A Day in the Life: Meeting my Publisher

I got up bright and early to catch the 7.30 train to London on Tuesday morning, to meet my brand new contacts at Egmont (publishers of A Lark in the Ark, Baby Goes Baaaaa! and Baby Can Bounce!). 

They've had a big change-round over the last few weeks. By coincidence, both the editor of picture books and the pre-school editor left within a couple of weeks of one another, so Egmont took the opportunity to have a rethink. Instead of 2 parallel editors, managing different titles, they've rolled the 2 lists into one under the control of a new Editorial Manager, who works to assist an equally new Publishing Director.

They've been trying to meet as many of their authors as they can. When they invited me, it seemed a long way to go, so I thought I'd get up early and make a proper day of it: fit in some galleries, maybe some shopping, definitely some drawing...

By the time we met up, I'd already been to see the Picasso etchings at the British Museum. I love Picasso and was so inspired, I just had to do some drawing there and then. Luckily there were some classical sculptures in the gallery, of the kind that would have inspired Picasso himself. Spot my Picasso-esque toes!

Lunch was lovely: we got on really well, munching and chatting our way through 2 hours. Here and there we remembered to talk about work: I raised various questions and requests and we discussed their ideas for the way they saw the lists moving over the next couple of years.

Nicely replete, I jumped on the tube to the V&A. I had intended to see the Modern British Art show at Tate Britain, but it didn't seem worth £14 for not much more than an hour, so I settled for the Recording Britain collection, which turned out to be a lovely and quite varied series of drawings and paintings, capturing changing environments throughout the UK. It included some by Kenneth Rowntree, who was commissioned in the 40's to record an area near me, before it was drowned to create the Ladybower Reservoir, where John and I walk regularly:

I wandered a bit through other sections of the museum and did some more drawing, but was getting 'exploding-brain-syndrome'. Also, my feet were killing me by now, so I sat in the cafe garden with my toes in the shallow pool.

Then I hopped on a bus to Harrods, where I bought my Mum and John some treats in the food hall, then chilled out for a short time, sitting on the grass with a cup of tea at Green Park. Then it was time to scoot for St Pancras. 

By the time I fell into my train seat at 8pm, I was feeling pretty knocked out. There weren't any good people to draw, so I tucked into a cheese and mushroom pasty. Then I discovered an interesting email on my Blackberry, asking if I fancied working with kids to design a mural for a new library, so I spent the rest of the journey thinking up ideas for that, and before I knew it, I was home. What a nice day.