Last week I was walking past the Blackwell bookshop in South Bridge, and noticed a book on display in the window: Up the creek without a mullet. Such an absolutely ridiculous title that I had to go in and have a look at it. The book is by Scottish author Simon Varwell, is published by the Highlands-based Sandstone Press, and relates his travels around the world in search of places with the name ‘Mullet’ (after the hairstyle that was fairly common in the 1980s, and as I noticed when I lived in Botswana, still very popular in South Africa in the 1990s).
I bought the book, very much enjoyed reading it, and last night Lindsey and I attended an entertaining reading given by the author.
Simon Varwell reading an extract from his book
Book signing
Varwell has a website and blog, where you can read about his absoultely daft but amusing quest and the extensive press coverage he’s received. So far, he’s visited 14 Mullets, and is currently writing a new book about the second leg of his travels.
There’s also some nice photos of Scotland at his Flickr site.
Couldn’t you get the two girls to look round? Did you get any free drinks? Did you ask the boy how much he expected to make from the book? Did either of the girls look interested in the author? Do you think the author could have gotten to sign the girls instead of the book? Vital elements of this report are missing, I fear. Hotboy
By: Hotboy on March 3, 2010
at 2:19 pm
Hi Hotboy,
Some people don’t like their photos to appear on blogs. Yes, there were free drinks, but I was driving, so only had an apple juice. Blackwell have an email list that you can get on, in order to be invited to book events.
By: Roddy MacLeod on March 3, 2010
at 2:23 pm
Mullets are the latest look here in NSC.
By: rob on March 5, 2010
at 9:47 am
Thanks for coming along, Roddy. Glad you enjoyed the book!
By: Simon Varwell on March 8, 2010
at 3:01 pm
[...] proof people turned up. And in fact, one of the folk who came along out of the blue wrote a blog post about the [...]
By: simonvarwell.co.uk » Blog Archive » Emails, pictures and dates on March 10, 2010
at 10:37 am
[...] Sandstone Press. I went to the launch of one of their other books back in March – Up the creek without a mullet, by Simon Varwell. Simon was also at this launch, and as I found out, will answer to: [...]
By: Book launch – The Long Bridge: Out of the Gulags « Roddy Macleod's Blog on November 8, 2010
at 9:52 am
[...] Napier, Don Lennox, Paul Diffley, Ronald Turnbull and Simon Varwell. I went to Simon’s book launch for Up the creek without a mullet last year. Always entertaining, and he had the audience [...]
By: Night of Adventure « Roddy Macleod's Blog on June 17, 2011
at 8:17 am