AL Kennedy on the Ullapool Book Festival. Oh. And a gannet…

Just in case you thought we were alone in the world in raving about the Ullapool Book Festival … have a read of what AL Kennedy said about it last Friday in The Guardian book blog:

“Meanwhile and on an also not-unrelated topic: Ullapool – a great wee festival all the way up in the far(ish) North – next stop, Isle Martin and the Summer Isles – with the listeningest audiences I’ve ever met. A weekend of talk and thought and a genuine sense of one long conversation/meditation being conducted over the course of consecutive events. The organisers looked after everyone extremely well with friendly attention to detail in a remarkable location. In that kind of environment writers can really get to know each other, and their audiences, and exchange ideas. (Most of us were too old or too married to exchange anything else.) Everyone there got to throw ideas around and appreciate a genuinely resourceful and imaginative community. And our final conclusion as a sunny Sunday eased its way towards lunch? That none of what we do would be worth doing or would really mean much without love.

Dreadful, I know – but we’d got all relaxed and unparanoid and truthful and there it was: love. At which point I have to cough a lot and think about death to counteract any disturbing or embarrassing sensations of wellbeing.

Death was, of course, present in Ullapool – as it is everywhere. I made an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to rescue an unwell gannet there. Gannets, it turns out, are remarkably heavy birds and can be tetchy. I ended up simply having the thing die in my arms as I carried it towards the Wildlife Rescue Centre. (And please don’t write in: I was advised to try carrying it, had covered its head, had not chased it about … it was just a very poorly gannet.) I have since received a surprisingly high number of gannet emails, gannet postcards and gannet-related items. Obviously, the idea of a gannet-bearing novelist catches the imagination, somehow. I can only say that divesting oneself of a large dead, staring-eyed, rapidly stiffening gannet at the edge of a small and inquisitive town is something I would not necessarily wish upon you. Onwards.”

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2009/may/29/al-kennedy-literary-festivals

Sharon