Diary – 9 March 2017

Oh dear. Usually writers who contribute to these diaries start with something like, ‘To Paris. To launch my novel at Shakespeare and Company.’ Well, I went instead to Penarth, which is a charming seaside suburb of Cardiff, and got a right royal welcome. I told the customers of Griffin Books (and Book-ish in Crickhowell and Cover to Cover in Mumbles) that I forbade them to buy books from Amazon. If they didn’t support their independent bookshops, they would lose them. And bookshops are vital for community health. Think what Daunt’s did for Marylebone High Street; started its transformation from a non-street to a destination street, no less.

Speaking of Daunt’s, do you realise that their business rates are about to double? Baroness Rebuck has asked in the House of Lords that independent bookshops be given special community status as far as business rates are concerned. With literacy levels at the shameful level that they are in this country — I’m banging another drum here, as a trustee of the National Literacy Trust — we need every scrap of assistance for reading to be put back on the cool agenda.

Goodness, Wales is gorgeous to look at. The landscape is sublime. I woke in Abergavenny to snow on the Black Mountains, interspersed with emerald green valleys — all that rain is not for nothing. The natural beauty only heightens a troubling question. Wales voted for Brexit, but every road, university and waterfront improvement scheme — and they are everywhere — is EU-funded. Excuse me? What were all those warmly welcoming people I met thinking of exactly?

Then Pershore, where I have never been before, and where I was interviewed by Linda Smith, the impressive Director of International Trade for Hereford and Worcester, in the community theatre (community again — of course…).