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.

I’ve been wanting to go to Wigtown for ages. As a self-confessed bibliophile (Francis Bickmore, an editor at Canongate, put it best, in one of the talks I attended over the weekend: “I have an almost fetishistic relationship to the actual object of the book, how it looks, how it feels…”) and a resident of Scotland for 14 years, it seems slightly insane that thus far I’ve not yet managed to make it to the country’s official ‘Book Town’.

What does that actually mean? The idea’s rather nice actually, being instigated with the sole goal of helping a community in need of regeneration; a book X-Factor ensued and in 1999, the Scottish Parliament designated Wigtown the winner of the title. It’s now home to “over 20 book-related businesses. A book lovers haven – and with over quarter of a million books to choose from, old and new … it is impossible to escape empty-handed.”

Basically, they’re book mad. A quick glance up and down the single main street encapsulates it wonderfully : at least five thriving bookshops within sight, but the single fish & chip shop has gone out of business.

It also means that annually, they hold the Wigtown Book Festival, now going for 11 years, with a programme that is very much on a par with the EIBF; so much so that the various people I’ve been showing it to over the last couple of weeks have all made the same surprised noise in the back of their throat. Bit like a startled walrus. When I query what has prompted this, the answer has always been along the lines of “It’s just, they’ve actually got some really good stuff on”. Well, yes. It’s a Book Town. In fact, because of it’s micro nature, WBF can get away with some things that the larger, longer Edinburgh festival can’t. Like the Martyr’s Cell programme: an old jail room in the county buildings, in which various authors take a 15 minute slot to rail on a subject of their choosing, the audience being whomever turned up. Subjects ranged from ‘How to be a Polymath’ to ‘The Magic of Turkeys’. Awesome.

I suspect that the sheer randomness of the whole event – “you’re speaking at a book festival where?” – which gives it a wonderfully romantic sheen -  probably appeals to those who agree to appear. It’s the little-but-brilliant festival that you harbour to yourself, least the wide world know about it and spoil the whole thing.

Opening weekend then. I’ll skip over the mad dash from Glasgow Central to Bellshill with a laptop, an omgitssoexpensiveidontwanttobreathe camera (on loan from work) and a bike; the ensuing car journey where it transpired The Blonde had left the road map at home, because “we have GPS on my phone” (which works wonderfully in the middle of Galloway Forest Park, where mobile signal is a dim and distant memory); and the swearing and stumbling of putting up a tent as fast as possible in the dark, before dashing back into town, applying green glitter eyeshadow in the car (where most of it ended up down the front seat, so that it looked “like a Scissor Sister died in here”, according to said car’s owner).

Suffice to say I arrived late enough to the proceedings that the box office was closed, the doors to the press office firmly shut. Muttering under my breath about people who leave road maps in the house, I ventured up to an open window, pulled the blinds aside and said, in my best RP: ‘Excuse me?’ Causing the manager of the festival to nearly jump out of her skin. Not the best first impression I’ve ever made. Thankfully, Anne didn’t hold it against me, and is possibly one of the most efficient managers I’ve ever met; she has the knack of always being exactly where she’s needed. To an almost farcical point on the Saturday night where I said to myself out loud “Now where’s my rucksack?” only to have Anne suddenly appear at my elbow, point and say “There” before whisking away again. I want to hire her to do that for me 24/7.

There were fireworks to open proceedings. I missed them due to the impossibility of driving pegs into the unending bed of rock that seemed to exist 2 inches below our entire tent. But I made the party following, green eyeshadow and all.

It was slightly surreal… I realised I was quite probably standing in the presence of more concentrated literary talent than I ever had or probably ever would again… and I couldn’t identify more than 2 or 3 of them. Actors, obviously, are the easiest to recognise, as their art involves you staring at them continuously; film crew, if they’re of a high enough echelon to guarantee celebrity status, will be familiar. But clearly I do not spend enough time soaking up the author’s photo whenever devouring their work.

It was also interesting to note that the room was composed of significantly more men than women. This may explain why, like all good parties, everyone ended up in the bar area, the dance floor a barren, beautifully lit absence of movement.

A peek backstage showed rows of chairs, waiting to be laid out the following morning. I’ve always had a thing for set dressed, empty stages, of all kinds. The anticipation and potential for them is never better than when there’s not a soul in sight.

I bonded with a man in a kilt at the bar.
“Can’t we have a pint of gin?”
“Or the jug? Just give us the jug?”
Poor staff. Further conversation with Gin Man led to meeting his wife, an ex punk artist from New York, who then became a copyright lawyer, and was now writing a graphic novel to explain the subject to the layman. It’s the fastest I’ve fallen in love with anyone for a while – a few drinks later we’ve settled on the fact that I will appear in the novel, and be known as Erin O’Crikey. Have enough Hendricks and it’ll seem funny to you, too.

Back to the tent, which suddenly seems infinitely more romantic and otherworldly. Midnight snack under the moon, by the loch. I decide I rather like Wigtown.