Yesterday I was in Ireland for a board meeting of Gill and Macmillan. This involves getting up at 5am, suffering the indignities of Terminal 3 at Heathrow and the airline BMI (whose motto is 'The UK's most punctual airline' - it was punctual and that is really important but everything else was...), hanging about at Dublin airport for the traffic to lighten (I do think Dublin has the worst traffic jams in all of Europe - up there with Bangalore on a bad day), and then an hour to the office.

But it's all worthwhile to spend time with a highly professional, highly creative, and totally engaging team determined to do the best possible job in what is intrinsically a small market.

To fully understand modern Dublin you need, in my opinion, just two guides. First you should grab a copy of David McWilliams brilliant book on modern Ireland The Pope's Children, so called because nine months to the day after the Pope's 29th September 1979 speech to the Irish people in Dublin's Phoenix Park there was the largest ever number of births - a tribute either to Pope John Paul's virility or the aphrodisiac effect of religion. This signalled the beginning of the Celtic revival. And second, to understand the true vibrancy of modern Dublin simply click on this video about Dublin coastal development.

Earlier in the week I wrote about the potential for Dutch rugby. Amazingly I now discover that the brightest young hope in English rugby is Dutchman Tim Visser. Watch this space.

I also received this from an occasional commentator on this blog. I wonder when it will dawn on Gerard that it may not be a media conspiracy which is blocking his success but that readers aren't that interested in buying his book.

Just got my "royalty" statement from the publisher. GINNY GOOD sold 24 copies worldwide in the last six months and I bought at least four of the copies, myself...so that's what? Less than one copy a week? Yes! I get a dollar for every copy sold, though, so in six months I made enough to pay for almost two of the four of my own books I bought. Yippee! Oh, but wait, I didn't actually get the twenty-four bucks 'cause I still owe $1,800 on the $2,000 "advance." Rats. At that rate I won't have the advance paid off until I'm a hundred and eighteen years old. Oh, well. Here's the latest "review" of The Audio Book of Ginny Good:
http://thommalyn.blogspot.com/2006/09/audio-book-of-ginny-good.html
Here are four more...and a bunch of other reviews of the real book:
http://everyonewhosanyone.com/ggrev.html

When you write a great book, whether it makes money or not is superfluous. The morons who run the media and entertainment industries will understand that one of these days. Or not. G.
Gerard Jones
http://everyonewhosanyone.com/audio/GGch00introm.mp3

And finally a link to a brilliantly funny website promoting a book published by a brilliant (albeit competing) London publisher Piatkus Books. Have a good Saturday.