Thursday 21 August 2008

Hide the Jelly Beans!






Abbey's gets a lot of interesting people through the doors (attracted to our fabulous books, no doubt) and sometimes they even pass for famous (ish). Yesterday Mr William McInnes, known to non-TV me as an author and fellow one-time resident of The Peninsula (Brisbane's equivalent of The Shire) but known to many others more familiar with moving pictures as a pretty good actor, was herded in, doing a whirlwind visit-the-bookshops-be-nice-to-booksellers performance.

Perhaps it was my black glucojel jelly-beans which he promptly helped himself to (that's okay, I don't like them) or perhaps he is always that exuberant, but I was treated to a one-man show of great virtuosity and good-humour, as he morphed into the sort of customer I used to regularly deal with on dole-days, after I mentioned my unfortunate past life as a bank teller in Redcliffe way back when. He tried out the horizontal rollers for good measure (work place health and safety of no concern!) clutching Tim Winton's newest novel (segue-ing into a fine rendition of a sniffy literary critic) and gave an impromptu reading from the new collection of Commander war-time comics with the requisite British good-chap and dastardly-Hun accents. Then he actually signed his new book whilst charming members of staff and giving one excited customer something to go home and tell his wife about ('you'd never guess who I saw today at Abbey's !!!')

You never do know who will walk in the door - that can be part of the fun... but maybe, if it's Mr William McInnes, hide the jelly beans! Lindy

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