My first blogger meet-up!

I had lunch with a pig-puppet! Well, okay, she didn't actually bring her pig-puppet, which was sort of disappointing, but that was the only thing that was. Everything else was totally undisappointing: from the fact that she looked like I imagined (but with extra cuteness), to the way she had just enough of an American accent to give me something to hassle her about, humoured my parrot obsession, and ordered Mars Bar cheesecake for us to share, without even much prompting from me (i.e. just one round of, "Mmm... look at those cakes! I like cheesecake. Do you?")

We even went on a short bookshop-crawl after lunch, and Lucy heroically refrained from laughing disdainfully at what passes for good bookshops in this city. At first I was a little bit overawed at the prospect of being in a bookshop with a person who posted 120 book reviews last year, but it was totally worth it because I got a recommendation for an author I hadn't heard of before, and whose name now totally escapes me. And I managed to pretend to know something about an author Lucy hadn't read (Alexander McCall Smith) and I think I got away with it. (So don't tell her I was bluffing, okay?)

My one regret is that despite talking about it, we both totally forgot to take a picture. We couldn't have done shadows anyway, since the sun appears to have gone on holiday to warmer parts, but we could have at least got a photo of our shoes. I promise to do better next time.

Speaking of next time, whose turn is it now to come to Australia and visit? Come on! I'm lonely down here.