Well what a month…
I’m exhausted. Barely days into
July, Her Ladyship delivered me to the Llangwm village pub, The Cottage Inn.
“They don’t let cars in Old Girl, sorry,” she says. “You’ll have to wait out here, while I do
the signings.” Excuse me… It’s my book… Shouldn’t I be doing the signings?
Four hours later, she totters out. “Sorry Old Girl, I sshhould have come out earlierer, but we were
so busy. We shigned fifty five
books. Not a bad shtart Huh? I have to leave you here now; I’m a bit
tiddly. One too many Slippy
Nipples?” Bit tiddly indeed. One too many Slippy Nipples? More like five too many, if you ask me. She’s what you humans call - ‘Pissed!’ “Now don’t forget we have to go to Cardiff
tomorrow for your Radio Wales appearance.”
She says in passing as she totters home
Hmmph, I’ll be left in the BBC car park, while she goes on
and on, not allowing the interviewer get a word in edgeways.
The following morning, a rather tender Ladyship
arrived. She’s walking with a tentative
step. “Morning Old Girl, we’ve got to
get up to Cardiff today and they’ve forecast heavy rain. Not looking forwards to the M4 to be
honest.”
I wasn’t surprised, it was a veritable nightmare. Heavy rain all the way and the spray from
the passing lorries left me in a complete mess. I was so relieved when we reached our destination. Her Ladyship checked her hair and make
up. I couldn’t understand why, because
she was going on the radio. “Well you
never know Old Girl, they might want to put us on the telly.” In this weather? She has to be joking.
An hour later, she was out again, with a rather severe
looking producer. I reckoned that she
had messed up the interview and after a brief goodbye; Her Ladyship clambers in
and starts me up.
I don’t think I did that well Old Girl. My mouth seemed to be at least five
sentences ahead of my brain. At one
point I found myself talking about my Haemorrhoids…” Oh my God, I hear enough about them and now the whole world
knows… “And then I used the word ‘bloody’
while I was talking about you…” Oh
thank you very much for that… “Let’s
get to our overnight stop.”
The next day we were on our way home. But first, Her Ladyship needed to take me to
see a TV production company. I can’t
think why, but they were talking something about doing a TV version of my
book. It was still raining, but not
nearly as bad as yesterday and we got home later that day, soaked to the skin.
Two days later we were off on another book signing at the
Victoria Book Shop in Haverfordwest. At
least the sun was out and Madam obviously didn’t expect rain, because she took
my hood down. The result was that
passers by kept getting in and out of me taking photos of themselves. The worst were the young children, who
refused to let go of their ice creams.
The result was an awful mess and a very sticky steering wheel while Her
Ladyship smiled on.
“Oooh you are a bit of a mess,” said Her Ladyship as she
packed me up to go home. “Urgh, what is
that on your steering wheel? We’ll need
to give you a good clean when we get home.”
We’ve had several more signings and at one, a festival near
Llanelli when Her Ladyship chose to camp.
She managed to collapse a portable toilet while she was sitting on
it. But more of that next time…
