My thanks to EILEEN ARMSTRONG and everyone else I met there for a fantastic evening at the North East Teenage Book Awards last Friday. Tommy has written a fine account of the nicer parts of the night, so scroll down to take a look: it’s just a few posts below this one.

Sigh. If only the rest of the weekend had gone as smoothly. I have spent the last forty-eight hours strapped upside-down in a bucket of unspeakable monster fluids. That’s not something I do for fun, I hasten to add. No: this was a PUNISHMENT, administered to me by my captors, for the “crime” of recording and smuggling out the following frantic message:

I’m only writing this now because the monsters are insisting that I make a full and public apology. Well, you know what? I’M NOT GOING TO! You monsters are holding us here against our will! We’ve got every right to try to contact the outside world in any way we can, without fear of censorship, or repression, or, or – No! DON’T PUT ME BACK IN THE BUCKET! NOOOlplplplpchokehacksplutterbubblebubble ominous silence.

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