More reflections on pointy ears, and some links to poems

Today at Elf Festival there were lots more people in leather jackets and fewer maidens with flowing gowns and pointy ears, but it was still fun -- actually I enjoyed it more than yesterday: at one reading I did "Instructions" and "Boys and Girls Together", my two fairytale poems, because I could find them from the web and print them out on the hotel nook computer, and now, looking at the Endicott coffee house, where I got them, I realise I could have read "Locks" as well... When I got to the end of "Instructions" the wind came up and howled and rattled the tent, and it felt quite marvellous. Managed to do two day's worth of question and answer sessions, and never repeat myself once.

"If teenage girls put on elf ears," I said today, back in the VIP room, pondering the unfairness of it all, "no matter how gawky they think of themselves in real life, they become beautiful. Whereas if I put on elf ears, I would look like a dissipated Vulcan."

And everyone looked at me and mentally sized me up for elf ears, and agreed.

Need to buy a belt tomorrow in the airport. The good thing about the meningitis was it meant that over February and March I lost about 15 pounds. But now none of my trousers fit around the waist, and I spent this weekend hitching them up, and hitching them up, and hitching them up, like a six-year old.

Lots of people wanted things signed but the lines were too long to do everyone in the half-hour segments they gave me. If you were one of the unlucky ones, I'll be in Brussels on the 20th of May, signing at Le Tropisme.