of poetry can reach us in many ways. It proved to me that the most fantastic way to experience poetry is to have it read aloud by someone who feels a passion about it and wants to share it, whether that is the poet themselves or otherwise.

I didn’t expect my last emotion when leaving the festival to be one of sadness. I thought that relief would have been what I felt: finally, a day off ahead. It wasn’t, I wanted it to continue. The atmosphere of the Writers’ Room on Sunday evening was tinged with melancholy as people said goodbye to old friends and new, the coffee pots and cake stands were taken away, journalists packing up their computers and pens, organisers revelled in the success of their event but realised that it was all over as they sat together around tables. It has been a remarkable experience, in which I have met many inspirational and talented people, had my mind opened to new ideas and opinions, and of course, enjoyed a fantastic selection of delectable cakes. I left the Writers’ Room completely overwhelmed by the encounters of the last ten days, a sense of poignancy pervading my mind as I thought, this is it now, back to reality. I looked around to spot one last table of people gathering: A. C. Grayling, Sarah Smythe (festival Director) Carlos Acosta, Sophie Dahl, Robert Winston, Jamie Cullum and Howard Jacobson, eating their dinner and sharing in relaxed chatter. Now, where else could you see that?

Posted by Jen Tomkins

After covering writers’ block, aids to overcoming writers’ block (wine helps, apparently), the stature of Martin Amis and how to best keep crows off your land (Sting cds, particularily shiny and about all they’re good for), our conversation turned to poetry. In particular, the poetry of punk poet John Cooper Clarke. Enter Cathy Hopkins, author and wife of Steve. “Cathy, meet Jen, and please read us some of John Cooper Clarke’s poetry”, requests Steve. I had barely had a chance to say hello and Cathy hadn’t even sat down before she was reciting with great gusto poem after poem of Cooper Clarke’s. The three of us were laughing away, I was being educated about a poet who I knew little about (not being from that generation and all) and I felt overwhelmed at the fervour people to have to share poetry they love. I hold the Romantic poets in the highest esteem (you may have noticed from my choice of poems on this blog), so I wasn’t entirely sure that this was going to be quite my thing. Yet to hear words come to life and be conveyed so enthusiastically, I was reassured that the spirit of poetry can reach us in many ways. It proved to me that the most fantastic way to experience poetry is to have it read aloud by someone who feels a passion about it and wants to share it, whether that is the poet themselves or otherwise.

I didn’t expect my last emotion when leaving the festival to be one of sadness. I thought that relief would have been what I felt: finally, a day off ahead. It wasn’t, I wanted it to continue. The atmosphere of the Writers’ Room on Sunday evening was tinged with melancholy as people said goodbye to old friends and new, the coffee pots and cake stands were taken away, journalists packing up their computers and pens, organisers revelled in the success of their event but realised that it was all over as they sat together around tables. It has been a remarkable experience, in which I have met many inspirational and talented people, had my mind opened to new ideas and opinions, and of course, enjoyed a fantastic selection of delectable cakes. I left the Writers’ Room completely overwhelmed by the encounters of the last ten days, a sense of poignancy pervading my mind as I thought, this is it now, back to reality. I looked around to spot one last table of people gathering: A. C. Grayling, Sarah Smythe (festival Director) Carlos Acosta, Sophie Dahl, Robert Winston, Jamie Cullum and Howard Jacobson, eating their dinner and sharing in relaxed chatter. Now, where else could you see that?

Posted by Jen Tomkins

The conversation progressed to consider the personal within the fictional and to what extent the ‘author’ is part of the character(s) in their novels. Morrison, who has written his memoirs in And When Did You Last See Your Father? (the film, starring Colin Firth has just been released) doesn’t believe that there is much of ‘him’ in his latest work, “Memoir is written from your own experiences, fiction’s abot the lives you haven’t had, imagining other lives and getting into the consciousness of those lives.” However Coe admits to drawing on personal experiences for the (female) protagonist in his novel, “Maybe it’s because I haven’t written an autobiography or my memoirs, I have had no outlet for writing about my own life so it manifests itself in my fiction.”

