Stupid Book Fair

Every year I feel guilty about not wanting to go to the London Book Fair. So every year I make myself go, look around, pick up tons of catalogues, hang around the Chronicle Books stand trying to steal stuff, and go home. But not this year. This year I will not go, and see what happens. Will I miss out? Will the world come to an end?

Weekend was spent proofreading, dancing, and sewing. Finished a big proofreading job, which will go towards paying for a laptop. Shortened a pair of curtains for the living room (yeah, only took us 4 months to get around to that), altered a silver & white 60s dress (think it was a wedding dress) to knee length to wear to a work dinner this week, and had dance rehearsal on Saturday and dance reality on Sunday. We’d been asked to perform at a plus-size beauty pageant at the Café de Paris in Leicester Square. The whole thing was being filmed for Channel 4 too, so unless we’re edited out we’ll be prancing across a screen near you in June or July. The Café de Paris is a pretty amazing venue, all red velvet and chandeliers (but nowhere near as nice as the Rivoli Ballroom), and the basement where we got ready had upholstered walls, giant velvet beds with mysterious white stains, and those mirrors with bulbs all around them. Oh, and cockroaches. As the audience wasn’t there to see us, and didn’t know who the hell we were, the applause when we were introduced was muted – OK it was nonexistent. The people sitting by the catwalk looked bored, and while this should have put me off it made me laugh. Also, we were all sober, as there was no rider, only a very expensive bar. We did get applause at the end, though, and I was out of there by 6.15 and home by 7.30. Doing it all again on Wednesday night at Goldsmiths, where those enterprising students are putting on a night of entertainment for International Women’s Day.