Kings Lynn Fiction Festival - 14th March 2010
20th April 2010
The earth is unusually brown. Not the red of Devon, or the chalk-white of Kent. From the train I see fields ploughed like well-used boxes of giants’ make-up: chocolate brown; all smudged for smoky eyes.
I am on my way to the Kings Lynn Fiction festival. When I arrive there is a bagpipe playing, and champagne. One of the other writers says she wondered what they meant when they said there’d be refreshments served on the platform. We are asked to hold our bags so in the photograph it looks like we’ve just arrived. The wind blows all my hair in my face.
During the festival one of the other writers says that Norfolk landscapes are 90% sky. It’s true. No child could paint Norfolk because there is too much sky, and sky is both too big and too easy and too boring. Better than doing it in a jigsaw, but still just a lot of blue, and grey bits that aren’t even shaped like proper clouds. On the way back on Sunday I will pretend I hadn't booked a first class ticket a long time in advance and sit in standard with five other writers, one of whom is more famous than I’ll ever be. We will be given green carnations, and, still drunk from lunch, we will see this sky full of rain and all we will be able to come up with is that it looks like a curtain. One of the writers will suggest that landmarks and train stations appear only when you arrive at them, and exist below the surface of the earth at other times.
