Sunny spells more powerful than magic ones as Sunshine whops Harry Potter's speccy wizard butt.

Forgive me. I've just heard my beach stunt on Broadway Market for the last bank holiday was so successful it's given me best-seller status*, with my book OUTSELLING THE LATEST HARRY POTTER*. Yes, whilst the latest wizard waffle was published last summer, with a huge international advertising budget behind it, my book has been out 3 sunny weeks now, has had as much marketing spend as the local scout jamboree, yet has pipped the speccy spellster's latest in the best-seller charts*. You'd crow too if it happened to you.

East Londoners are voting with their feet evidently. Not for them the pot-boiling puerility of the Rowling industry, but honest local fare, by local authors pouring their honest heart-felt toil into their works. Supporting local produce, full of hearty, heart-warming, nourishment. Nurtured by the benevolent rays of the East End sun, and fanned by the gentle zephyrs of amateur publicity puffing. Is it too far fetched to see this as the spirit of the Blitz reasserting itself? Plucky East Enders standing up to the boastful boschfulness of the publishing megabrands. Resiting the tyrannical doodlebugging carpet-bombing tactics of the sinister book-peddlers, who'd have us believe there is only one book in the world (or 2 counting the Da Vinci Crud). Well, that won't happen here, and the mega-sales* sensation of the Sunshine spirit of independence and integrity has proven this.

Let us go forward together.

* At the Broadway Bookshop, based upon sales to date. All statements are accurate at time of posting, and are based upon information provided by the Broadway Bookshop. The author is wholly responsible for all hyperbole, self-engrandisement and potential defamation of respected members of the publishing industry, and his views noway reflect those of the Broadway Bookshop or its subsidiaries. All hyperbole, self-engrandisement and defamation are the result of a hangover. The supplier of the alcohol The London Review of Books Bookshop, where the author ligged a fair amount of free plonk last night, is not responsible for the author's condition and resulting views. It is however responsible for not having a copy of his book, and being rather sniffy about whether they would stock it or not. Which led him to seek solace in the bottle they so readily plied at their event. Indirectly therefore, scarcity of book and abundance of wine resulted in the author's need to assert his worth in this posting.

Another mist opportunity: the curse continues

I have always wanted to see St Ives, and for two main reasons: the famous light upon which an artistic school was founded; and the famous Lighthouse which Virginia Woolf used as the central motif of her novel To the Lighthouse. A book partly about the disappointments of the unpredictable British climate, whose opening passage I use as the epigraph to my first chapter. The first of many cruel ironies.

And so I finally got to St Ives this weekend, using my appearance at the Daphne du Maurier Festival in Fowey, and the hottest, sunniest weekend of the year so far as the perfect opportunity to see both light and Lighthouse in their elements. As the whole of the country blazed under cloudless skies, as London saw 26 degrees, Brighton 27, other parts of Cornwall around the same, St Ives remained in a sepulchral sea mist which meant I was lucky to see my hand in front of my face. Light, famous or otherwise, was in scarce supply. Two items of news were repeatedly vouchsafed me throughout my increasingly hopeless day: that it had been lovely there yesterday; and that few had seen the like of such fog before in spring time. It was all down to the hot weather reacting with the sea. Strangely enough, none of this offered me much consolation. Nor did the news that back in London, indeed other parts of the county, were having a fine day of it; nor that it would be lovely there tomorrow. Today I was in St Ives, tomorrow I wouldn't be. No doubt I would be somewhere that would be experiencing snow of such profusion that the saltiest old sea dog among had n'ere seen the like, man and boy, while the rest of the county sweltered.

Why did I stick around? Because like a berk I believed some of the other folk who told me it would clear by 1.00 ... 3.00... 4.00... an ever retreating horizon of delusional hope. And there was my long-anticipated trip to the Lighthouse. About 4.00, the sun did try to peep through, so we got in the car and headed off to Godrevy, to see the Lighthouse close up. Don't get me wrong. I quite like fog. It's so rare in London now I rather regret it, and often wish we could have a good old-fashioned pea-souper. But there is a time and a place for everything, and the time for fog is not May, when the rest of the country is in bikinis, and you are stumbling perilously close to a cliff edge staring forlornly into a bank of swirling stuff and half expecting an enormous Hound with flashing eyes to come bounding towards you and rip your flippin throat out. I know I'm a hopeless land lubber, but correct me if I'm wrong, i thought the whole point of a lighthouse is that you can see it. In any conditions. I kid you not, I couldn't see a bloody thing, and muttered a silent prayer for those in peril on the sea along with my curses for the merry dance I'd been led on that day. And to cap it all, the chirpy twonk of a DJ based in London played sunshine records for the next hour on our drive out and wouldn't shut his trap about the glorious day we'd all been having.

I had not had my vision.

O, we did like to be beside the seaside

The launch of Sunshine at the Broadway Bookshop on Saturday was a roaring success. Friends and punters turned up, books were sold. Someone tried to nick the yellow icecream tricycle kindly lent by Lock7 cafe and bike shop to drum up trade. A two year old knocked over my sand castle (I'm thinking of doing a Charles Atlas course to square up to him). Folk got drunk, and the beach was left in chaos by the end of the day.

But best of all, the kind old sun put his kiss-me-quick hat on, and kep it on all day. Kissed us all, and bestowed his blessings on a day dedicated to his celebration.

Hip Hip Horray.

If I don't get a tan soon my credibility (such as it is), will be in shreds

Yesterday my long-awaited book about Sunshine was published, and the world fell silent with awe. Well, it fell silent. I managed to find one copy in a bookshop in central London, which, of course, I maneuvered into a more favourable position on the racks. No doubt it has been shifted back to its original place by now, and I can see this turning into a fun sport over the coming months. Eventually they will set guards over it, which will make it look more important, and so achieve my ends. Whatever it takes.

But, my main concern at the moment is my pallor. How will my public take me seriously as an expert on sunshine, and defiant champion sun-worshipper, if I remain the colour of old M&S underpants in need of a good boil? Next week I'll be giving a talk at the Daphne Du Maurier Festival in Fowey, Cornwall, and if the sun don't come out before then I'll be denounced publicly as a fraud. Go on a sunbed councils one friend. Go get sprayed another. It's too late for a sunbed. It takes a few weeks to build up to a tan, and, anyway, it's not the same. As for being sprayed. I did that once, and, I'm in no hurry to repeat this.

I was writing a piece for Vogue on the history of the suntan. The Vogue name worked its magic, and got me an interview with the CEO of St Tropez spray tan, and a sample all-over paint job from none other than Posh Spice's personal sprayer. I knew you'd be impressed. Yet, it couldn't have been less glamorous. There I was, in big pants and what looked like a pair of plastic incontinence pants on my head, being given 'definition' (a six pack by the trompe l'oeil of the tanster's craft), for three days of rusty smeardom smelling like an old biscuit tin. O the glamour. And what kind of message would that be? They'd see through it immediately. No. I can't do it. It's real or nothing. I can but pray for sun soon, and toast myself into a presentable state to meet my public. With a tan they might not even recognise me in that bookshop, too.