Meeting Norm

Do you have very clear visual images of people you have made contact with but never seen? I certainly do. And I had a very vivid one of Norman Geras, whose much admired normblog I had the great pleasure of contributing to last year, here and again here. I also had a delightful lunch last autumn with Norm's lovely and talented wife, the writer Adele Geras, who I had met through this blog. Well, yesterday I went to their house in Manchester for a very nice lunch, and met the Norm for the first time. When I remarked that he did not look like I had imagined him, they pointed out quite rightly that I could have looked him up on Google images, so I did, and here he is. It was good to discover that we are both relatively new and very enthusiastic converts to the novels of Anne Tyler, and that we both thought The Patchwork Planet the best of her novels, or at any rate of the ones we had read so far -- though he is rather ahead of me, having read ten to my five. So that was fun.
I'm just about to start reading one of Adele's novels, Happy Endings, which is about a young girl's adventures in the theatre -- right up my street -- so watch this space!