I was expecting a bedraggled Polly to turn up, but instead
The Event itself is already well described elsewhere. I thought it went very well, and managed to stay dry eyed until Dave Devereux's account of being with Diana at the end of her life - but there was plenty of laughter too, and I think Diana was approached from enough angles that we managed by a process of - not triangulation, perhaps, but polygonization? - to see her before us, if in a fitful way like a Star Wars hologram. It was the kind of event where one thought, "I wish Diana could see this - she'd really enjoy it!"
In the interval and afterwards, I met more old friends, including a student whom I didn't recognize because she was in the wrong context - agh! - and the indefatigable and generous Jessica Yates, whom I never see but she gives me some carefully-selected photocopies from her bag. Blackwells had taken up position in the crypt, and were selling advance copies of Reflections, which looks a handsome volume. I hear that David Fickling, its publisher, was also somewhere about, but I managed to miss him.
Speakers, partners and dogsbodies went to Diana's house for a bite to eat afterwards, and I did a bit of ferrying of both people and unsold books (giving directions to Diana's house is like playing three-dimensional chess: it's generally easier to give the person a piggy-back). This occasioned my meeting the charming Megan Whalen Turner, who had come over with
Later that afternoon I took
Altogether, an excellent weekend.