h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I have been enjoying Wordfest very much this weekend - including quite a lot of wine in the intervals between talks. Also had tea and scrumptious cake this afternoon (in the company of another MLer) at the new Cambridge branch of Patisserie Valerie. It's replaced Halford's cycle shop at the corner of Jesus Lane and seemed to be doing a roaring trade - probably lots of tourists. The cakes are listed on the menu in French, but unfortunately they seem to have forgotten to teach the waiting staff what they all are - our waiter was completely baffled by 'tarte aux fraises' and I had to tell him what it meant. When my companion asked him what his first language was, it turned out to be Spanish, so I was not impressed that he didn't recognise 'fraise' as 'fresa'.

Sessions I attended were: Hanif Kureishi, Jeremy Hardy, Literary Editors' panel (editors of the TLS, London Review of Books, Granta and the Cambridge Literary Review, chaired by Mary Beard), Politics & Literature panel (Prue Leith, Andrew O'Hagan, Blake Morrison and Lionel Shriver, chaired by Anne Garvey), debut novelists reading from their work (Emily Mackie, Amy Sackville & Max Schaeffer, chaired by Ali Smith).

Now chilling out at home briefly before going back for the Literary Quiz this evening - will report back in due course, but not expecting to do brilliantly, given that some of the above will be forming their own teams!

Well we didn't do too badly - came 8th out of 13 teams. We beat the team containing several of my colleagues, plus two published novelists, so that was quite satisfying!

Seriously impressed, Annie. Used to do a [v. difficult] general knowledge fund-raising quiz against teams from BBC regional news. They were very hard to beat on current affairs and politics but didn't know everything.

When I talked to my office colleague (the Schools Liaison Officer, a recent English graduate) about it, she said that she had only known the very few questions on 16th/17th century stuff, and that the novelists and their friend (a barrister) were completely sozzled from about halfway through, and as a result didn't contribute much!