Read Wigtown Book Festival: The Friday
Read Wigtown Book Festival: The Saturday 

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Roughly 9 hours after leaving Bladnoch Inn, I’m back in search of something fried and hot. Feeling returns, and so does my smile, upon finding the oddest bookstore yet.

I’m very tempted to try my luck and knock, but am already late for my first  session, for The Wave Watcher’s Companion. Originally it caught my eye due to the mention of Cornwall in the blurb – “One bright February afternoon, on a beach in Cornwall, Gavin Pretor-Pinney took a break from cloudspotting and began watching waves rolling into shore. Mesmerised, he wondered where they had come from, and vowed to find out.” – where I partly grew up, and my sister’s family now live, keen surfers all. It’s nowhere near as esoteric as I had been hoping, but no less enjoyable for it; there’s lots of science, in a kind of ‘Did you know?’ way, and Gavin Pretor-Pinney delivers it all with a measured excitement, as if he’s just learning all this stuff at the same time as you. I love that books like this exist; there is a definite market of people, much like myself, who struggled horribly with school science lessons, but have a genuine fascination for how ‘things’ work. Our God is Bill Bryson, obviously, but this guy’s pretty damn good, too.

Afterwards, finally make it to the official Festival Bookshop.

They like Ian Rankin a *lot*, but then he did open proceedings this year.

Alisdair Gray has also been in attendance, presenting a talk about his paintings, whilst his definitive work is included in the ‘Ten Scottish Books That Changed The World’ exhibition, showing at WBF. I, er, still have not managed to read it, but quite like the cover…

Make my way to Reading Lasses, which wins the award for Best Bookshop Name in town; JK Rowling’s ‘Ballad of Headless Nick’ is on display in the back room, and it’s alright, as silly wizard poetry goes, but having to tiptoe in and out due to a random women napping on the nearby, sun-drenched sofa makes me giggle more. Accidentally wander out the wrong exit, where rather aptly I find the entrance to Narnia.

Next door is Glaisnock Guest House, where Wigtown’s artist-in-residence, Deirdre Nelson, has been collecting words from visitors, writers and workers at the festival; all will be then gathered together, and used to create a piece of work revealed at The Spring Fling in 2011.

And, all too soon, it’s time for my final event. On the way there, however, I come across a sign that has nothing to do with books, and is a little confusing:

I’ve chosen Phyllida Law: Notes to my Mother-in-Law to close my Wigtown experience, and I’m quite excited. The fact that I’m distinctly younger than the average audience member is an unexpected bonus; I rarely feel like the whippersnapper these days. Law is late, but so incredibly charming with it – something to do with a plane, a tractor, and lots of yelling – in that ever-so-English way that you just immediately want to take her home and bring her tea in fine cups and have her say: ‘Well, I was just speechless!’ for the rest of your life. The book is sad and sweet, a collection of notes Law wrote to her mother-in-law, who grew increasingly deaf and isolated, despite living in the house with the rest of the family. A lot of the ‘do you remember when?’ stuff goes right over my head, but I’m still laughing more than at any event in the Edinburgh Fringe; it may have been the story concerning using garlic up the bum as a cure for piles that did it, but it’s hard to say.

And that’s it. Two nights and two days, and it’s not nearly enough; I have that slightly odd feeling of having been somewhere incredibly different and removed from my normal life, despite the fact I’m no more than 4 hours from my front door. Sufficiently in love to make solid plans to return next year, I wander off with an armful of books, the Copyright Lawyer’s email and enough inspiration to keep me going for a long while. I thoroughly recommend it.

Day 2 was a day filled with oddments and unexpected shots. It started early because my choir were singing in the Ross Bandstand, after which I was required to take some new photos of us (as there were none less than three years old).

This meant I missed a Storytime event (which I eventually got along to a few days later) and it took me a while to focus on the task at hand. Thankfully there was a need for random shots of the site, so I spent the afternoon split between processing yesterday’s and documenting the punters. This shot was in no way set up . Honest.

Scattered throughout my Book Festival days are the Photo Calls; I don’t attend all of them because I’m often in an event or catching some atmospheric shots of the site, but if I notice some distant flashing behind the Press yurt I pop round to see what’s happening. Here we see Fatima Bhutto posing (and she seemed to be quite happy to pose) for the press photographers.

Hanging around the site are some awesome portrait photographs of authors, from last year and this. They are taken by Chris Close, who works with a terrifying ring flash and manages to get today’s photos processed and printed onto canvas by tomorrow. This is what people mostly think he looks like…

The biggest surprise of the day was the queue for John Green. Clearly the organisers didn’t anticipate his popularity, as he was booked into the Children’s Bookshop tent for his signing… and the queue pretty much filled the tent!

