Good morning!

I feel joyous - buoyant - alive! I have just spent two wonderful days in Dublin promoting the paperback of Rainy Days and Tuesdays (out now folks) and it was a brilliant experience. (Apart from the bus to Dublin, which was not brilliant and I thought I might boke a couple of times. Seriously...only the king size bar of Green & Blacks secreted in my bag could assuage the nausea).

I arrived after two on Wednesday at Bewley's Hotel where I set about getting myself ready for an interview with Sue Leonard from the Indo. We were going to meet in the Merrion Hotel which is a very fancy place where people call you 'madam' and serve tea in china cups and proper cucumber sandwiches. I was looking forward to the sheer poshness of it all.

I had a shower - it was blissful - one of those amazing power showers that shoot out an environmentally unfriendly 3000 litres of water per second. It was so strong that when I stepped out I had to check the drains in case my nipples had been washed off in process.

I was just getting myself gorgeous when Sue phoned to cancel our meeting because her daughter was in labour. That was officially the best excuse I had ever heard! So while fancy tea in trhe Merrion was off I got to luxuriate in the hotel room for a couple of hours before getting dressed, walking down to the lobby and drinking a nice West Coast Cooler (od school stylee) reading my book and waiting for the Lovely Niamh from Poolbeg to pick me up.

I then met with Paula (Poolbeg boss lady) and Sarah (Poolbeg marketing lady) for dinner in a gorgeous Italian restaurant in Malahide. The food was gorgeous, and the wine was cracker. And we had mad craic and I got to talk over all my writerly insecurities in a supportive and funny environment. I also heard the funniest ever stories about platform wellie boots and Paula's twin girls, but I'll keep schtoom! I didn't once get that "Shite, what the hell am I going to say" feeling which was refreshing. I do however hope that because of the niceness of the wine I didn't talk a lot of horlicks.

The following morning (head only mildly sore) I received a text from Sue Leonard to say she was now a proud granny to the beautifully named Daisy Sofia. Coupled with the Irish sunshine, that was a great start to the day. I was picked up by the lovely Niamh in her very cool car which has not a trace of a Wotsit rammed into any surface and we did the rounds signing books, stopping for coffee, signing for books, stopping for lunch and getting my photo taken at St . Stephen's Green for Sue's Indo article.

We just had a great laugh and a good gossip and I'm filled with enthusiasm for what lies ahead.