Dreaming, not Gleaming

Last time, I referred to Oxford as the City of Gleaming Spires. As you all know, I got that wrong. It's 'Dreaming Spires', and I don't know who said it first.

It looked very pleasantly dreamy on Thursday, a fine autumn day. I was in Oxford for a publishers do - Lion, a Christian publisher I work for, had been in business for forty years and celebrations were in order. We gathered in the Cathedral, Christ Church, which in itself is a bit over-awing. We heard about how Pat and the late David Alexander started the business from their back bedroom forty years ago and travelled to book fairs with a sleeping bag in the back of the car because money was too tight for a hotel. Now they are selling all over the world in over two hundred languages, and have bridged the gap between sacred and secular publishing.

This was followed by afternoon tea (or as they call it where I come from, a bun fight). Tea, cake and champagne. Now, that's my kind of celebration. And it was held in the Great Hall of the college. Think of the dining room at Hogwarts (in fact, I think some of the HP films were made there.) We were surrounded by portraits of world changing scholars and statesmen who had studied there, and I gazed around like a country bumpkin.

Just as it people were drifting away and it looked as if it was all over too soon, lovely Su Box, who was my first editor at Lion and is now freelance, scooped a few of us up and took us to a nearby cafe. Think of it, eleven over-excited Lions round a table. I sat next to one of my heroes, Bob Hartman. As an author and live storyteller, he is the past master as to bringing a new view point and a breath of life into old stories, and is always generous in his help and attention. His new project is www.nonstopstoryshop.com - take a look. All round the world, said Bob, storytelling is taking off. It's being rediscovered.

Oh, that reminds me. The Lion Classic Aesop, by Margaret McAllister, Illustrated by Amanda Hall, is out now! Just saying!