Friday evening pleasures

We were at the Lit & Phil last night (for the third time this week) for what desperance describes as the Chaz'n'Val show. Actually, this was Val McDermid's show: she's the headline act, but more to the point, although Chaz was notionally interviewing her, she doesn't take much interviewing. Chaz had only to say "Talk about the book," and she did.

• Listening to Val talk is always a pleasure. She's intelligent, witty, entertaining, and just indiscreet enough. Her Fife accent is only a tiny part of this pleasure: but hearing Val say "murder" with relish and a great rolling of Rs, that alone is worth the price of admission.


• So, actually, is hearing Val say "Andrew Motion." Apparently Andrew Motion is writing a sequel to Treasure Island, and we all agreed that you'd make quite a long list of people who might be writing sequels to Treasure Island before you though of that one. (In fairness, it sounds less as if someone wanted to commission a sequel and ran down a list of possible accomplices authors, more as if this was something Andrew Motion really wanted to do. But still...)


• After which durham_rambler and I dragged desperance off to the Union Rooms, where they split a plate of nachos, I had a bowl of chips, and we share a bottle of surprisingly nice Rioja. We hadn't planned to order the Rioja, it was suspiciously cheap, but they were out of prety much everything else, and, as it happens, that was fine. It's always odd being out on a Friday night - the bright lights, the bouncers, the underdressed lasses, the noise - but fun, once in a while. And there was talk, and drink, and did I mention the chips?

And then on Saturday morning it was snowing, absent-mindedly, persistently, maddening as someone humming under their breath.