It’s not as straight-forward as drawing a line between memoir and fiction though, is it? Surely a writer has only their own experience to draw on? Yet Coe says, “Writing allows you to get into a perspective different from your own”, even if it isn’t your ‘real’ perspective – the perspective that you have attached to your sense of identity – how could you possibly write (convincingly or otherwise) about something you have never experienced, seen, read, heard or touched. Is it a question of interpretation? When in ‘character’ an author is able to position themselves in a different mode of interpretation, to imagine a different response from normal but at one and the same time there must be the realisation that this interpretation has also come from within, from knowledge and experience.

Reading is then another form of interpretation. Issue 27 of The Reader features an essay by Raymond Tallis on Ian McEwan‘s Saturday, it also discusses the position of the contemporary novelist and the aim of literary fiction, “to leave a more lasting and different kind of impression” rather than just giving readers a “rat-a-tatting good read”. Coe made a pertinent comment about the relationship between reading and writing, “You don’t realise what book you’ve written until people read it”, interesting when you consider the extent of readerly interpretation on bringing the book to life. Thoughts in the author’s mind are deciphered into words on a page, those words are then unravled in the reader’s mind, with their own set of experiences construing a meaning. Authors interpret our world in their fiction, we interpret their fiction in our world.

Posted by Jen Tomkins

I heard Stella Rimmington and Henry Porter discussing Spy Fiction and surveillance, Dom Joly delivering swift gags about British embarrassment and the ridiculousness of some of our traditions, John Walsh and Patrick Gale examining the role of obsession and its part in the creative process, and Al Murray, well, being obnoxious. You will understand that such a diversity of speakers and ideas means that drawing any sort of strands together is rather tricky (and essentially unnecessary) but I have too many questions swimming around in my head to let it lie. Prompted by Walsh and Gale, I was thinking about the essence of creativity – its roots and its outlet, the potential for damage that comes with obsession and the idea that creativity arises from some form of personal damage and then the process of artistic creation attempting to heal that – each of the people listed above are creative and they use it in remarkably different ways but a cohesion began to appear to me, they all present a conflict.

Rimmington and Porter write about visible and invisible conflict (the Cold War, terrorism and the espionage) but they also explore moral conflicts: how far is the government allowed to go to defend us at the expense of the members of the intelligence service? Dom Joly, particularly annoyed with the rules and regulations of golf clubs, has written a book, Letters to my Golf Club, where he sets about writing a series of confrontational (and far-fetched) letters in order to infuriate board members. Humorous, yes – especially the ones to Denmark – but it’s setting up a conflict. Gale and Walsh directly address monomania and the overwhelming, often devestating power of creativity, for their fictional characters and their own personal creativity, “You send yourself into a world with these obsessives,” says Gale, “they become more real than the flesh and blood around you, their obsession becomes yours and your obsession becomes them.”

Dare I bring Al Murray into the mix? I think so, for one good reason: his abbhorent ‘Pub Landlord’ character is set up purely to present conflicts, “We need rules because if we have no rules we’re French, if we have too many, we’re German”, sexist, racist and generally offensive, he seems to give the audience what they want: a chance to indulge in conflict. I must say that I left two-thirds of the way through.

Is the idea of conflict a necessary one for creativity? Are some obsessions more dangerous than others? Is the idea of a damaged soul and a need to repair it our fundamental drive to want to write, paint or sing? There is little to make me believe that creativity is a gentle force, not with the lives of many of our most admired artists and painters being so tumultuous and damaging. Talking to my friend Rob Watts last night (who was also my A-Level English teacher and harboured my obsession with Keats – oh dear, there’s that word again), I put the question to him: “Why do people feel they need to create?”, his answer, “I hate to be pretentious but I can’t get that ‘we possess (and therefore create) art lest we perish beholding the truth’, good cynical answer to contradict.” It is indeed, Rob, and it throws yet more conflict into the very notion of the essence of creativity itself. The self-indulgence of creativity is something I certainly don’t want to be going into now but it could be that it helps to resolve (or at least go on the way to) resolving some of our internal and external conflicts.

