Poisson d'Avril, and other interesting dishes

Just woke up in my own bed back in America (which was a good thing after three weeks in hotel rooms), following a night of strange and exhausted dreams, which was, if nothing else, entertaining -- in one of them I dreamed that I died (in a tiny, suburban front garden), one of them was about working with Lenny Henry on a new TV series while he explained his theory of finding a producer to me, and how we didn't want someone competent and unflappable, what we wanted was someone who really didn't want the job and would go "omigodwhymewhymeargh!!!" when we told him he was now the producer. And then, just before waking there was the extremely odd dream in which I was given the job of carrying the late Queen Mother to a charity function, and I got the wrong house (it belonged to some mafia people, who were all obsessed with electric typewriters), and staggered around it looking for the charity dinner while trying to make interesting conversation with the very old dead lady I was carrying who only wanted to talk about long forgotten elderly palace servants...

Hi Neil,Just googled STONKER, a word I'd never heard before. And you may want to may want to clear up the difference between the Australian version and the British one. I'm sure you didn't mean "to baffle completely" as part of your review of Wolves. But...stonker
[Austral] 1) to hit hard: knock unconcious2) to baffle completely: outwit, foil Noun: stonker
Usage: Brit Something very large, powerful or severe "I lost 3 days of my holiday due to a real stonker of a hangover" Something very good" a real stonker... bloody great" Derived forms: stonkers Thanks, Ned Reid

Thanks, Ned.

Today, of course, is Edible Books Day -- see http://books2eat.com/ for details. What is Books2Eat? The International Edible Book Festival is a yearly event that takes place on April 1 throughout the world. This event unites bibliophiles, book artists and food lovers to celebrate the ingestion of culture and its fulfilling nourishment. Participants create edible books that are exhibited, documented then consumed.

At http://books2eat.com/books2eat2006.html they list the various festivals and parties taking place around the world celebrating this, today and tomorrow. Which is something I was reminded of by all the messages over the last week saying, for example,

Hi Neil.I realize your fans can be a little eccentric (and ok, maybe I could be lumped into that category, myself), but have you seen this guy's blog? http://glassman.typepad.com/
His goal is a little, um, odd. From the first post:"Hello, the Internet. My name is Howard Glassman. I am fifty-eight years old, soon to be fifty-nine, and I am going to digest the compleat works of Neil Gaiman. By "compleat works," I mean "everything the man has ever published, be it comics, essays, poetry, or prose." By "digest," I mean "pass through my alimentary canal." I will start eating tomorrow morning at breakfast, with Coraline."
How do you feel about this? Also, do you have any favorite recipe suggestions?-Anson

I just worry vaguely about someone needing to eat the things that are currently only on the hard disk, that I'll come downstairs one day to see my laptop broken open and stuffed with fennel and herring.

Susan Henderson goes and finds out more about Mr Glassman and his quest, and interviews him at her Publishers Marketplace blog http://www.publishersmarketplace.com/members/SusanHenderson/ (the archive entry is here).

And a favourite recipe suggestion? Not sure. But I do think that Anansi Boys should be prepared Caribbean style...

Neil,Very sorry to bother you with a very odd question, but someone recently asked me, as a bit of an Avengers buff, what the Marvel character Sersi was up to. I replied that I hadn't seen her in a comic since the early days of Kurt Busiek's Avengers, but that she might possibly turn up in some capacity in your Eternals thingie. So, um, does she?

Well, somebody with her name does. But she's a party organiser in New York, who apparently knows nothing about the Avengers or about living forever...

....

I answered many questions for the Guardian a few months ago, and a selection of them are up here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/story/0,,1742887,00.html

(the word roody was broody when I wrote it.) I may post the rest of the questions and answers, the ones they didn't use, up here next week...