8.30am: No need for parking tickets at the car park of the Sydney Writers’ Festival – I just leave a copy of Pride & Prejudice under my windshield wiper.
9am: “I’ve got Ferrante Fever,” says a friend. Embarrassed, I reply, “Hopefully calamine lotion will work for that.”
10am: Big crowd for enfant terrible author Susan Smithers, author of How I Quit Both Sugar AND The World’s Deadliest Terrorist Group.
11am: It’s an incredible sight seeing hundreds of grown adults filling in colouring books with crayons. If only they were actually at a mindfulness workshop.
Noon: People keep talking about Man Booker. How come we never see him? Is he an actual person?
1pm: Have the choice of seeing “the most important Chinese intellectual of his generation” or the dude who writes those Minecraft “how to” guides. Go to the Minecraft session.
1.45pm: Authors are always going on about “uncomfortable truths”. Why can’t we have “comfortable truths” for a change?
2pm: “A gruelling and intense journey that leave little room for catharsis and redemption … and makes one ultimately despair about one’s fellow man” I tweet as – yes, finally – I reach the head of the coffee queue.
2.30pm: I’d like to see more books featuring haughty butlers on the program line-up.
4pm: I learn that the collective noun for a group of librarians is a “shush”.
5pm: Purchase commemorative festival quill.
6pm: Ushers throw me out of A Love Affair With Shakespeare after I keep insisting the speakers refer to Shakespeare as “the man we call ‘Shakespeare'”.
10pm: Yes: everyone still talking about THAT thing.

Like books? Hey, why not try my ebook military thriller, The Spartan?