Posted by Jen Tomkins

It hasn’t gone smoothly today. Computer problems this morning (I am, as they say, not technologically-minded), not being able to get the tickets that I initially wanted (McEwan sold out, Alex James cancelled), no cake left in the Writers’ Room. Problem after problem. Time to put Plan B into operation. Plan B meant that I was free to do as I pleased until 1pm, at which point I went to see Erica Wagner (Literary Editor of The Times) and Nick Hennessey (storyteller and singer). In a unique ‘Storytelling’ event, Wagner read from her debut novel Seizure and Hennessey sang ballads from his new album A Rare Hunger, a fascinating combination of the spoken and sung, the contemporary and the traditional, taking you on an emotional journey. It was completely different from anything I have experienced at the festival this year; not people talking about their work but performing it, letting the words speak for themselves.

Before I went to see this event though, I was in the Writers’ Room having lunch. Which was a fairly calm and quiet affair. Until that is, I got in the way. Sitting at a table talking reading the paper, with my back to the room, I became aware of a couple of men standing behind me. I turned around and attempted to shuffle my chair around but the gentleman who was trying to get his rucksack from under my table (I hadn’t noticed that before, which worries me as I feel I now have a duty to be vigilant around rucksacks) was adamant that I shouldn’t move. Fine, up until a couple of others were now with this gentleman and I was sitting with my brie and grapes at this table in the shadow of four men. Time to move to the other side of the table. As I do, I get more “Oh, no, please don’t worry” comments but well-mannered as I like to think I am, I say “It really doesn’t matter, honestly, I’m just getting in your way.” Who is it standing behind me but James May, who is obviously rather concerned about interrupting my lunch. Sitting down opposite me he asks, “Is there anything else I can do to ruin your day?”, to which I respond, “Well, maybe but I’m sure you won’t”, “Is there anything I can get you?”, he then says, “Of course not, it’s fine, honestly!” (silly polite me, I could have at least asked him to pass me a cup of coffee but nothing was being ruined really, it was all rather entertaining). There was then a steady stream of journalists and fans after interviews, signatures, photos. Pen, anyone? Jen to the rescue. “Thanks, I promise not to run off with it, that would surely ruin your day.” He certainly draws a crowd, his book signing lasted for an hour and forty minutes and we were then surrounded by a bevy of people. I finished off my lunch and then got up to leave, winding my way through past the BBC journalist, at which point I felt a hand on my arm. “Excuse me”, it was James, “I’m really terribly sorry for ruining your lunch. Do take care.” It’s good to know that manners still exist.

Posted by Jen Tomkins

The man was children’s author Morris Gleitzman, an Australian writer unafraid to bring up some controversial issues in his literature. In Boy Overboard Gleitzman charts the story of a refugee from Afghanistan seeking asylum in Australia but it does not turn out to be the idyll he imagined. The Australian government has been heavily criticised for opening scores of detention centres for immigrants and PM John Howard’s reaction to Boy Overboard was, “why can’t Gleitzman leave children to their innocence”, to which Gleitzman said to me, “Can you believe that, from the man that has locked up thousands of these children?” No. Or actually, I think I can.

The overriding theme of this festival for me so far has been the extent of the media’s manipulative power, blending fact and fiction to create so much grey area that the ‘truth’ seems a genuine impossibility to discover. The festival’s theme, ‘What does change mean to us?’ is emerging as an unanswerable question: who is this ‘us’ anyway, shouldn’t that be ‘me’? As advancements in technology and communications further infiltrate our existence, we are less and less able to disengage from that world to our real world. Call me pessimistic, but in a world dominated by the media and one where news is entertainment, entertainment is news, there seems no way out. There is an inherent contradiction in us all: we want integrity but yearn after sensationalism, we hate the paparazzi for infringing a celebrity’s privacy but we will buy the newspapers nonetheless.

Of course, this brings me back to thinking about issues raised in Iannucci and Kunzru’s talks over the last few days: what is real and what is surreal? We think that the news is real but the ‘news’ is chosen for us and reported in such a way that is deemed appropriate, we think that surrealist art is just that, surreal but is it not just another representation of reality, like the news? At least a reality, we all have our own. I shan’t get started; I could go on for hours.

