DESPERATELY SEEKING ANNIKA

OK, this is a long shot because I don't know if anyone reads this blog.  Also,  I'm not on Twitter so that doesn't help either.  But if you are reading this I NEED YOUR HELP PLEASE.

What it is, see, I'm trying to get hold of someone called Annika.

Here's why?

Some weeks ago, I did a book festival thing in Uxbridge at the end of the Metropolitan line.  Annika chaired a panel with me and the writer Alice Oseman.  Before the panel, I'd commented on Annika's very nice notebook [see fig.1].  She'd said, 'Please, won't you have it?'

I'd said, 'Oh, I couldn't possibly.  Oh, OK then.'  And thanks to Annika's sweet generous nature, I'd gone home with a notebook that very neatly summed up my general situation.

Fig.1

But being a firm believer in Swoppsies, I'd wanted to give Annika something in return.  So I asked the festival organiser for a contact address and sent Annika a parcel.  Like I said, this was all some weeks ago.

Yesterday, I went to the post office depot in Norwich and picked my parcel up again.  There are few things more disappointing than thinking you've got a mysterious exciting parcel to collect and then discovering it's actually an undelivered one that you posted yourself to someone else.

I don't want this parcel.  I'm the one trying to send it!

So if you are Annika, please would you drop me an email at hayleylong@hayleylong.com  Or if you know someone called Annika who was at Hillingdon Culture Bite in October, please can you tell her to look at this page.  Or if you wouldn't even mind just sharing this post on your social media thing, that would be very nice of you.  Thanks.

PS.  In other news, I'm off to Delia Smith's Top of the Terrace restaurant at Norwich City Football Club on Friday for the East Anglian Book Awards.  'The Nearest Faraway Place' has been shortlisted for the Mal Peet Children's Prize which is lush.  Especially as I am a huge admirer of the great Mal Peet.  I am also a little bit allergic to Norwich City Football Club but that's because I am from Ipswich.  I'll be fine though.