And the winners are ...

other than me for getting such a great cake!

Yesterday was full of loveliness. The Oxford Times published a two page piece about my two new books, including the photo my boy, Pip, took.

me meeting me in the supermarket - this photo by Zoe, photo in paper by Pip

And then last night’s launch of my two new books at Caper Books was such a delight. Thank you Xander - proprietor of Oxford’s best bookshop! There will be a short video of the speech I gave - in which I extol the virtues of bats and hedgehogs - online soon.

There was a cake - well I hoped to be able to buy one of those silly hedgehog cakes, but there were none to be found - so - bought a plain one (my baking skills are not to be inflicted on members of the public) and then asked my friend and neighbour, Sally, a brilliant artist who makes wonderful linocut designs (and teaches you how to do it too) if she could decorate it with a hedgehog …

I thought she did a wonderful job, though I was slightly nervous as she had suggested adding ‘another *&%$ing book about hedgehogs.’

The Wine Society delivered (thanks to both Bloomsbury and Graffeg for contributing to the entertainment budget!)

I thought doing a prize giveaway was going to be easy - I really did not imagine that 122 people would answer the question correctly … well, I did expect you all to get it right, just not quite so many of you.

I asked the internet to generate two random numbers - 8 & 63 - and then I simply count down the list, the first person signing on Substack is ‘1’ and the last person signing on Facebook is ‘122’.

Now - please - a drum roll …. the first winner is …

Tracey Goldstone

and the second …

Sophie Ellis

Please would you both DM me with your postal address - thank you and congratulations.

Oh, and if you want to check back and wonder about the names chosen not matching exactly with the numbers of people who sent in their answers … I did have to discount a few of you who ‘accidentally’ voted more than once!!!

Tired now …

Oh - how about a Bat Book giveaway??? I will launch that at the beginning of next week!