The Longest List

For one rather disorientating moment I thought that "The Heritage" had made the long list for the Arthur C Clarke Award. Which it has. In a way. You see it's a very, very long long list. That's because the long list is the list of all the books which are eligible for an ACCA. So I may well have come last of all eligible books. Which is probably worse than being ineligible (take a bow, all those prizes for youngsters which I undoubtedly would have won - haha - if I weren't already TOO FUCKIN' OLD). However, the screen doesn't lie and I'm up the top, thanks to the marvel of having a surname that begins with an 'A'. I'm sure Malcolm Gladwell has something to say about this but I'm not sure I can be bothered to wait and find out what it is. Anyway, I have no chance of reaching the short list, so tonight I'm gonna party like it's 1999. i.e. hide under the bed with my industrial cache of baked beans and wait for all the computers to crash.