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on my deadpan delivery. Haven’t the heart to say that this is because bits of my body think it’s 5:00 a.m.
    Day 4
    Morning doing more media, many of whom I’d met before. One keen guy conducts entire interview with the mike of his recorder plugged into the auxiliary power socket. I didn’t like to point this out, because it would be impolite, so when he found out by himself we did the interview again.
    Noon: Small Mainstream Bookshop signing.
    A very small shop—250 square feet or so, I’d guess, but with a very mixed and friendly queue that took up more or less the whole ninety minutes allocated. This is one of those shops where the owners seem to know half the customers by name, and probably ring them up to find out how they are if they don’t see them for a month. Couldn’t fault it. Banana daiquiri supplied, entirely unasked.
    Straight on to: University of Bananabendin, Worralorrasurfa.
    A good crowd that took two hours to get through. Pet wallaby brought along to see me, and a fan presents me with a bag of dried bush tomatoes, of which I’m known to be rather fond.Oh, and here’s a banana daiquiri. And someone’s holding a baby kangaroo.
    Then a phone interview with a journalist doing a preview piece for the signing a few cities down the line. She’s never read a Discworld book, but nervously admits to sharing a home with someone who’s read them all. And reads out bits to her.
    On to Small Family Bookshop, for a talk outside in the rather nice back garden. Nibbles and, hey, a banananana dakry. Overhead, possums swoop from tree to tree, unless I mean wombats. Hard to get away from this shop because the owner is one of those lovely people who tries to give you his entire stock to take away, but I make it in the end.
    Day 5
    Damn—the cooling fan in the laptop has stopped working. Ring up local office of Wasabi Computers, who might be able to fix it tomorrow, except that tomorrow we’re somewhere else.… It might be a software problem, says the engineer, and there’s a fix on their bulletin board, but time is pressing.…
    10:00 a.m.: Bookshop in a Mall, Outinasuburba.
    Nice big queue and I eye the early arrivals carefully, espying a fan I’d met before. Explain problem. He nips off. An hour later he’s back, and slips me a disk with the freshly downloaded fix. I sign all his books. No worries.
    1:00 p.m.: Small Bookshop, Worralorrasurfa.
    Still enough fans around to take the queue to about seventy-five minutes. As a charity wheeze, they can have their picture taken with me. One lady has made me an entire box of origami turtles. No worries.
    Day 6
    8:10 a.m.: flight to Arthur.
    11:00 a.m.: Interview with Big Radio Journo (said to be first-divisionmedia). I was prepared to dislike the man but in fact we got on pretty well; he avoided the usual dumb questions and we had a decent twenty minutes. Sometimes it’s a bit embarrassing to be interviewed by a journalist who’s a fan because fan-type questions don’t work well on air (they say things like “So … is Rincewind coming back, then?” and you can hear a hundred thousand people looking at their radios and saying, “What the — is he on about?”).
    On to Small Yet Seriously Worthy Bookshop, Innasuburb.
    This shop is seriously behind all aspects of Discworld. They sell the Clarecraft models and had even imported the videos. Don’t know how many people there were, because everyone was keen and wanted to chat and a bunch of actors in costume from an upcoming production of
Wyrd Sisters
also turned up. A fun event; every tour should contain at least one. I was allowed to kiss Granny Weatherwax. Few people can say the same. Not without having a very croaky voice, at any rate.
    On to Big Specialist Bookshop.
    Big Forbidden Planet type of queue, heavy with carrier bags. One nice lady had brought a banana daiquiri in a thermos. Another one opens the violin case she’s carrying and it turns out to contain a polished scythe blade on a black velvet