In desperate search of some culture.

Despite all odds we (friend, Sanders et moi) made it into Aberdeen to the Aberdeen Wordfest to hear Margaret Atwood speak. Friend has been before and promised us marquees with interesting displays, which I had translated into beer, wine and strawberries, prime Scottish beef burgers, and Happenings - perhaps people reading their poetry aloud, theatre pieces, quartets playing soothing classical wallpaper music, jazz would have been nice too, and above all lots of books to pore over.

Nothing. The only books were those by the authors invited to speak which could be signed after the talks, a good enough idea but the prices - well, Amazon was too competitive. For Sandy I had ordered a ticket to a presentation called 'Car Boot Science' during which half-hour he learned the useful trick of getting a boiled egg into a coke bottle. No suggestions on how to get it out.

It was the last day of the fest but even so we were very underwhelmed by the flat atmosphere that we had travelled 2 hours by (noisy) train to attend. No marquees, only the Uni Halls (nice enough it has to be said, but wet grey granite doesn't cheer, and there is always that feeling of heavy Calvinistic rectitude to architecture this end of the world). Worse still - bad food. Not just fast food and sandwiches, they had tried with two sorts of stew, they just hadn't succeed. it wasn't tasty and gave me indigestion.

Nothing at all for almost-teenagers - not even books! The science thingy was aimed at much younger children. It's lucky Sandy is such an adaptable child and not the fussy easily bored sort. We had to leave him sitting around watching pigeons (later playing balls wih some littl'uns) whilst we went to our talk.

Listening to MA did make the trip worth while, although there again I was irritated by the inept 'interviewer.' MA is a witty woman and would have been better able to talk alone IMO instead of being asked about the feminist movement in the '70's - which questions seemed to bore her as much as they did me. We did hear a little of what it is to be a famous author and what effect growing up in Canada has had on her writing The comparison wth Scotland had t be drawn of course and her avowed liking for Scotland. She said that both countries were good largely (it seems) because Canada, like Scotland, provides so many good ways to kill off ones characters. Lots of opportunity for drowning in rivers, lochs and seas , cliffs to fall off, mountains and forests to get lost amongst with the possibility of dying of exposure. Canada has bears too of course - one up over this little land, although there is talk of bringing back the wolves. 'In East Anglia there is only mud.' She was talking, it turned out, about archetypal, allegorical ways to kill them off rather than the prosaic car accident which can happen anywhere and isn't in itself of much literary merit.

She also said that the writer you talk to today is not the same as the writer who wrote the book you read because she wrote it at least 2 years ago and has moved on. After that, rather confusingly, she also declared the modernist view 'there is no author' is nonsense and that an author's intent is the one that counts, not any interpretation superimposed by the reader.

That's about all I remember just now. Gotta go as usual. G'son gets his mum back today. He was flatteringly sorry to not be staying here and I must say he is a joy to have around.

Later: In retrospect and after a quiet evening to myself I expect the day was made worse by asthma and worry about Sandy being bored. Still, I don't think the Uni had exactly pulled out all the stops. The lacture hall the talk was held in was huge, holds 600 and was packed to the gunwhales. At £6 a ticket for this one talk alone they must have made some sort of a profit. We weren't expecting Hay-on-Wye, just a bit more enthusiasm.