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We celebrated First Story with a gala evening at Holland Park school. Four of the children who were involved in producing anthologies last year read. To my immense pride Edward, my protégé was among the four; his laid back ease on stage, and his heartfelt, honest story made me proud and also sad that his parents couldn’t be there and nor was anyone from the school present. He was among his peers, many of whom he had met and befriended on the Arvon Course which was his prize from First Story as one of the most promising voices in my writing group, but he was not witnessed by anyone from his own life, and that was a real shame.

Reading aloud on a stage is exposing, reading what you have written, when what you have written comes from your heart, is more than exposing, it is like being on a roller coaster – exciting, terrifying, exhilarating, thrilling and intolerable all at once. It is not for the faint hearted and not all writers are any good at it. But increasingly as attending literary festivals appears to be taking over from reading books as the public’s preferred method for absorbing literature, all writers have to do it.

Sometimes it is to an audience of chairs. I once read to five hundred empty chairs. I was led into the auditorium by a stout blonde woman who must have been an executioner in a previous existence as her capacity for empathy was non existent and she didn’t tell me no one had come. At first the glare of the lights towards me made it impossible for me to see into the gloom of the room, but as my eyes adjusted I saw the hideous sight and I wondered if I might just decompose into a blob of embarrassment ( I think the physical personification of embarrassment is that stuff called SLIME beloved of school children especially my daughter). Unfortunately there were three people in the audience, so there were witnesses to my ordeal, and although they were kind, they could not fill the empty chairs. Having lived through that vile hour of my life hasn’t made me a better person, but it has made me appreciate anyone who gets up and performs to entertain others.

In a similar vein, I was sorry to miss Ivo Graham, the 19 year old comedian stand up bravely at the 99 comedy club in Leicester square last week. With the peculiar blend of charisma and talent that makes a stand up routine work, he held his audience on a night when the big cats of comedy like Alan Carr were also airing their new material. Its easy to forget how excellent live comedy can be, as the true laughs tend to sink beneath so much rubbish, but when it works there is nothing like it.

As far as my own live performances go, this week they will be confined to an evenings cooking demonstration conducted by telephone to my son who is in his second week at university. So far he has made chicken noodles with peanut sauce via the phone, and a re-arrangement of the traditional tomato sauce for pasta. After standing passively in the kitchen watching me cook for years he has many of the techniques at his finger tips but the execution tends to elude him. He cannot get over the fact that if he wants to eat he has to do it all himself, over and over again. “And I did it yesterday,” he marvels. I am proud of him, he is rising to the challenge alright. Any phone recipes gratefully received – it is harder than I thought to explain how and when to add ingredients to a hung over, hungry student with a mental picture of his Wagamama favourite Chicken Katsu Curry blinding his vision.

Answering a barrage of pleas for book recommendations – this week I stayed up til 2 last night reading "Miss Hargreaves" by Frank Baker. Published by Bloomsbury, Norman gets carried away with a fantasy game and creates his very own human being. Miss Hargreaves herself reminds me of Signora Castefiori from Herge’s "Tin Tin" and of the various Aunts in PG Wodehouse’s Blandings Castle novels.
She would make a very good stand up performer herself.