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Tuesday 15 October 2013

Cheltenham Literature Festival 2013

Me and Gill went to the Cheltenham Literature Festival on Saturday!
We got into Cheltenham around half 1 and headed to the festival sites.
The year before I managed to find a conker and this time I managed to find quite a few! I think we took about 6 each home with us? Which is lovely! I wish I had taken my camera to take photos of everything, but my back has really been killing the last couple of weeks, and in a fit of agony in the morning I managed to forget almost everything (including my keys which I'll get to later!)

We strolled between the sites browsing the Waterstones tents and stalls, and grabbing cake and tea in the cafe.

I bought The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman for the signing, because I've read it and I loved it, so thought that would be best! I wanted to buy Stardust, but with money the way it is I thought it would be a bit dumb to buy it again after I'd bought it on my Kobo!

I also fell for one of his children's books, called The Dangerous Alphabet or something? It's gorgeous! It's like a little alphabet poem with odd little lines and illustrations for each letter - it's beautiful! I fell for it but had no money, so Gill offered to buy it for me for Christmas, so that was amazing...I can't wait to read it to my kids when they make an appearance lol!
That's the nicest things I find, as a kid remembering those books that helped you learn. They had loads of them in the Children's tent. They had a Frog and Toad book! Loved them at school! They also had other loves like The Hungry Caterpillar, Brambly Hedge, The Jolly Postman etc...they had such lovely books in there! Also, one I had to take a photo of, called 'Norman, the slug with the silly shell'! How adorable! It was a doughnut!! <3 See below hehe.

It was so nice seeing so many children walking around with their heads buried in a book. I read or heard somewhere recently that alot of kids are embarrassed to be seen reading. That's so upsetting don't you think? Books encourage imagination, intelligence...just everything. You learn so much from immersing yourself in another world. It's just a shame. But I think the Kindle adverts and things like this festival really promote childhood reading. And to be honest, any caring, smart adult reads with their child from a young age anyway. Make of that what you will!

Anyway. So we saw the lovely Printmaking man from Stroud again this year, and he's so amazing, he loves his craft so much and it's so obvious! He hardly charges a thing for his work, it makes you want to plough him with money! I dug out a print I saw in a pile that had Humpty Dumpty on and because it has a smudge down the side he let me have it for free! He's brilliant :)

Then after a tea-stop we went along to the Town Hall for the Neil Gaiman talk! He was lovely, such a genuine guy! He read a part of his new children's book 'Fortunately, the Milk' and it sounds amazing! I really wish I had bought that one, it sounds like great fun hehe. He did a Q&A and then afterwards he went along to the Waterstones tent for a signing.
He was only doing dedications in his new book, and you could only have one other book signed, so I had The Graveyard Book signed, and Gill had her gorgeous black-edged book of Coraline and Other Stories signed! It took about an hour to an hour and a half to get to him, but that was fine, stood in the rain for half of it!

All in all, it was a great day! Just a shame I was in pain for much of it!

About half way home I remembered that I'd forgotten my keys - idiot! So I decided it was fine - just ring my mum, Gill would drop me wherever she was, I could get the keys off her, then get a bus home... This was 9pm - 11:20pm I finally got through to Kelvin's phone! Does no-one check their phones any more?!
Haha, so in that 2:20 hours, I rang my mum, Kelvin and Kelvin's house about 30-40 times! I was considering just getting a train to Newport just so I knew I'd have a bed!! Gill took me to a local pub where her friends Mike, Nick and Dave were having a drink, and we sat with them for an hour or so. Mike offered me a sofa at his house which I would have taken up! I knew that if my mum's car was at Kelvin's then they'd definitely be coming home at some point, so around 11 Gill and Mike took me to Kelvin's and the car was outside. So I said I'd wait there until they got back rather than put Mike out!
So I waited on the doorstep with my brolley and a little tickle from Kelvin's cat who ran back under the Range Rover unsurprisingly!
I finally got through on Kelvin's phone and they came running home lmao! That was when my phone died, so they ordered me a taxi home, 'cause although he has a spare room I wanted to charge my phone and let Kev know I was ok and not shivering in a bush somewhere lmao!
Got home about 12:15 in the end, which wasn't too bad I guess...but ugh! What a drama!

Anyway. That was an eventful day! Here are my bad photos :3



He is so adorable! <3



This tree was huge and amazing <3 It was fenced off all around because unfortunately it has a fungal infestation that's killing it from the inside out and it's collapsing in places, poor thing! It's over 200 years old! :C


These were hanging in a little cafe/shop area, cute!



Adored these lights outside the Box Office...I want them! <3



The talk room and Neil signing that girls book (she was a huge fan, almost burst into tears lol aww)



 
CONKERS :D <3


 
Ticket and signed book :3




Print's by that guy from Stroud <3 The end one is so cute! It's only slightly disturbing to read when I remember I call April Apple...but other than that it's awesome lmao! <3

1 comment:

  1. I was hoping you'd put up photos from this as i was wondering how it went! looks fun, hopefully I’ll have spare cash next time to come :) it must have been painful seeing all those lovely books and having no money.
    well that apple print is very saucy, I never know you felt that way about me.

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