FROM a week of book signings I have been observing the family with interest. I don't think it's dead, or on the way out or anything truly serious but I do think it may be going through a fair period of stress.
It's amazing how much angst and strain you can pick up while sitting at a table. It's like as if they think you're deaf because you are sitting down and they are standing up.
. OXFORD
A mother and daughter stood looking at each other without satisfaction.
"You look so ... oh, I don't know," said the mother eventually.
"That's helpful, Mother."
"Well, you know how you fly off the handle dear.
"Why could that be, Mother?"
"You're implying that it's something to do with me dear: I just asked you to come out for tea and a cake and suddenly I'm the villain again."
"You asked me to come out for tea and a lecture, Mother."
"How strange you are, dear."
They had arrived at me. They wanted me to put a dedication: "To my darling daughter on her 33rd birthday. Love always, Mummy." I wrote it obediently.
"Will you read it yourself?" I asked the mother, hoping for a bit of praise.
"No, terribly sorry, not my cup of tea at all. I like biographies and, well, different fiction I suppose.
. CHELSEA TOWN HALL
The man in the anorak asked me to write: "Hope mutton dressed as lamb enjoyed the disco." I said that it was an odd and not entirely pleasant thing to write as a greeting on a book.
"Does it say anywhere that a greeting has to be pleasant?" he asked me ferociously. It didn't, but on the other hand.
"Could I say John asked me to sign this with his love?" I offered.
"That would not be the situation" he said.
"What is the situation?" I might as well know, rather than spend the night wondering.
"The situation is that my wife aged 43 went to a disco if you don't mind, with all the youngsters in her office hen night or something. A disco at her age." I wrote my name and the date and asked him to insert the insults himself.
He tried hard to think of a Bad term of abuse. "Feminist," he shouted at me as he left.
. BIRMINGHAM
"The book is for my Mam, her bloke's leaving this weekend," said the girl in the shop.
"I'm sorry," I said.
"I'm not, he's worthless. We're all coming round to watch him go and make sure he doesn't take anything. We think he's loosening the bath taps."
"He'd take the bath taps?"
"Well he's got to do up a place of his own, he'll need taps."
"Will she miss him, do you think?"
"Hard to know. She's used to it, he's the third fellow to leave after my Dad. Bad judge of men, runs in the family." She saw my eager look.
"You don't want to hear about me," she said.
Wrongly, as it happened.
. MANCHESTER
The elderly pair were not sure they were doing the right thing. Their neighbour either loved my books or loved somebody else's. It was so hard to know, wasn't it.
It was. Very hard.
"I suppose she could change it," the old man said doubtfully. Not so easily of course if it were signed with a special message for her.
Ah, that was the trouble.
The queue moved from foot to foot and I yearned for the wisdom of Solomon. Their neighbour had no family, they told me. Well, no family that came to visit anyway; no post, not much contact with the outer world but a nice person when you got to know her. Of course there was an argument that she could have alienated her sons and daughter. It wasn't natural that out of three sons and one daughter, none of them should stay in touch.
I suggested writing her a postcard rather than signing the actual book which she could then change if needs be. They thought this was a great idea.
"Don't mention anything on the postcard about her having driven her family away by her nagging," the old lady said anxiously.
. MANCHESTER
They were three years married, the book was an anniversary present.
"Well, it's for her," the boy said. "She'll be stuck in it and there's no food on the table for me."
"You're never home to put food in front of," she said. "He goes to the pub after work and forgets to come back."
"I'd come back it there was anything to come back for," he said.
"And then he looks at telly and snores; snores so loud you'd have to turn up the telly."
"Or change the channel," he said.
"I suppose I should look at action replay and listen to snores all night," she said.
I wished them a very happy anniversary and many more to follow.
. EDINBURGH
I had broken my glasses and needed to borrow a pair from someone in the audience.
"Take mine, then I don't have to look at my wife," said a man.
"He's joking," their daughter said.
"He's not but it doesn't matter." The mother's face was hard and lined. I wondered why they had come out together to a reading and a signing, the joyless little group.
I borrowed someone else's spectacles, a kind, happy man who smiled a lot at his wife, I thought they would bring me more luck.
The sour family came to have a book signed.
"For lovely Gloria, who is well named," was the dedication. I was overjoyed in my simple way.
"There now, he does like you," I cried happily to the woman with the hard lined face.
"Gloria is his boss's wife, he has every kind of hope imaginable in that department," she said in a clipped voice and they left the hall.
. DERRY
The woman had three gorgeous but reasonably, very bored small sons. They thought waiting in a line in Easons in Foyleside was not one of the great ways to spend a Saturday morning. A tin of sweets did go up and down but they wanted bigger and more burger like things.
"You're very patient," I gushed at them.
"Yeah," said the boys.
"But of course your mother is very good to you too, isn't she?" I said. They were silent.
"My goodness is long forgotten," said their mother, who was twentysomething. "But today will be long remembered. When they come to shovel me into the old people's home, they'll say remember the way she dragged us round bookshops and destroyed our youth?' " The boys nodded solemnly.
I wondered what they would be like in 60 or 70 years' time when the day came to discuss residential care for their mother. Surely they'd have forgotten the morning's torture by then.
Wouldn't they?