DAY SIX: Bad blogger. Bad, bad blogger.

So there I was yesterday afternoon, still recovering from my reading (and the massive Random House party on Sunday night, which left dock at Jamie Kennedy's at the Gardiner Museum, tore through Avenue at the Four Seasons and eventually smashed up onto the rocks of the Hospitality Suite), when I suddenly realized there was another festival party about to start at Harbourfront.

"Ugh," I thought, as I crawled from my bed to the couch. "How can there be another party? It can't possibly be as big as last night. I'll just show up a bit late."

Turns out I missed the biggest party of this year's IFOA.

The IFOA/Hello! Magazine Opening Party went down in the Enwave Theatre last night, and it was a veritable who's who of who matters in publishing. I am a bad, bad blogger for missing it. When I showed up at about 7pm (yes, 7pm, people... this blowout started at 530 in the afternoon), the room was packed and wildly overheated. Speeches were over (I heard from a number of people that Geoffrey Taylor gave a great one), 150 people had already left and Hello! had already taken down their photo booth (get this: you could have your photo taken, and then through some whiz-bang printing they'd give you a personalized Hello! cover. I rue the moment on Sunday night when I switched from wine to scotch. Rue it, I tell you.)

Anyway, because the inimitable Becky Toyne decided not to rip my head off for being late (though it was well within her right to do so) and instead recently handed me a CD filled with photos from the party, forthwith, I will pretend I was there.

Actually, better to start with Hello! Magazine's party diary.
Ok, onwards!

Team IFOA. Finally, their turn in the limelight. Well deserved!

Guest curator, feted novelist and all-round lovely bloke, Colm Toibin (right) with artist Micah Lexier.

Globe Book Review editor Martin Levin stumping Booker-winner Anne Enright with some arcane piece of trivia.

Two members of the IFOA Royal Family: Ben McNally and his son Rupert (pretending not to be admiring Kim McArthur's passing ponytail).

Bad blogger, arriving late. That is a look of contrition on my face (accompanied by a frisson of indigestion and a soupcon of a migraine).

Say what you will about blogs... Colm Toibin's reading mine.

Hi Colm. Hi Anne. Hi Dermot.

I learned something strange and a bit unnerving last night: a few of the Irish writers at this year's festival are actually reading this blog. Last night in the Hospitality Suite (oooh, I promised my superiors at Harbourfront I'd never start a sentence with "last night in the Hospitality Suite." I can almost feel the hairs going up on the back of Geoffrey Taylor's neck. You see, the Hospitality Suite is the Vegas of IFOA. It's strictly off-the-record - no media, no hassles. Just writers "relaxing" and "being themselves" in a well-appointed suite at the Westin Harbour Castle. To blog about the goings-on in there could be the single fastest way to "destroy" a young man's writing "career." Or so I've been told.)

Anyway, last night in the Hospitality Suite, Colm Toibin quoted from this blog, Dermot Bolger accused me (in a very friendly manner) of stealing his "best stuff," and Anne Enright introduced me not as an author but as the official blogger (it's OK, Anne... I know I'm already terribly overexposed in this capacity and sadly underexposed as a writer).

This led to the classic conversation about blogs themselves, and how many of us feel they are simply useless, or self-congratulatory, or both (Colm came up with a very good euphemism for blogs versus books, actually, but I'll not share it here for reasons of propriety already discussed above).

But this makes me wonder: what would make this blog better? What would pull it up and out of the mongrel blogosphere? And I think I know the answer. A pure-bred, world-famous, prize-winning, Irish-accented Guest Blogger!

So come on, Colm. Have at you, Dermot. Let's see it, Anne. Which one of you will rise to the occasion and offer to write IFOA's first guest-blog?

Sniff, sniff...

OK, I admit it: I missed all of last night's events. I missed Junot Diaz and David Benioff. I missed Anne Enright and Nam Le. I missed Jeffery Deaver and Ildefonso Falcones. I missed it all.

Why would I do this? Why would I miss some of the biggest draws of this year's festival? What could possibly have been more important?

It's simple. I am getting sick.

My throat is sore, my nose is becoming stuffed, and my legs are aching. I have been going all out for four days and four nights and the pace has, well, killed me. AND... I have my reading today.

I am reminded of the sage words of Geoffrey Taylor, IFOA's director, on Day One: "Andrew, the festival is not eleven days long. It is, instead, one long day."

So, it was a hard decision, but after dinner last night at Le Select Bistro (cock's crowns, lamb's neck, lemon tart), I decided to go home to bed. I am now preparing for my talk (4pm, Studio Theatre), and drinking hot drinks. I will be fine. Do not pity me. I just wanted to explain why I went AWOL last night.

~

Quote of Day Four:
"It was a Great White, and it went right under our boat."
- Julie Angus
"Would you like some of my chicken heads?"
- partner-in-crime, Samantha Francis.