richard ford

it turns out he was just like old friend DR... (PD to some)...

i woke early, went over to beneath the trelick tower...checked out the lesson i'll be teaching in a few weeks, the man who's currently teaching it is off touring by then...

perfectly nice...

then home, found the sports writer which had been missing for a little while... got on my bike, went down to aldwych... bvsh house...

had a fine old time... asked my question.. which i think has a better chance of being aired on the show than last time's question... because it drew an interesting bit of conversation...

he signed my copy of the book, i had a glass of wine, played the thing i often end tunes with on the steinway grand in the room...

then once outside i bumped into him again, he was waiting for his car to take him to the hotel, i offered him a backy, but he said his prostate might give him trouble, he said my prostrate might start giving me trouble too...

i asked him how old he was, hoping he'd say he was 72... because i met the 18 year old me on the train down to brighton on friday night & it made me realise i was surely going to meet the 72 year old me as well fairly soon...

(18 years old (ish), half my age, doing mechanical engineering (mathy) @ university, plays piano, has a stud cat... (we had a female stud cat)... so the 72 year old i'm going to meet will have been doing roughly what i'm doing now... 36 years ago...)

he said no he was 66... oh well, nobody's perfect...

it also turns out that there's a 3rd book to the frank bascombe books (the sportswriter, independence day...) called the lay of the land, which he was writing just as i started reading him... back in 2002...

so that's very exciting... i've got independence day ahead of me, then the 3rd...

so i was totally high on life as i cycled away from bvsh house... went over to le fam pevo to deliver some books josiah wanted them to have (baby stuff)... had a gradually calming down evening with those lovely folks...

it turns out EQ is just about to pop... by friday apparently...

now i'm home & i've got my 1st huge tuesday since the holidays ahead of me...

oh & i met a nice woman on the tube... as you do... (in the 1st half of the day, the 2nd half all bikey)

x