A Very Clean Desk

Back to anti-blogging after the London Book Fair, a party spree, a bit of writing and the usual deadening busy-ness of modern life.

I was looking forward to today: the last day in the office after completing the thankless job of doing the royalty statements for over a hundred of our classics titles, the prospect of working on the Simon Boccanegra libretto and winding down before the short Easter break.

The desk was extremely clean yesterday when I left the office – still extremely clean when we dropped off the few remaining copies from the excellent launch of Pink Hotel at the Phoenix Artists Club just before 10:00pm – and even cleaner this morning, when I found out we had been paid a visit (at around 11:30!) by a couple of burglars. They smashed one of the doors of our office, took my computer and another one, and in the process they managed to lose their earpiece and mobile phone . . .

One of our authors suggested I should disrupt their lives by sending nasty text messages to their address book: "I have slept with your sister" – "Your mum's ugly" – so that they get beaten up or have an even tougher life in prison. But I don't think we need to worry too much about them – the police will see to that.

They didn't take any of our books. Illiterate thugs – with so many beautiful books around they went for a couple of worthless computers. . .

Now, anyone wanting to read into this that computers and eBooks will triumph over physical books . . .