This was followed by an exciting multilingual event in the Corner tent which inexplicably always made me nauseous and woozy – I’m pretty sure it wasn’t the event to blame. Here we had five poets from different countries reading their work in their native tongue and having careful and intricate translations performed immediately after.

And then onto the first Unbound! Here we had a group taking it in turns to read us through the history of literary pornography, assisted by burlesque-style flashcards. Although I quite enjoyed some of the works shared from the stage, the high fpoint for me was all the people who walked out within the first ten minutes with looks of disgust on their faces.

There was a handout as well, but since nobody assigned homework I didn’t pay it much attention.

Day 3 started me off with another big crowd, although with fewer children than Pullman pulled in.

This time it was for Jeanette Winterson, a woman known for her astonishing ego. The remarkable thing I found was that although she was pretty much just monologuing  about herself, her childhood, her philosophy of life etc. she was nonetheless a captivating and entertaining speaker. I’m almost tempted to read some of her books now…

We also had some quality time with a chair round the back.

This chair was representing, I think, all the writers who couldn’t attend the Book Festival due to being imprisoned. Harsh stuff!

Nothing book-related in Edinburgh would be complete without a visit from Ian Rankin, and sure enough he appeared to be interviewed non stop for hours.

Who else? Erm, Louis de Bernieres?

Simon Callow? (I totally spent ALL DAY squeeing about him being there).

Having mentioned queues, this was awaiting the Sir Ian Blair event an hour before it started:

I then had the dubious pleasure of being shoo-ed by Sue Perkins. Having spotted her (and papped her) I dashed over to one of the Press team to squeal in hushed tones “ohmygod it’s SUE PERKINS!”, to which she replied ” I know, isn’t it GREAT and there’s Simon Callow being interviewed over there!”… and apparently this was all too much for poor Sue (who I love, btw – this is entertainment, not bitching) and she waved me away and asked me to move behind the camera. It seems she was unable to keep her eyes off my brightly shining hair though, as one of her crew then told me in no uncertain terms to go away because I was too distracting. Tsk.

After a brief visit to Sir Blair I went to see Fay Weldon with Fatima Bhutto being interviewed by Ruth Patel. I’ve never been a big fan of Fay Weldon but was always aware of her. I didn’t realise how old she now is, and it was a little distressing to see her tottering up on stage. Once she got going though, she was totally there, and when she laughed it was like a beam of sunshine! I ended up speaking at cross-purposes with one of the staff because I came out talking about Fay’s amazing face and he thought I was saying that Fatima was a bit of alright and it took a while to untangle…

Thanks to not being able to read or think, I missed Iain (M) Banks talking about his latest book, but I made up for it by taking a picture of just about everyone who came to get things signed – and what a mixed bunch they were! It was both heartwarming and demographically satisfying. Also, he looks way better now that all the ginger has gone.

The day ended with some question over whether writing the word BLUE on a piece of white paper actually assigned a certain blue-ness to the paper, or whether it just meant that bureaucracy will soon end us all.

This first kiddies event was Bookbugs, and I was in awe of the performers’ energy and enthusiasm.

After a few miraculously dry days, the skies went dark and wet. The nice thing about Edinburgh though is that it often looks lovelier just after a rainshower.

Onto Jeremy Hardy then, who pointed out only half in jest that his followers, mostly Radio 4 listeners, were a rather fragile fanbase. Since the Book Festival is basically Radio 4 listeners, this was a bit close to the bone. I hear the goal is to get Radio 2 listeners…

A couple of behind the scenes glimpses for you here. Firstly, “Anon‘s Colin Fraser” who is operating the @EdBookFest Twitter account (he’s usually on @AnonPoetry). Here we see him editing a recording to post on AudioBoo.

And here’s one of the big containers out back. This is where books come in from the publishers etc. in preparation for an author event, before going back if any are unsold. The amazing thing is that it’s constantly in motion. The boxes of books never look the same from one hour to the next, which left me with an urge to set up a month-long timelapse next year. Somehow.

Signings, signings, Ian Rankin photocall…

David Shrigley sharing book space with Barack Obama…

Signings, signings…

Alastair Darling’s event should have been dramatic, but due to a slip by his press people, everybody knew what he was going to say before he got there. What I did enjoy were the salute from Brian Taylor:

…closely followed by a mimed moustache from Mr Darling:

David Shrigley was a bit of a disappointment to me. Nothing to do with his work, just that he was a bit tall, clean and well-spoken. Perhaps expecting a mangled stick figure to come to the Book Festival is a bit much?

And then the day closed. I pointed a camera at someone whose face seemed familiar and afterwards realised that it was David Bishop (former editor of 2000AD, tutor of a well-respected Creative Writing course at Napier University and more, I’m sure) and that Anna from Edinburgh City of Literature had popped up in the background. Nice!