Saturday at the Borders Book Festival

We melted in the heat at the book festival on Saturday! On Friday we were bundled up with scarves, but yesterday the sun shone brightly all day long, and the marquee was sweltering inside. I think today may be the same!

Rain or shine, the Borders Book Festival is the place to be, especially with a line-up like this in the main marquee

and we even have festival goers who match the book covers.

This is where I spend my days, selling books, chatting to familiar faces from previous years, and enjoying the excitable, positive energy which exudes from this space during book signings. We get a considerable number of people who come back later, extremely embarrassed, because they have been so swept away in the moment of talking to the speaker who has signed their book, that they forget to pay for it! It's something we can more than understand! It is exciting to have a chance to exchange a few words with a celebrity, and the Borders Book Festival does manage to attract real celebrities - ones we have all heard of!

To find a bit of peace during a frantically busy day, I have a walk through the gardens surrounding the marquees. The herbaceous borders are really delicious at this time of year.

One of the things I enjoy most about this book festival is the opportunity to spot little moments that wouldn't happen anywhere else. For example, here we have BBC Radio's Jim Naughtie getting a book signed and having a chat with John Cleese.

And here, an authors' mutual admiration society with Joanna Trollope signing and swapping books with Ella Berthoud.

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the running wave

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