‘Question, Debate, Discover, Engage, Enjoy’: Cheltenham Literature Festival is delivering what it promised in its promotional material. I may have been mistaken for one of the festival’s guest speakers (by one of the festival’s guest speakers) but I feel my identity has slipped further out of my reach after absorbing the disquieting notions that have been explored during the last few days. Iannucci picked Wallace Stevens’ ‘Six Significant Landscapes’ as one of his most admired poems on Sunday evening, explaining, “I didn’t understand it as an undergraduate, I still don’t understand it but it sounds great and the images are fantastic.” I am now experiencing my life as if it were a Wallace Stevens poem, simultaneously knowing what’s going on and not having a bloody clue!

From ‘Six Significant Landscapes’

Rationalists, wearing square hats,
Think, in square rooms,
Looking at the floor,
Looking at the ceiling.
They confine themselves
To right-angled triangles.
If they tried rhomboids,
Cones, waving lines, ellipses—
As, for example, the ellipse of the halfmoon—
Rationalists would wear sombreros.

1955

Posted by Jen Tomkins

“Love with Impediments” offers us a vision of commercial dependency and vacuousness, using advertising slogans such as, “flexible loans tailored just for you” and “optional storage drawers available”, within the body of the prose to exemplify the oppressive force of consumerism on the life of the female protagonist. The ubiquitous desire to retain “beauty” by the You of the story, leads to her ultimate downward spiral into hell. A darkness begins to creep up on her, “we all have secret guilty doubts,” finally the incessant and meaningless consumption catches up with her. The repetition of “beauty” in the story turns beauty itself into an ugly commodity, which is then reflected in her experiences of hell as being “one of the compressed masses of pain” where she is no longer beautiful or even individual.

The psychedelic universe of the advertising world that Kunzru paints is not entirely surreal though. What is elucidated through this vision is a world that is obsessed with security and certainty, a need to mediate one’s sense of self through the purchase of a product. A reality most of us can recognise. “Advertisers glorify the individual in an almost neurotic way”, explains Kunzru, “they lever open a worry and then force us to fill a void.”

Kunzru also discussed My Revolution, a chart from the political to the personal by a man actively involved in British terrorist activity in the early 1970s. Asked the question, “What is it possible for fiction to do?” Kunzru’s response was “as an author you have a licence to break the rules, you don’t have to footnote everything, it permits you a sense of freedom.” It was a small and intimate event in one of the festival’s smaller rooms and as a member of the audience you could feel the energy and potentiality of the various forms his writing could take: “I do have various modes in my work and I’m wondering which path to go down.” It was remarkable to witness a man unafraid to tell us that he did not know which path his writing was heading down but it should not matter, his acute observations and certitude with words will surely keep them all open for him.

Posted by Jen Tomkins

At these large events you rarely feel that you see anything of the ‘real’ person, especially with actors–that’s what they do, act–but occasionally you glean something from what is said that seems to come from somewhere more personal. Dame Helen discussed how dissimilar she felt from her friends whilst growing up (her father, Boris Mironof, was a Russian immigrant), how in the theatre she was (and still is) always rebelling against formal acting doctrines and trying to make her way forward as a woman in a male dominated arena. What you can infer from all of this, is that Mirren carries a sense of ‘otherness’ in her life: she was acutely aware of her status as an immigrant’s daughter; she left the RSC to join Peter Brook‘s innovative theatre company in Paris, describing him as a “tough task master but very truly brilliant”, and holds in very high esteem, “there’s beautiful rhythm to his plays, he’s like a composer–he picked the best from us all and created beautiful compositions”; her strong female roles, most obviously as Jane Tennison in Prime Suspect and the Queen, have demonstrated her desire to put women at the “centre of drama.”

We all battle with ‘otherness’ in varying degrees–it’s what makes us individuals–but I suddenly realised how these huge celebrities have to deal with not only their own otherness but the otherness of being a ‘star’ and the pressure that entails. When she received her Oscar, Mirren explained that “everything stopped, everything shut down for a moment”, the actor was left behind and she was lost in herself, in her otherness.

