Wellington 5

Wow, it’s so cold, now! There was a fire evacuation from the hotel yesterday—the quickest evacuation and return I’ve ever experienced—and the people who’d had to come from the restaurant (unlike us who’d been lounging in our rooms with jackets and bags nearby) were all huddling together out in the car park, so as not to die of exposure in the five minutes it took the NZ Fire Service to determine that there wasn’t a fire!

Yesterday’s session with Neil Gaiman went swimmingly. Kate de Goldi wrangled us, and a very enthusiastic audience, with great skill and charm, and the hour whipped by. I was prepared to just sit and admire Neil’s signing queue afterwards, but a respectable number of people came up to me, too, which was good—also I met Lydia Weaver, who’ll be chairing the panel with me and Simon Schama on it today. (12.30—be there, Wellingtonians and visitors!).

After a morning swim at the Freyberg Pool just across the road (and a very nice pool it is, with excellent change rooms), we went off to the Dixon St Deli for breakfast, then I repaired to the Embassy Theatre for pretty much the rest of the day, to drink up writers’ words and resist temptation at the Unity Books stall.

Then, post-session and evacuation and everything, it seemed like a sensible thing to do to go out and dine in town, seeing as we were out in the cold already, so we did that, at the Metropolitain in Cuba Street. And the rain had cleared by then, and the wind, which had been blowing down tree branches during my session in the afternoon, had calmed down, so we could walk comfortably through the wintry cold, there and back.

Now it’s the crack of dawn on Sunday and it looks like a clear day ahead. Going to see Gil Adamson ‘s and Kevin Connolly’s sessions today, and possibly others—as well as my own, from the inside.

Then, you know, food and touristy faffing around. All good wholesome fun.