If you want to bamboozle me, now's a good time

If anyone wants to deceive, bamboozle or mug me, any time over the next five days I'm going to be a push-over. I probably won't even see you coming. My head is going to be dizzied by debate, confusticated by conversations, and buzzing with b...b...b... ideas. It is the much-heralded (and in my case somewhat dreaded) World Writers' Conference as part of the Edinburgh International Book Festival and I am in it. And it starts today. From lunchtime. Hence my slight earlier-than-usual posting. I will not be fit for anything later.

I am sure the only reason I'm in it is because I'm crabbit and I think we are expected to be crabbit and indulge in near-fisticuffs because that's what some internationally-renowned authors did at the previous one, fifty years ago, on which this is scarily modelled. (Even the new one's website looks scary, don't you think? I have no intention of being crabbit in public, so the idea of being expected to be eloquently crabbit is scary.

Then all the bumpf came a couple of days ago and I became a bit less scared and a lot more excited, because I discovered that they have laid on a vast and exciting programme of social opportunities to discuss anything we want (well, book-related, I guess, but who knows?) with fellow delegates. And I very much do like the idea of discussing (even crabbitly) book-related things with other writers and to be given many opportunities to do this with writers I mostly haven't met before is an exciting idea.

As I say, hypnotised as I will be by all this probably-lubricated discussion and the effort to avoid fisticuffs or tongue-tied moments, you could probably get me to sign anything.

Wish me luck. I shall report.