conference, part 3

Current work: admin
Listening to: David Coverdale
Reading: Sharon Penman, The Sunne in Splendour

Sunday, we started with a roundup of the PR activity this year from Catherine Jones (shown here flogging RNA cards!) et al.

The amount of coverage we got for the Awards was stunning. Lots of exciting stuff planned for the rest of the year, including plans for the RNA’s 50 year anniversary in 2010. Any RNA members reading this, remember to send cuttings to Liz Bailey and any bright ideas for PR: the press responds really well to ‘fun’ items.

Then it was a truly hilarious talk by Jane Wenham Jones (sorry, I was laughing too much to take a picture). Made me want to go and read her novels.

And then Kate Walker on websites – lots of food for thought there too.

And then it was my talk on local history for novelists. Now, I was worried that I was going to be teaching people to suck eggs… but people seemed to enjoy it. At least, they came up to me afterwards and said I’d started off ideas or they completely understood why I spend my spare time fossicking around ruins and churches and museums and in the archives. And although I’d printed out my notes, I didn’t refer to them that much. Because I told stories, showing how local history can inspire you and how you end up going off on a tangent. (Thank you, lovely Fiona Harper, for taking the pics.)

This is me telling my story about the only funerary wax effigy outside Westminster Abbey and how I’d had this bright idea and tried it out on my middle research assistant… (Later, when he looked through my slides, he looked at me. ‘Mum. You didn’t tell them.’ Yes, honey, and they would all have done exactly the same…)

Then it was lunch and final goodbyes. I was travelling home with my friend Kate Jackson Bedford, so it was lovely to have company (and also a map-reader until we reached the other side of the M25, when I knew where I was going). Then we discovered the junction from the A11 to the M11 was closed, so we went back on the A12 instead.

Had a fab time away, but it was good to be home. And now I have some catching-up to do.