An evening in Aberystwyth

Clarity and Reckoning in the Wild West.

Last week, with all the exuberance of a puppy dog, I made may way up to the seagull-shit capital of Wales (my car, after being parked by the castle for 15 hours, is still not speaking to me). Aberystwyth Waterstones, by way of the ever-generous Mike Parker, invited me to talk about Abandon All Hope. It was a bold streak in me that accepted the invite, seeing as that town is not given much love in the pages of the book itself.

As the day came closer, I began to question this bold streak. The lion’s den. In the early days of Wales Arts Review (and probably quite some time after the “early days”) we used to refer to our annual trips to the town for our Books Council funding review as “venturing behind enemy lines”. We would laugh, slap shoulders, the grins would slowly fade, and we would swallow hard and get in the car.