The trip

Reasons my (5 year old) son found for me NOT to go on the trip I've just been on, to the Hay Literary Festival where I was due to give a workshop on how to write a thriller, and take part in an event with two other authors:
1. Everyone in my class knows how to write a story. If the people coming to see you don't know, they should have listened properly at school.
2. Wales is very cold mummy. Everyone knows that.
3. It's a bank holiday mummy. That means you're not allowed to work.
It was hard to argue with really - his reasons were pretty solid. But go I did. And I'm so pleased I did - I met some great people, met a whole bunch of enthusiastic and talented teenagers, took part in one of the best literary festivals we have in this country.
But there was no mobile phone reception. Like, NONE. I'd promised to call at 6.30pm to read my children a story over the phone. I promised to check in, sending pictures of things I thought they'd like. And I couldn't do it. Like really, could not do it. That's rural Wales for you. I got into a panic, I tried borrowing my publicist's phone, but her signal was dead, too. I was signing books, meeting lovely people who had listened to me talk and then actually bought my book, and all I could think about was my children, waiting for me to call, their little faces so full of disappointment when I didn't... Then, finally, the signing was over and I walked and walked, over a mile from the festival, in the pouring rain, until I found a signal. And what did I discover? That my kids had forgotten all about the promise, gone to bed no problem, with none of the sense of betrayal, of broken promises that I'd been killing myself with.
The moral of the tale? The guilt I beat myself up with is totally stupid and I should just relax and enjoy myself.
And only go places with good mobile reception...