Things are a bit mad here and just to make a busy period even more fun, towards the end of last week, my computer decided to take its ball home and refused to start. We got it sorted eventually, but by then I was away to Leeds, to start a week of storytelling and drawing events with children.
I took a train straight from Leeds to Durham, where John had booked me into a hotel, ready for a couple of days doing the Northern Children’s Book Festival in the North East.
Actually, neither of my festival events were in Durham, but my first day was in Middlesbrough, while day two was in North Tyneside: a fair way apart. Durham is about half way between, so I made that my base. I didn’t want to trail my suitcase around different hotels: all that packing and unpacking and repacking, when I’m already pretty zonked from the children’s sessions – just too grim.
So I was up early again the following morning and back on the train to Middlesborough: plenty of opportunities for more train sketching, as you can see.
My festival events all went really well: 3 sessions a day, each with up to 60 children, all between 4 and 7. One group of 60 all arrived in pyjamas, including their teachers – I felt very overdressed!
Between the storytellings there were frantic book-signing sessions, trying to draw a little picture in each, in time for the first batch of children to get back to school and the next lot to arrive!
Pretty full-on, but excellent fun. I was full of beans right up to the moment I got back to my hotel each evening. It’s like pulling a plug: I collapsed in a heap. Not even energy for food sketching!
I was really pleased to be home come Friday night and John took me out for a cocktail and a curry as a reward.
Mind you, I was up early again the very next morning, to take a train to Hull for our November SketchCrawl, but that’s another story…
