Just back from Latitude festival, held just outside one of my very favourite places in the world, Southwold in Suffolk. Cue swimming in the sea, long walks under amazing endless Suffolk skies, lots of great bands, a few unhealthy lunches, some warm beer & generally lots of fun. Plus Philippa Perry, the author of our latest Book Club read, was giving a talk in the literary tent, so of course I went along. She was great, very interesting on the process of putting the book together (she would make very rough sketches of what she had in mind and then pass them to her illustrator [also her gardener, Junko] who recreated them to produce the engaging comic-strips that make up the book. She also said that the cartoon was a particularly helpful device because words and images are processed by different parts of the brain, so there's a different kind of engagement going on when you read it.
She was also forthcoming about the process of psychotherapy itself, with lots of questions from an interested audience. Would she have therapy herself? She laughed and said that the very fact she was standing on stage presenting a book that she had written and created was testament to the postitive effect that undergoing therapy had for her.
She couldn't have been more delighted when I told her WKR had read Couch Fiction (have a look over on the main site for our reviews and scores), and told me merrily to 'blog away' so I hope she meant it and doesn't mind me posting the lovely photo she posed for. Those are my glasses, above her fabulous yellow ones.
And finally the good news for any who have read and liked the book is that she has two more in development.
Philippa Perry at Latitude 2010
It's about bands and coloured sheep
and badges
and walks on the beach
and beach huts
Rumour has it a beach hut along the smartest end of the promenade could set you back as much as £35,000. (!)
Lots of opportunities for secondhand book browsing
The North Sea from Walberswick beach. If you look closely then yes that's me bobbing around in there. It was freezing. But exhilarating.