Connections...

Life is full of conflicting information. Just yesterday I was told that collectively we drank 150 million less pints than we did last year. Aside from who might do the actual counting (and why incidentally is it always a nice round number?) this bombshell runs entirely contrary to other events also featured in the news.

For example, at the weekend an arachnophobic Portsmouth man, while trying to burn a spider, set fire to the front of his house. It took 3 fire tenders to dampen down the conflagration. The fate of the spider is as yet unknown, but you can rest assured that if it survived, the first thing it did, was struggle down the pub for a pint to settle its nerves.

The uncharitable amongst you might reach the conclusion I did. If a man chooses fire as his favoured weapon in his battle with a spider we should not worry about, what I might suggest, is a temporary dip in beer consumption. But don’t be hasty in your judgement of our Portsmouth chap, and while your at it, dispel the stereotypical view you have already built up about him (pit bull terrier owner, web tattoo on neck, shaved head, incapable of spelling paedophile), because you are almost certainly connected to him.

That’s right, courtesy of the news, I’ve discovered there are only 6 degrees of separation. In other words, I know someone, who knows someone, who knows someone, who knows someone, who knows someone who knows the dangerous dog owning psychopath from Pompey. I like this logic.

Using this formula I’m connected to the person who commissions new travel writers at the publishers Harper Collins. This is useful, as I’d like to ask him a favour. I’m wondering whether he might go and look at where I’m currently sitting in the travel title chart on www.authonomy.com (7^th – after only a week or so on the site) and ask him if he’s seen the reviews?

So all I need to kick this off is for one of my dear readers to come forward if they have a connection with book publishing.

There's a pint in it for you…