I just walked past an eatery. It’s not new but I never noticed it before and now I wish I still hadn’t. Eatery is one of those  blue touch-paper words for me: it’s the invention of the kind of people who put televisions in pubs. And serve microwaved lasagne with chips.

I won’t absolutely swear that I’ve never used the word eatery. I actually think I may have served it up, with a  side dish of irony,  in one of my early novels. But still.

I’ll tell you another word I hate. Abode. And the one that brings a red haze before my eyes: tome.

As in, ‘Are you busy working on your next tome?’

Tome me not you pretentious enquirer, because a) I’m Laurie Graham not Edward feckin’ Gibbon and b) of course I’m busy working. What do you think I’m doing? Lying on a couch eating Maltesers?

Yesterday was publication day for the mass market edition of A Humble Companion. Mass market. I like that. It has the ring of fighting talk about it. I’m in Asda apparently.  Yey! Bit of a non-event, mass market release day but I celebrated anyway. A glass of fizz and a rib-eye steak in the company of friends we see far too rarely.

And now confession time. Yes ‘eatery’ does indeed appear in one of my novels. Page 369 of The Unfortunates. Glad to get that off my chest.