I'm afraid this is going to have to be very brief as I need sleep: yesterday, arrived in UK, met Steve Jones and signed lots of bookplates for him for his Dark Delicacies signing of the new edition of the Mammoth Book of Vampires (or possibly the Vampire Book of Mammoths), then first meeting with Julian Crouch (designer/director), Vicky Featherstone (director) and Nick Powell (music), then up to Hourglass Films to see Mirrormask footage, and then a working dinner with Dave McKean, who was going to be shooting his pick-up shots at Pinewood today, so we went over the script for all the dialogue that had to be shot and got it all exactly right. Today was more Julian, Vicky and and Nick, which included a trip to look at scary doll's houses at the Museum of Childhood, and then we all went to see Kiki and Herb (not to mention Stephin Merritt and Claudia Gonson).
No time to answer questions, so here are a couple of quick things ---
I am almost certain you will have seen this or been sent it a million times, however, the Guardian has an article (http://www.guardian.co.uk/elsewhere/journalist/story/0,7792,1176710,00.html) about a town in California that fell for the dihydrogen monoxide joke and promptly banned it.
and this from John Innes...
Hi Neil,
Journal readers might be interested in the snapshot of book and CD recommendations that you gave me when we talked before your signing in London. Yours along with those for Alastair Campbell, Bill Bailey, Daniel Lanois, Gerry Anderson, Jamie Lee Curtis, Johnny Marr, Ravi Shankar and Tony Bennett (among many many more) can be found at....
http://www.wordmagazine.co.uk/wom/index.php
All the best,
John
and Ricky Gervais, Rob Brydon, Robert Plant etc etc... what an astonishing list of people...