Posted by Jen Tomkins

Arriving on stage, Lee made a point of pouring his glass of water from the jug on the table next to him, claiming, “I have always wanted to get up on a podium and do that.” I can see where he’s coming from, there’s something very ‘Parky’ to aspire to there. So, the water had been expertly poured and the conversation was flowing but it seemed that this glass of water could not be drunk with the same fluent skill. The glass came crashing down from Lee’s hands and fell into pieces on the floor. Shame-faced and showing signs of obvious distress about this incident (the podium-jug moment is a proud one), Lee began picking up the pieces of the glass, claiming – after a previous discussion about the power of television editors and the constant manipulation of all that we see – that it could just be ‘edited’ out (this event is to be podcasted), “well, they edit everything however they want anyway, don’t they?” I don’t think he’ll be so lucky. “That’s what was missing from Cheltenham though, the element of slapstick”, Lee quips. Shortly a member of the audience handed him a bottle of water (he kept trying to drink from his smashed glass), “There you go Stewart, you can’t break that, it’s plastic,” Iannucci responds.

Beneath the humour though lay some pertinent issues: the tacit agreements between the press and politicians; the false facts that are presented that once ‘out-there’ can never be forgotten (Lee co-wrote Jerry Springer The Opera – there weren’t 8,000 swear words, just 127); our engagement with sensationalism which presents an inherent contradiction in us all: which do we prefer, fact or fiction? With Iannucci’s sharp wit and irreverent take on politics and the media, it was not surprising that the conversation moved towards examining comedy as a way to find ‘truth’ about what is really going on in the news. If news is entertainment and entertainment becomes news, then where’s the space for truth and integrity? “Just remember, this [Lee points at the fragments of shattered glass around him], this really happened.”

In The Writers’ Room after the event, I was extremely lucky to be sitting next to Iannucci and Lee whilst eating my breakfast (pain au chocolat and Javan coffee). After a few minutes of sitting there a feeling rather in awe, I thanked Iannucci for a thoroughly entertaining hour and for awakening me from my Sunday daze, which then prompted a conversation about the ‘glass’ incident. Iannucci and Lee both admit that comedians will always have a “few scripted gags” but that above all, a comedian “couldn’t wish for a better comic moment” than that like the ‘glass’.

Lee then had to dash off but I was left talking to Iannucci and his delightful wife about their festival experiences, “fantastic but tiring”, says Iannucci, “I can’t work out whether I’ve said the same thing five times or not at all!” I then took the opportunity to ask him what he was going to pick as his favourite pieces of writing in an event later to be hosted later in the day. He quickly rattled of a list, “Little Dorrit, a George Herbert poem, an essay by Orwell, Marlowe’s Dr Faustus… ermmm, hang on, I have the whole list in my rucksack.” But where is the rucksack? It is not where it was supposed to be anyhow.

As Iannucci goes to where he thinks he has left it but finds it missing, the room breaks into mild panic. The walky-talk clan are working overtime, Iannucci and his wife are scouring the Writers’ Room and I am just sitting in the middle, at my table, with my cake, watching this drama unfold around me whilst I’m thinking, I have just indirectly caused festival HQ meltdown. I did feel useless, although it was quite helpful that I had prompted Mr Iannucci to locate his rucksack (with all his notes in) before he had to get somewhere in a rush, but I felt that there had to be something I could do. So, think Jen, think… Ah! Stewart Lee had been sat there, maybe he or his driver picked it up without realising? It was worth a shot. So I approached a rather panic-striken Iannucci (with a small tap on the shoulder and a sheepish smile), “perhaps Stewart Lee picked it up?” No sooner had I mentioned it that he was on the phone and indeed, there it was. The bag was returned to its rightful owner. “It’s professional sabotage”, remarked Iannucci, resuming his more relaxed demeanour, “now, books… books…” and produced the copies of the text that he had and went through each one with me. This was fantastic, a full preview of one of the festival directors most admired works. I couldn’t end our conversation without asking who was ultimately his favourite author, “well, Dickens, of course”, he replies, “his prose style is so supremely succinct.” I thought it then best to leave, before any more chaos could unfurl (although I was later to become guarder of the bag).

Posted by Jen Tomkins