Why can’t real life be like the Cork Short Story Festival?

I’ve just got back from the Cork International Short Story Festival and I have Post Literary Festival Separation Anxiety (PLFSA).

It’s so hard to leave a festival sometimes. Especially one as spectacularly warm and generous as this. Of course I missed Naomi and the boys like crazy while I was away, but when you spend more than a night or two with fellow writers and book lovers, you build bonds with each other that hurt when you break them to go home again.

I was there for the whole five days of the festival, and was thoroughly spoiled the entire time. At the Cork Story Festival, you get a pack of ‘Bank of Frank’ (O’Connor, that is) vouchers when you arrive. These can be exchanged for food and drink at certain times and certain places, meaning you are rarely hungry or fully sober.

A typical day ran something like this:

9 am – Alka Seltzer in bed.

10 am – full cooked breakfast, croissant, yogurt and three cups of coffee in the hotel restaurant with the other writers staying there.

11 am – a quick excursion. Highlights included the Cork Butter Museum (a museum about butter), and a trip to Cobh, which was the last stop for the Titanic.

1 pm – spend our vouchers on lunch at the Farmgate – a gorgeous restaurant on a mezzanine level above the English Market that serves the most delicious fresh fish, sausages and other Irish fare.

2:30 – 4 pm – afternoon events. My favourite was Marie-Helene Bertino reading from her story collection Safe as Houses.

4:30 pm – back to the hotel to FaceTime with Naomi and the boys. A 25-minute Pzizz.

6:30 pm – meet in the hotel lobby for pre-event drinks.

7:15 – 10 pm – evening reading events at the Triskel Arts Centre, with coffee and cake in the interval. My event was on the first night – I felt so lucky to be reading with Etgar Keret. Other highlights included Manuel Gonzales reading from his story collection The Miniature Wife, Molia Dumbleton reading her Sean O’Faolain prizewinning story, a flash fiction night (for which I wrote a piece while I was there inspired by our trip to the butter museum), Alistair MacLeod speaking sagely about the writing process, and David Constantine accepting the Frank O’Connor Prize, followed by a brilliant discussion with Cathy Galvin.

10:30 pm – after the story events, we’d all head to the festival club at the Cork Arts Theatre, where we had vouchers for drinks, and for a box of nine different canapés every night.

1:30 pm – after the festival club closed, we’d go back to the hotel, where the bar was open late. The hotel did 24-hour pizza, which came with a sweet chilli sauce squeezed all over.

4 pm – Alka Seltzer in bed.

While the experience was wall-to-wall wonderful, I accept that a daily routine like this would be impossible to maintain in real life. After just a week in Cork, I couldn’t speak in full sentences, and the waist band of my trousers was so tight that I could no longer tuck in my shirt.

Thanks so much to Pat Cotter and Jennifer Matthews for the most amazing week, and for making me feel so welcome.