Either this wallpaper goes, or I do

overcast, mild, temps 14

Am in Montpelier now, at the Bed and Breakfast. Dreadful place. All heavy Victorian wallpaper and furniture. Glum landlady. Dark and dreary room. I was hoping to arrive early and spend a few hours relaxing in the room before the event. But could not wait to get away. Especially when I had to take a broom to this huge cobweb on the wall.

Happily I'm only here overnight, and this has convinced me that sometime in the future, when Chief Inspector Gamache et al are investigating a murder away from Three Pines (if such a thing exists), they need to stay in a dreary, sullen place. So, actually, this is great! Wasn't really looking forward to yet another stay in a spectacular, large, lovely, clean hotel room, with flatscreen TV, jacuzzi, spa and no spiders. How antiseptic.

I'm feeling itchy...bed bugs? ugh. Still, I have to say this really is part of the book tour territory. I've stayed in some horrible places and some astonishingly fabulous places. Crap shoot, really. The publishers do their best, and Sarah - the publicist - sent me links to three places here inMontpelier...and I chose this one. D'oh.

not that long ago I was at a book festival and my room was so small my feet went off the end of the bed and were in the bathroom. The walls were also made of paper so I could hear everything anyone said in the corridor. I was at another book festival and the hotel was infested with young americans who streamed across the border (this was a Canadian border town) because the legal drinking age in Canada is lower than in the US. So on Friday night the kids booked into the hotel with the sole purpose of getting drunk. And running riot. At least they had the great good sense to book into a hotel and didn't try to drive home.

Had a great drive down here to Montpelier...two and a half hours. Denis in Cowansville had put the winter tires on the volvo this morning...lovely man made space for us in his hectic fall schedule. But I'm driving the other car since it has GPS. Arrived with three hours to kill before going for dinner with the BEar Pond Books people. As soon as I saw the B&B room I wanted to flee. A reader who will be at the event tonight suggested place called La Brioche, on Main Street...it is an off-shoot of the New England Culinary Institute, so I skidaddled out of the B&B and raced over to La Brioche for a medicinal Cafe Latte and eclair. Yum.

but am back at the B&B now. Hoping, with familiarity, it will seem less dreary. It seems to be working. At least I don't have to share a bathroom. And the place, despite the cobwebs, actually seems clean. Just dark and dreary.

Loved the comments from yesterday's blog - and all the odd placenames...I thought no one could ever beat the Brits, but I have to say Intercourse, Michigan, just down the road from the town of Blue Balls is pretty good. Though, as I said in the comment, in Quebec it would be Saint Intercourse. And Saint Blue Balls. We put a saint in front of everything. We have a Saint Louis de Ha Ha. Can't imagine what he is the patron saint of.

Off to Bear Pond Books for a dinner at 5:30 then the event at 7pm. Then driving tomorrow (probably crack of dawn) to Norwich for an event at the Norwich Bookstore at 7 tomorrow night.

Speak to you tomorrow.