First up for my Thursday evening was the launch of Nothing tastes as good by Claire Hennessy, who tri-locates everyday, as far as I can see — busy woman. I then hightailed it up O’Connell Street to my class in the Irish Writers’ Centre, where the hope is that some of Eithne Shortall’s journalistic nous will rub off and speed up my painfully slow review-writing process.  I skipped out a little early to catch Henri McKervey’s interview with Martin Doyle for the Irish Times Book Club podcast—which she handled with her usual poise—then chatted to some of the assembled literati for a while. My hectic literary life, right?

Well, no. These days, even a single event is unusual enough. I have missed every single ILF event this year, and I’m not booked in to any of the many good festivals I could be attending or participating in. It can be hard to keep up, and there’s only so much shore-leave one can take, but the real reason I’m laying low is that I (as I can never bear to tweet) #amwriting. The WIP is at that agreeable, all-absorbing, everything-is-still-possible stage, and I don’t want to be doing anything else. It’s not a bad complaint.