I thought of writing a post Sunday, tried to write it yesterday and but couldn’t finish until today. It might be the chronic fatigue I was diagnosed with in November. Or it might be it was just Monday Horribilis yesterday. Monday’s are universally the worst day of the week, but a Monday after being offwork for  a week, and a Monday the day after England’s latest capitulation – yep, definitely, the Monday Horribilisest (easier to write than say) of them all.

Yes, I was away last week when I wouldn’t normally have been. A comedy of errors to say the least. A four day cruise with one stop in Amsterdam which I had booked to possibly meet a Wordle Leaguer over from Australia. I booked it before their confirmation because prices kept rising and because I knew from experience I could transfer the cost to a future cruise if I had to cancel. Wrong! My Aussie friend had to cut Amsterdam and I was not able to transfer to a future cruise – that was only a COVID thing. I had to go or lose the money.

Ergo, I was in the unique position – along with my fellow passengers – of being docked in Amsterdam watching England play the Netherlands. Some intrepid passengers went ashore to watch it. Not for me, but then I had decided I was not getting off the boat anyway – so much so I had not even brought any Euros with me. First time though I had to take an umbrella on holiday.

The reason I mention all this is because there is the slightest possibility of a change of my book sales dynamic. On the quoits court, the afternoon the sun came out, I met a couple of 18 year old girls. They might not want me bandying their names about on here so let us just use random letters M and H. I turned up at the quoits competition and other than the host there was M and H and an older lady who I took to be their mother. We played one game and then went our different ways. It was only the next day when I bumped into them again at the late night quiz that I discovered the woman had not been their mother. They were sailing together as a pre-degree holiday, pending results, M was off to Oxford and H to take a food technician degree whilst also working a job. It turns out we had the Trafford Centre in common. I have been there a few times when back in Manchester and although they do not live there they had been there too. Would you believe they had a school trip to the Trafford Centre?

The late night quiz is called the continuous quiz because in the main the same teams play every night and the team that won the night before starts on minus 1 point the next night. We were in a team of five that first night, which was the second of the continuous quiz because I had missed the first watching England. We agreed to be there the next night for the final quiz although as it happened I bumped into M and H at an earlier quiz on that Friday in which we did abysmal on 90’s music, followed by a individual quick fire quiz in which I did abysmal and finally they watched me get 3 numbers off winning the bingo jackpot. It was during this time that M was doing a cryptic crossword book. I commented that I did a lot of puzzles myself but could not get my head around cryptic ones, although I had, I mentioned, just published a novel about a cryptic puzzler. M expressed an interest and as luck would have it I had a copy on board, so I agreed to bring it to the late quiz.

As it happens I had copies of The Puzzle, Rewind, Once Upon A Week, Doctor Oh No and The Whole in One, so I turned up with them all. M was interested in The Puzzle and H in Rewind. M said she was a phenomenally fast reader and could read my book in a night. She said she would give it back to me the next day. Unfortunately, that would be tricky because I was getting off the boat as soon as it docked. Instead, I gave them the two books – which were my personal copies, but I could easily buy them again. They asked for them signed so I did that, and they wanted a photo with me. Fame at last. Seriously though, I never thought of a younger readership – except for Once Upon A Week of course – and maybe my readership dynamic might change. At least it has increased by two.

I don’t know if they will leave a review, but I hope they do because I will be interested to see what they think. We didn’t swap contact details – I did not think about feedback until later – and whilst I did tell them I had a website I have just found out that the Contact Me form is not working and neither it seems is Comment to a post. Or at least the test messages I sent did not get through. A query for my computer guy.

Here’s hoping they like what they read because the last time I signed dedicated copies was to Richard Osman and Alexander Armstrong and anyone who reads my blogs knows that nothing happened from that.

Anyway, even if they do not leave a review, they were very nice people and I wish them well in their academic endeavours and future life and careers.