merci encore

I have so many other belated thank-you's to say at the moment that I don't really know where to begin. But here goes. I'd like to thank everyone who came to the Waterstones High Street Kensington event recently. The number of books sold that night was enough to propel Toute Allure to no 4 in the bestseller chart.

It was such a delight to see old friends and meet so many readers in the flesh, having corresponded by email or via my blog. I'd particularly like to thank the staff of Waterstones, and in particular their fiction buyer and bookseller extraordinaire Patti Huisse, who is the reason I was there giving a talk in the first place.

A big thank-you also to the RAC who were utterly brilliant when I locked my keys and Biff in the car, just as we should have been setting out to Portsmouth for the ferry. It wasn't a particularly hot day but because of Biff, the RAC put me down as a 'priority' case (and probably a nut case too, such was my panic on the phone at having locked him in the car.) Still, they calmly assured me that they would be there within forty minutes and even if they couldn't unlock the door of my ancient Golf they would get him out somehow.

In the event I cancelled the call-out as a man working on a house nearby came to my aid, managing to open the door with a bent coat hanger, while Biff sat in the driver's seat, looking nonplussed by the small crowd that had gathered round to watch. On that note, I'd also like to thank Tom who took charge of the situation and let me phone the RAC from his security lodge. (A signed copy of Toute Allure now sits on his shelf alongside autographed works by local residents, JK Rowling and Piers Morgan.)

And yes, of course, we missed the ferry. So I took one to Cherbourg instead, which turned out to be a better as it was a fast ferry and took just three hours as opposed to the usual six.