You Can't Have It Both Ways

I've had a quieter couple of days after Friday's slightly bizarre events and a busy day on Sunday - so that meant is was time for another road sign image! I spotted this on the way back from a walk to my local shops and it just made me chuckle - surely an accident waiting to happen! :-)
After an early morning run and tackling our somewhat overgrown front garden I had the rest of the day to myself until I needed to meet up with my sister in Chatham for an author event at the library in the evening.
We had a drink first at The Command House pub at Gun Wharf. It has sweeping views over the Medway and is a lovely place to be on a warm summer evening with a cool breeze wafting over the water. It originally dates from the 18th Century and was once the Storekeeper's house of an ordnance yard that supplied artillery to the Royal Navy at the nearby Chatham Dockyard.
The event at the library was for Ben Aaronovitch, the author of the Rivers Of London series. The books are a fabulously engaging mix of fantasy, magic, comedy and police procedural. Once critic has described them as "The perfect blend of CSI and Harry Potter". I picked up the first in the series purely by chance in a bookshop in Rye a few years ago and have loved them ever since.
The event was in the form of a Q&A session as Ben says he finds this much more interesting, especially for him, than just spouting a monologue at the audience. The room was full and there were plenty of questions which he answered willingly - he was funny, irreverent and fascinating to listen to.
He regaled us with the realities of giving up seven different jobs before having to go back to work again prior to be becoming a full time writer, how he occasionally does some of his research by asking questions on twitter (the average response time is less than 3 minutes!), his views of the TV and publishing worlds (not entirely complementary!) and how his books are translated into different languages (he worries if the translator does not ask any questions) - at the last count this included French, German, Italian, Spanish, Polish, Japanese, Hungarian and Czech!
He says he does not consider writing books work but compares it to running a marathon. You swear you'll never do it again the moment you finish but then forget all the grinding effort and pain and can't wait to sign up for the next one.