Our Weekend at the Edinburgh Festival

When Louisa Symington of Penguin phoned to tell me our Reading Group had won their Book Group Prize, I was completely surprised and absolutely delighted.These sentiments were reflected by the other members, when I phoned to tell them of our good fortune. Ian, my co-founder, who couldn’t share the Edinburgh-experience part of the prize without abandoning his family, driverless, in the middle of France, was equally delighted to have won.

There are currently ten, hardcore, members and I thought it might be difficult finding eight of us who could all make a weekend in August. I wondered who we could draught in, at short notice. Fortunately, before my fantasies ran away with me, it became apparent that eight of us could manage the dates.

Penguin wanted a photo of all of us, not just the eight who’d be in Edinburgh, so we invited Julie Duffy and Genevieve Pegg to our next meeting. We wanted to have a celebration, including the two who couldn’t come to Edinburgh, so, unusually, we had some food and drink at that meeting. We were glad of the drink, as we were all quite nervous at having real book people at our humble reading group. However, Genevieve and Julie were not at all intimidating and the evening went pretty well. We discussed ‘Invisible Man’ by Ralph Ellison.

The eight of us met Julie again at Heathrow on Saturday for a lunchtime flight to Edinburgh. With her this time was Kate Jones, who started the website for reading groups at Penguin.

Having been whisked to our lovely hotel by taxi, we were left to our own devices for the afternoon. We all went out together to climb a hill and then split up into smaller groups to follow our fancy, with an arrangement to meet up to hear Ariel Dorfman at 8 o’clock.

Edinburgh was buzzing. Along The Royal Mile there were people, some in costume, handing out fliers for various shows. There were also street performers of a very high calibre, stalls selling interesting ‘objets’ and throngs of happy festival-goers. The daughter of one of our members was stage-managing a play on the fringe. She and I went to swell the audience (not by too high a percentage, actually). It was very good. Performed in an extremely unusual way, the four members of the cast all played the central character, one at a time, seamlessly and the other parts as well. Amazing. The Book Festival, in Charlotte Square, seemed a haven of tranquillity after The Royal Mile. This was probably because by the time the two of us arrived everyone was already in the Main Tent. We just made it in time.

Ariel Dorfman spoke very movingly of ‘The Disappeared’ of his native Chile, interspersing his lecture with poems, one of which had its premiere in English at the event.

On Sunday the really exciting part of our prize weekend started with lunch in the restaurant of a lovely hotel, in the company of a real-live author. The food was delicious and Ali Smith an absolute delight. She was interested in us and what we’d read and, though she lost points for not having heard of ‘A Glastonbury Romance’ (see our entry for Penguin Book Group Award) she had read several of the books we had chosen recently. She spoke eloquently about them and just had time to recommend something, before being whisked off to prepare for ‘Desert Island Books’.

The book Ali recommended is ‘Fishing for Amber’ by Kyrie Carson. She said she’d like to come to the meeting at which we discuss it, which is tremendously exciting. After lunch we rushed back to Charlotte Square for Ali’s event, in the Main Tent. The other authors there were Val McDermid and Kate Atkinson. The Roy Plumley/Sue Lawley part was taken by Jackie McGlone. She invited each author in turn to choose, first, the children’s book, then the adult’s she would take to a desert island. The answers were interesting and often amusing. Questions from the audience included one on which non-fiction work they’d take.

Ali had been quite nervous beforehand, but it went very well and at the end she introduced ‘Ealing Samaritans Reading Group’ as winners of the Penguin Book Group Award. She said some very nice things about us and then Kate Jones stood up and said more nice things. A proportion of them were true. All too soon we had to leave for the airport. Our flight was delayed by over an hour, but nobody minded, as it prolonged our wonderful weekend. Of course, we all spent the waiting time reading. There were a lot of copies of ‘The Whole Story and Other Stories’ by Ali Smith in evidence. After our surprise at winning and the suspense of waiting for our prize weekend, it managed to exceed expectations and we flew home at well over 35,000 feet. Thank you Penguin.