How I Met Kevin McCleod

You know how sometimes things happen to work to your advantage (or your disadvantage)? Well, a friend recently pointed out a two-for-one deal on tickets to Grand Designs Live, and since Paul & I like the show and it would be a fun day out with friends we bought some.

We met up with our friends and headed to the show, queueing up and getting in before the official opening, then heading straight for the main stage and managing to get seats – much to my relief as I’d woken up feeling a bit under the weather – just before they filled up.

Then one of our friends returned from the nearby bookshop to say that anyone who bought a book in the next fifteen minutes would get into the priority signing queue. I deliberated, then decided ‘why not?’ since there was a book I wanted.

After an hour’s wait, out came Kevin.

He was a great speaker, funny and honest about the down sides of building. After talking for about half an hour question time started. There were some good questions, though some silly woman kept shouting out “what’s bespoke?” (to which I really itched to yell out “get a dictionary!” in reply, but didn’t).

Afterwards three of us headed for the signing queue. It was fun being on the ‘other side’ for once, and be reminded of the wait, the shared excitement, the post-it with the names for the author to dedicate to, juggling book (opened on the right page) and camera…

… then suddenly it’s all over. (I told him how we started watching the show after a disastrous home renovation and it helped in the healing process. He grinned and said “Like therapy?”.)

And that’s the story how I got cheap tickets, scored good seats, found out about the priority signing queue and wound up meeting Kevin McCleod.

After our group had recovered from all the excitement we separated to look around the show, which also provided another stroke of luck as we found a kind of attic ladder that will solve an access problem in Paul’s new garage. And, like many, many others, we gazed in amazement and a little covetous wistfulness at the remote controlled rotating shoe shelf – or ‘Shoetisserie’, as Paul named it. Then we all left to have a post-Kevin lunch together out in the spring sunshine.

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