The festival bubble…

Just back from the Rye Arts Festival, having given a talk called ‘Murder in a Seaside Town’. The festival is brilliantly run, and there are advertisements for it all over the picture-perfect streets of Rye. Seeing ones own mug posted alongside the likes of genuine household names, it’s possible to enjoy the brief illusion (or delusion) of celebrity. Then — it’s all over and back to real life. But it was fun while it lasted, and the Rye-ites are extremely loyal to their annual festival, willing to turn up in droves to listen to the ramblings of a crimewriter they might not previously have heard of… An excellent 24hrs on the south coast.