Ab-duck-tion!!!

Book Festival staff - always eager for volunteers!

We were wandering along, minding our own business, when suddenly we noticed an intruder in our midst!! Here comedian and radio presenter Fred Macaulay alerts us to (the very lovely and very welcome) Kate Silverton, from BBC Radio 5 Live, who were broadcasting live from Charlotte Square gardens this morning, masquarading as one of our own!

Let's hope she's keen to man the Box Office and do some ticket-selling.

Curdle your coffee

Death, madness, suicide and cats. Dying ones. Robin Robertson's Wake up to Words session in the Highland Park Spiegeltent was, as he said himself, likely to curdle the delicious free coffee. Fellow poet, guest selector and friend Don Paterson introduced with as many flourishing words as he dared - among which the lovely 'Robin's poems translate the world into sound' - we were told the format of the event was that 'Robin will read and then he will stop.' No questions, just an hour of poetry. Heaven.

However, Robertson's poetry often revels in a vision of hell. That poor cat, his moment in the sun teed off with 'I'll read one about cats. Normally I say I don't like cats and 6 or 7 people leave the room. So I'll not do that this time.' In 'Cat, Failing', the cat is dying, with the 'shame/ of being found out'. Robertson's dreams - "another uncomfortable dream for you" - transmuted into poetry, of sexual encounters with hairy-chested witches, among other nightmares. He read one he'd written for Sean O'Brien, that he revealed - drily - O'Brien had deemed obscene. He mixed old and new; 'Donegal', a tender one for his daughter from his first collection, then a long, new sequence on Strindberg, who Robertson admires, "less for his work and more for the catastrophe of his life."

In attempting to find something cheerier, he plumped "far from it!" with a poem about a chest haemorrhage, written in haste before his friend the novelist Alan Warner (as it happened, in the same booth with us) could use the real-life episode in his next book. "It [the chest] was all open. Did you get that? Wouldn't want to send you away dissatisfied." He did read a little funny called 'The Tweed' about giving Hugh MacDiarmid a back rub, before finishing with the exquisite 'At Roane Head'; with such staggering musicality and Robertson's wonderful, sonorous voice, this was an hour filled with amazed fixed grimaces and curdled coffee, but also those fizzy head moments poetry can bring; a sensation I'm led to understand the music world calls an eargasm.

The Adventures of Petunia

Petunia. A lovely name for a lovely... trolley.

She was born in the Valley and rescued from a garden centre that had so callously deemed her “surplus to requirements”. A shadow of her former glory, Petunia left for the city to seek her fortune. Upon arrival in Scotland’s bustling capital, she was nursed back to health, spray painted gold, strewn with flowers, and welcomed with open arms into the Sponsorship Team at the Edinburgh International Book Festival.

There she thrived. She carried all manner of wonderous things, from wine (with which she filled herself heartily) to newspapers – and even the occasional Site Manager...

At the end of each day Petunia was parked for a well-earned rest. But this happy-go-lucky existence was not to last. One evening Petunia parked herself for the night and awoke to find herself...

... clamped!!

We explained to the dear Sponsorship trolley that anything staying still for too long at the Book Festival will eventually get clamped. Anything and anyone.

So really, Petunia shouldn't feel too bad.

Activity Corner

This is our storage container that keeps safe all of the exciting materials that we use at our free crafts area at the back of the Children’s Bookshop, as well as all the paper, pens and sticky-glittery goodness that stocks our RBS Workshop Tent.

A few weeks ago – before our beautiful venues where established, before hundreds of authors graced us with their presence, and before thousands of visitors descended into Charlotte Square – this is what our children’s activity corner looked like. Not much activity going on there, and decidedly uncorner-like. We unpack the storage container at the start of every festival, and after much fetching, carrying and arranging, the activity corner is ready for: activities!



Unfortunately, ‘activities’ just doesn’t quite convey the masterpieces that emerge from behind the bookshelves. Every day our master-crafts-staff come up with an exciting project based around the themes and the events featured daily on the children’s programme. We’ve had under the sea creatures, where you can write a message and send it across the waves in a bottle, and we’ve had a day in the jungle with Elmer the elephant when you could make your own elephant ears and trunk or impressively regal lion mane. Or you might fancy colouring in one of the characters from your favourite book who you might have seen at the Book Festival, like the Mr Men or the Fat Controller. You can also write a line of our story on our story wall, made up by the hundreds of visitors who gave us so many great storylines that we had to create another page!


As you can see, we like to adorn the walls with the brilliant artwork created by our young visitors, who range in age from tiny tots still grappling with their first crayon to children up to the age of 11, who come along with fully fledged ideas about what masterpieces they would like to create.



The activities are co-ordinated by our resident artistic experts, Laura and Helen, as well as their crafty crew of Front of House helpers Tess, Larry, Jennifer and Hannah (and some other members of staff have been known to pop over to acquire some Maisy mouse ears or a rather fetching pirate eye patch). They bring loads of enthusiasm and a seemingly never ending supply of pritt stick for every child they work with, and have never once complained about getting glitter in their hair or a multitude of paper cuts from folding sugar paper.

If you’re at the Book Festival during the day, do stop by and say hello – we’d be more than happy to provide you with some glitter glue if you tell us what you have in mind, as we love to hear your ideas!

PS You might even get your face-painted too. But only if you've been good.

Win-Win Situation

We're delighted to announce that the second winner of our txt2win competition for a pair of tickets to the Unbound Grand Finale 7pm on 30 August is Andrew Frayn. Congratulations Andrew!

The competition continues until 30 August, with more Edinburgh International Book Festival goodies to be won.

You can enter as often as you wish.

Simply text BOOKFEST +
FLIRT or LOVER +
YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS
to 60777

and receive Edinburgh International Book Festival info and offers.

Standard network charges apply.

Weird and wonderful photoshoots at the Book Festival

The 2010 Book Festival has just passed the halfway point, and already we've welcomed hundreds of weird, wonderful, eclectic, multi-talented authors. So when it comes to photoshoots, do you really expect them to just smile and wave? Here is a behind-the-scenes look at some of our photoshoots. From Alan Moore peering ominously from behind the wilderness of his hair to Jeanette Winterson throwing oranges at the photographers!