So I lied. There were 1 million petals, not three, and they were poppies, not roses. I got my info from the Evening Standard, so I blame them. Anyway, it wasn’t much of a spectacle, so I am sorry if you showed up and were utterly underwhelmed – I was too. The planes were pretty high up, and it was dark, and they dropped their cargo over Westminster/ the Hungerford footbridges, so everyone on Waterloo Bridge was looking downriver enviously before turning their collars up and heading home. The high point was lots of searchlights lighting up the sky, and every so often one of them would hit a red cloud of poppy petals and everyone would ooh and aah.

Boss just asked me to lunch. I can’t do today, so we’re going next week. This means I have a whole week of panicked thinking: am I getting a raise (doubtful: only been here two months), is he going to drastically change my job description (‘You know we hired you to work on books? We’d like you to clean the toilets now.’), or am I being politely fired?

Today I raised an ISBN. This gives me an incredible sense of power: see that little code on the back of a book? And on the copyright page? I chose that! I looked at my big list of ISBNs, and I wrote the title of the book next to one, and IT WAS DONE.

A woman from a literary agency just called me. This is the conversation as I remember it, 45 seconds later. ‘Hello, this is blah blah, blah blah’s assistant from Shiel Land. In October we sent Ian a manuscript by blah blah blah, called blah. We’re very keen to hear his thoughts. Can you look into it?’ Me: ‘Of course!’ Hang up. Don’t remember a freakin word except those I have transcribed above.