I missed out on the festival at Hay-on-Wye this year. It was back in the days of office work and well, after my damp and dreary experience last year and being a Delicate Little Hot-House Flower at the best of times I ddin't make too much of an effort to go. (And frankly sweeties, I could have recreated the experience reading a book while standing in the flower-bed mud in the back terrace these past rainy weeks.) But I am missing the literary life a tad. I want the joy back in my veins of chatting to authors and picking up those lovely, fresh new books and breathing in the smell of them.

So this July I am off to Harrogate. The Crime-Writers Festival is a three-day event as part of the larger International Festival. This time there will be no outdoor, windy, cold and rainy marquees to sit in, no rivers of mud to endanger the heels and no chance of catching trenchfoot in the surroundings that rival a rainy Glasto. It is all being held in comfort of the Crown Hotel. And as I have booked into the self-same hotel for the duration, I may even be able to wander down in a froth of satin negligee and take my breakfast Earl Grey while discussing the finer points of autopsy findings with an author or two. I'm also expecting a power cut, a murder or two and possibly a bit of amatuer sleuthin' (as Lord Peter Wimsey might say)

With such well-made plans, what could possibly go wrong?