Blue Spruce nominee and author supreme Linda Bailey was in Brantford and Paris yesterday, doing readings at both libraries. I have been looking forward to meeting Linda in person for a long time so it was a delight to drive her around for the day. It was also neat to be with another author for a whole day. It can get scary though. Linda’s sense of direction is as abysmal as mine so there were many times when we lost the car in the parking lot, turned the wrong way out of the bathroom, and so on. Thank goodness for the GPS in my car.
It was a pleasure to watch Linda present at the Brant County Library in Paris. Every child in the audience was sitting in rapt attention. Linda has a way of presenting that makes each person in the audience feel that they’re part of a dialogue. She got rave reviews.
After the Paris presentation, I took Linda to lunch at the Arlington Hotel right downtown in Paris. This place is now a beautiful restaurant, pub and hotel, but when I was a university student, it was the cheapest place to get beer. A glass of draft was 15 cents. My sister and I ran a youth drop-in centre just off the main drag in Paris for a few summers from 3 til 11pm each day, so became familiar with this place.
After lunch, there was the usual tussle over who got to pay the bill. When I have lunch with Valerie Sherrard, there have been times the bill has ripped in two has we’ve struggled for the right to pay, but Linda had a different idea. She challenged me to an arm wrestle. I won, but just barely.Ha!
I don’t have a picture of our arm wrestling, but here she is, looking might fierce:
A picture…
You know, I would have PAID to see a picture of that arm-wrestle.
~kc
Sounds like a fun day, Marsha. You need a GPS on your person!
They do make them small and portable enough for a pocket. Hmmm….