MEETING BONNIE GARMUS

I was in Geneva when I saw that Bonnie Garmus (Lessons in Chemistry) was going to be signing books at the San Jordi book fair in Barcelona, and I hadn’t planned on coming back to Spain so early. But I’d never been to the Barcelona book fair where, if I’ve understood correctly, the tradition is you buy your boyfriend/husband a book (we have to give those men some culture!), and he buys you a rose, and Bonnie Garmus is a rock star in my eyes, so I flew in last week.

I took the train to Barcelona this morning but arrived too late to make Bonnie’s first signing. The atmosphere felt quite overwhelming; HUGE crowds in a place where I don’t know my way around is pretty full on for my anxiety.  But I resisted the urge to call it too much of a commotion and bolt straight back to the countryside.

With an hour to spare, I went and had a quiet coffee before going back to bedlam to see if I could figure out where she might be. If I hadn’t enquired in the bookshop where I thought she was supposed to be I’d never have found her, because there were hundreds of stalls with hundreds of authors doing signings. Spanish people clearly read a lot, and it was wonderful to see such enthusiasm!

I spotted the stall where Bonnie was seated, bought a copy of her book in Spanish and went to say hello. Bonnie is lovely, she has beautiful cornflower blue eyes and a gorgeous, soft way about her. We had a little chat, and she signed my book. We took photos in which she looks great but I think I look a bit like a potato because I’ve been on cortisone for close to a month now because of my auto-immune disease and, well, potato (why am I so vain?), and I said goodbye and that was that!

Then I hesitated. Should I brave the crowds or head home? There’s a shop in Barcelona I’m dying to visit, but I’ve no idea where it is, and I figured today wasn’t the day to try and find out, nor even take a taxi because traffic was crazy too.

So, I got on a very smelly, very slow train back towards Girona that would make an even smellier sounding poem than the one I wrote last week about the smelly man at the airport, but this time it was just too gross to even consider writing poetry about! Trust me, armpit juice was Shalimar compared to this…

So, there you have it. My grand day out in Barcelona!!! But yay Bonnie Garmus!! Thank you for being so kind, Bonnie. Enjoy the rest of your INCREDIBLE book tour!