stratford-upon-avon shenanigans
I’ve never been so shocked, when we were in Stratford-upon-Avon, our book’s publicist, Alex Richardson, stole a sheep! She ran right down the road with it, tucked under her arm. After we spent a night in the Stratford-upon-Avon house of detention, we promised the local constabulary that we’d spend the rest of the weekend leading workshops and generally acting as upstanding role models for the young citizens of Warwickshire at the Stratford-upon-Avon Literary Festival.
But look at that sheep there in the window, standing so complacently. Tell me you wouldn’t do the same…
The house of detention was very nice, actually, even though it had the same big picture of a queen in every room.
Since we were publicising the book You Can’t Eat a Princess!, we had to bring along our team of aliens, who didn’t behave very well at the breakfast table.
One of the wonderful festival organisers, Natasha Roderick-Jones, took us out to super-posh Alveston Manor for lunch in between workshops:
Since we only had a little over an hour, I didn’t have a chance to change out of my space princess costume. You should have seen the black looks one elderly lady gave me. It was hard not to giggle.
As part of the festival, Alex and I got to listen to a talk by illustrious BBC foreign correspondent John Simpson. (Don’t be too hard on me, I drew if from a fair distance.)
After his talk, Alex and I ran to catch the 9pm Ghost Tour, but the guy at the gate wasn’t having any of it. No ghost tour for us.
The school we visited was amazing, they’d made bulletin boards for every guest speaker and really prepped everyone for my visit. So the kids were raring to go, and came up with amazing character designs. What a boost! Thank you, Bridgetown Primary School, you guys rock!
Here’s Alex and me visiting Shakespeare’s birth house.
And my take on the festival logo.
That was an amazing trip, thanks to Alex, Natasha, Steve Blackman, Annie Ashworth and everyone who’s been making the festival happen!
I promised people in the Cox’s Yard workshop on the second day that I’d point them to the free downloads on my website, so here they are. And you can find out about other books I’ve been working on here.
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