Then I waved goodbye to my little bean, left in the very capable
hands of her Mary Poppins of a Grandma and skipped off to the London Book Fair
for a day of *actual* work.
I’ll be honest, it wasn’t an overwhelming success. The tube
was ghastly for a start. I forgot quite how depressingly bleary everyone is on
rainy mornings. But once there, I immersed myself in all things booky which raised my spirits and kept my mind off the shenanigans I was missing out on at
home.
In between meetings I managed to rush off (well, to be fair,
it was more like tottering given my lack of practice walking in heels) to some
very interesting seminars. I managed to catch an interview with the very
hilarious Caitlin Moran, a talk on optimising social media, and a demonstration
of the opportunities available in children’s ebooks.
Unfortunately the demo was
very technical in nature and had to be delayed because (I am not making this
up) the right cable could not be found. Hmm… Still, it was so interesting that
I wanted to find out more and searched out the company’s stand where I
persuaded the CEO to give me a full demonstration. It was very impressive. The company
will take a current ebook and either follow your directions on where to make
them interactive, or make their own suggestions (children touch the lights in
pictures and they switch on etc). One of the examples that raised my eyebrows was
an illustration of a messy room with various items strewn everywhere. By
clicking on the various items and moving them towards the cupboard or drawers, your
child can ‘tidy up’ the room. Now, I’m all for the value of educational games,
but surely physically tidying the room
would be more productive? Just saying.
It was just about this time that my husband received a phone
call. Apparently the GPS in Mary Poppins’ umbrella had stopped working and
Grandma and Little Bean were lost. Neither of them happened to mention this
little episode to me when I rang for welfare checks during the day. Another
example of grandparents and grandchildren being in cahoots.
Anyway, they managed to get home in one piece. Much later so
did I – with sore feet from shoes and exhausted brain from playing with
grown-ups all day. Tomorrow, round two…
