So there’s a thing going around Facebook which you may or may not have seen. It is a challenge to write twenty five things about yourself. Then you tag twenty five people including the person who sent it to you and the twenty four new people are supposed to do make lists of their own.

I find this mathematically untidy, by the way, although I recognise that for followers of the duodecimal system, twenty four (decimal) is a much more pleasing number than twenty five.

I’m also not a fan of these endlessly replicating chains of trivia – not least because I woke up to what computers cost in environmental terms by the revelation that two Google searches are effectively the same as boiling a kettle full of water. That’s… alarming for someone who worries about energy consumption and climate change, but who likes to use the internet as a kind of external brain.

Anyway – herewith, my twenty five things. I’m not making twenty four more people do this, though.

So… I’m going to New York.

Yes, it comes as a surprise to me, too.

I’m going partly because Clare is going, and partly because I want to go drop in on Knopf and say “Hi” to some US booksellers and get a sense of what’s happening over there. And I want to hug the buildings of New York and feel the Obama Afterglow.

We are, of course, going by plane.

Hm.

I don’t do well with planes. I just don’t enjoy the experience all that much. It’s fine most of the time, but I’m periodically aware that I’m in a staggeringly stupid place for a human being to be and that 35,000 ft up is definitely a hostile environment.

It’s a little alarming that I’ve had this conversation with more than one person in the last few days…

Friend: So, you’re up against a pretty tough field in this BSFA thing.

Me: Yes, yes I am. But just being there is wonderful.

Friend: Stop that.

Me: What?

Friend: Stop being all self-deprecating and crickety and British about this. It’s not about playing the game, it’s totally about winning.