On Tuesday 10th October we launched my new Worple Press collection Beyond the Gate in the beautiful crypt (or Forum) of the newly refurbished St John’s Waterloo, in London.

I love book launches. And because this one had been postponed from July, I’d had extra time to plan, in a very bossy way: notes and circulars to the team (MC, guest readers, book table helpers, drinks table helpers, chair movers etc), visits to the venue, sketch maps of how the room could best be laid out, lists of drinks and nibbles, timetables…

So glad I did all that planning!

A few weeks ahead of the launch date, Philip and I decide it will be best to put all the stuff in the car (books, wine, food, tablecloths, change of clothes etc…) and drive to Waterloo to keep it all smooth and stress-free.

Tuesday 10th October comes. We load up, leave our home in East Suffolk at 1 pm. We’re always early. We laugh about how we’ll fill the time from ETA at Waterloo at 3.30 until 5 pm when we’re due to meet our son Freddie (providing jazz sax for the interval). We’ll set-up from 6 pm, with guests arriving at 7 pm.

Shouldn’t have laughed. Shouldn’t have headed that last email to the team ‘Finalised plan for tomorrow 10 Oct’.

We breeze along through Constable country just north of Colchester. Then forty minutes into the journey, heavy traffic – not unusual on the A12. Then the traffic stops. No exits off that part of the A12. No garages. No traffic police, no signs. Nothing. Just stationary traffic. There’s no option but to sit in it.

I find brief accounts online of a man on a bridge over the A12. We hope he’s okay. But the A12 is apparently closed in both directions for fourteen miles, which seems a bit extreme. We are (we’ll later discover) in the middle of a 20-mile traffic tailback with only a closed road ahead. By now it’s 3 pm, then suddenly it’s 4 pm. No movement at all.

I start texting Freddie and other members of the team: Might be a bit late for 6 pm set-up. At that stage we still assume we’ll soon be free of the traffic and will drive all the way. But by 4.30 pm, not having moved more than a few yards, we need a Plan B. Train from Colchester. That’ll work, though we’ll have to leave most of the stuff in the car. Take the books, ask the team at St John’s to bring in wine etc for sixty guests.

We reach the road block at 5 pm. The entire 20-mile tailback of traffic, including hundreds of lorries, is being shunted off the A12 into central Colchester, in the rush hour. So this is what gridlocked means. It takes an hour and a half to drive two miles from the A12 exit to Colchester station.

It’s 6.30 pm now, we’ve been on the road five and a half hours, and have travelled just 40 miles, but thanks to the amazing friends who are helping set up at St John’s and simultaneously chatting with me on WhatsApp, everything at the venue is almost ready. Where are you now? they ask from time to time, and I daren’t tell them we’re more or less where we were five hours ago. On our way to the station, I tell them. Which is true.

At Colchester station at last, I grab books from the boot, my accessories and outfit, and run for the 6.33 pm London train while Philip finds the car park, telling me: I’ll take the next train, see you there. But I miss that first train, a fast one, by two seconds. Philip catches me up – we board the 6.43, a slow one; I’d no idea there were so many stations in Essex. But hey, we’re moving.

Just after 7 pm I start getting pictures of my launch party on WhatsApp; it looks fabulous! What a team! But we won’t arrive at Liverpool Street until at the earliest 7.50 pm, and then we have to get to Waterloo. The event is due to finish at 9 pm. Touch and go.

I change on the train – modesty doesn’t interest me at this point. Accessories, lipstick, glance through set notes, carry on tap-tapping on WhatsApp.

Liverpool St: scooting fast on foot now. Central Line, then the drain to Waterloo, out and over to St John’s. Hooray!

It’s 8.15 pm, more than seven hours since we left home. Dart to the loo. Then downstairs to the Forum, and I can see lots of smiling faces. It’s the interval. Freddie’s playing the sax. Hugs and more hugs. I feel as though I’m flying. I am flying.

Books for the book table. Card reader set up. Five minutes of breathing and vocal exercises in the green room. A glass of chilled white wine. And I’m on…

I can’t say more than this: it was wonderful. Arriving was a gift. Getting there. Feeling so thoroughly supported and welcomed. Thank you everyone. And below are some pics, taken both before and after Philip and I arrived!

It was marvellous to see, even briefly, so many dear friends from different sides of my life. Thank you all for coming. A lasting sadness is that I missed hearing my brilliant guest readers Andrea Witzke Slot and Peter Carpenter, and I also missed most of Peter Kenny’s cool-as-a-cucumber compering. But I keep hearing that they were all excellent. There’d better be a next time, soon. Another sadness is not having had the time to connect with lots of people I was looking forward to meeting for the first time. I have faith that we’ll meet soon, one way or another.

So Beyond the Gate is well launched: truly a team effort… And it’s a little spooky because it’s a book of paths, tracks and roads. Diversions, dangers, risks, near-misses…

My heartfelt thanks to Philip and Freddie, Andrea Witzke Slot, Peter and Amanda Carpenter, Peter Kenny (MC), James Randell, Michael and Julien Bascom, Malcolm and Maureen Boyland, Chris and Jude Hedley-Dent. And Quentin Black for most of the photos.

Thanks also to Ewa Wiczkowska, the Bookings Officer at St John’s Waterloo, and to all the team there, for invaluable help and support.

More about Beyond the Gate here.