The surreal side to this writing game

Seventeen (or so) years ago a very lovely author lady called Anne Dunlop walked into a classroom at Thornhill College and spoke to a group of 15 and 16 year olds about writing.
She led our writers' workshop for weeks and sat through a lot of very painful teenage prose - most of it from me.
I read her books (The Pineapple Tart trilogy) and thought she was perhaps the coolest person on the planet on account of her mad red curly hair and fantastic gold shoes. And she wrote about grown up things and teenage love affairs and all the sorts of things 15 and 16 year old girls aspire too.
When she finished the course she signed my copies of her book and wished me more confidence with my writing.
And when I did my first ever work experience at the local rag she was the first person I did a proper interview with. I still remember the headline "Anne has the Write Stuff" (inspired or what?).

So all those years passed and I became a writer myself and struck up a friendship with fellow Poolbeg author Sharon Owens who had in turn struck up a friendship with Anne - who had just recently returned to writing after a 10 year sojourn to Bahrain and Africa and all sorts of exciting places where she married a very lovely man called Nick and had four gorgeous children.

Anne and I shared a few emails and yesterday I found myself, along with Sharon and her lovely family, at Anne's house in Co. Derry enjoying vegetarian lasagne and chatting about everything from books to birth.

And all I could think was this is the lady who had the nice gold shoes who wrote about shifting and f**k me knickers and who didn't run from the room when I wrote the most godawful shite about Bob Monkhouse (Seriously... I cringe at the very memory) and I'm in her house, with her family and the lovely bestselling author Sharon Owens having the craic.

And then she asked me to sign a copy of Rainy Days and Tuesdays... which was too weird, and too wonderful for words.