Literary Tour

On Friday afternoon I discovered that Wilbur Smith's latest book was out, how exciting!! So I decided to go online and see how much it was going to set me back, only to find that it had only just been released that day, and what was more he was doing the first book signing at 12:30 on Saturday - queue roadtrip....

Yes, me and George (that's my navigator) set off on the two and a half hour journey to a little town called Yeoville at 6:30am to make it in time for 9am opening, just in case that was when the queueing started. by 7:15 I had no idea where we were and was blindly following the instructions given to me until eventually we made it to the right place and on time.

It turns out that he is not popular enough for people to line up for for 3 hours so I had some time to get some breakfast before returning at about 11pm by which time there were about five people waiting and I became number six. The line grew steadily and by 12:30 was at least 100m long and 4 or 5 people wide, it appeared to me that as the line got longer, more people were likely join. I spent some of the time wondering what sort of differential equation might model the situation and while something like y'=3y might have done it, it quickly gets out of hand when one begins to think about time being a third variable and no-one really likes partial differential equations.

Anyhoo, I was certainly glad I was at the start of the line because shortly after the allotted time, I was able to meet one of my literary heroes and he wasn't so sick of signing he didn't care. No, he shook my hand and said he was pleased to meet me. I was even able, albeit quickly, to chat to him about my travels while he signed my copy of the book.

Well with that I was off and back on the tour. Literary stop two was at the 'Bulford Kiwi' built by NZ soldiers in WW1 , it's hard to get a view of it, I had to go a considerable way off road to find a decent spot. It's all army land when I read the army range signs which said don't go any further if there were flags up, I didn't see any flags and as someone not necessarily inclined to follow such orders I drove on. Luckily I didn't get moved on or arrested or shelled by tanks before moving on.

The third and final stop was at St Mary's in Cholsey where Agatha Christie is buried. While Poirot is my favourite, those who have read/watched a Miss Marple who lives in St Mary Mead, might be interested in knowing that the church is on Marymead Road, perhaps some inspiration? Certainly the church and surroundings were exactly as I would have imagined when reading the books - just perfectly 1930s rural England.

And I know the kiwi is not perhaps technically a literary stop, but I read about it in a book alright! And interestingly, here's how we became known as Kiwis.