So yeah, the Writers and Readers Festival. After all that buildup, I was only able to get to five events, due to an alarming lurgy which saw me, on Friday morning, scoff two extra-strength Nurofen with a double Sinutab chaser. I have to say that the resulting warm, floaty and pleasantly tunnel-vision effect was absolutely perfect for watching both the authors and my own circling thoughts looping randomly about (the phrase ‘Brownian Motion’ comes back to me from er … sixth form physics?) inside my cranium. Those pesky purple toads everywhere were a bit distracting, however.

But enough about me, all fine now. First up on Friday morning were the Chatelaines – Kelly Ana Morey, Laurence Fearnly and Jo Randerson, chaired by Catherine Chidgey. Jo was late (fog in Wellington) and Kelly Ana and Laurence were both perhaps a trifle nervy, but holding it together well. Ms Morey, looking smart, read from her forthcoming book after a bit of a sound glitch. It was hilarious – the book, not the glitch – can’t wait to hear more of Gilbert and Anthea the mail monster (she throws his letters out into the rain as a matter of daily duty) and their dogs Herzog and Mr Sammler (no prizes for naming favourite writer).

Laurence read from her book Butler’s Ringlet about butterfly-hunting in the South Island… it transpires that as a graduate (with distinction) of Bill Manhire’s class, she just wants to write ‘beautiful, beautiful things’, but has been stymied by a vicious review from Charlotte Grimshaw, ages ago ... this humbly human admission was a definite crowd-pleaser, but there’s a lesson in it: just don’t read reviews. Well, the bad ones anyway.

Jo eventually turned up, looking wild and spiky, and was funny and slightly perplexing in her reading from The Keys to Hell which Chris has got in his reading pile and will no doubt get to at some point ... It would have been good if these four had been able to get stuck in and have a good old chin-wag but they never quite made it, unlike the next lot – the scandal-mongers: Philip Temple, Dame Anne Salmond, Annamarie Jagose and Peter Wells (chair).

This was a treat. Philip Temple’s book is about the Wakefield family who in the early 1800s founded Wellington, Nelson and Canterbury settlements and had a strong family tradition of eloping with (actually closer to abducting) very young heiresses, strictly for the dosh. Bounders and cads, I should say. Anne Salmond read a juicy cannibal bit from her book about Captain Cook, and Annamarie Jagose read, in a calm and matter-of-fact way, probably the most outrageous bit of gay sex in her book Slow Water. Lots of downcast eyes and pursed lips from the Parnell matrons, but as Annamarie quite rightly pointed out, we were all there because of our interest in scandal after all … but apparently even Peter Wells told her she was brave when she informed him of her chosen piece.

I, also brave, asked a question: ‘Did they, the writers, find it a fine line to tread between the sober responsibilities of biography and (I used the wrong word) sensationalising the scandal, which is what their audiences were hungry for?’ What I meant was … exaggerating the scandal, allowing it to pull the readers.

Philip Temple and Anne Salmond both said that in the cases of their subjects, damping down the outrageousness was probably more the scenario, and not letting it dominate. And in a subsequent chat with Annamarie Jagose she agreed that sometimes when dealing with historical naughtiness – in the days when the sight of an ankle was scandal enough and diaries probably only hinted at what went on behind closed doors – a certain amount of rounding out was needed if only to bring the measure and scale of it into contemporary consciousness.

Finally for Friday, with my eyeballs rolling attractively in my head, there was ‘Of Corsets, Cowpats, Coppers and Laudanum’ with Catherine Chidgey, Annamarie Jagose again, Jenny Pattrick and Elizabeth Knox, whose common thread is the historical novel.

This bunch of women, chaired well and amusingly by Stuart Hoar, had a ball. Jenny and Elizabeth in particular were very bubbly and funny, and Annamarie at her gorgeously saturnine best. They spoke of when not to let the facts get in the way of a good story: both Jenny and Catherine found disclaimers come in very handy, and Annamarie was outraged that on her ship the captain didn’t believe in the popular ‘crossing the line’ ceremony (when going over the equator) so she damn well did it anyway. Elizabeth Knox was amazed when, having written a book about wine-making in Burgundy (in The Vintner’s Luck, one of my all-time faves, soon to be made into a movie thanks to Niki Caro – and Weta Workshop for the wings, YAY!) she discovered that in fact most of the details were correct.

But they all agreed that alternative versions of the realities were out there. Annamarie described a trip to Waimate North (where the unfortunate Mr Yate had his mission station) and how she had bumped, unbelievably, into a descendent of Mr Taylor, the sour old prude who had denounced Yate to Sydney society and thus ruined him. She lurked, eavesdropping on the woman as she spoke of her relative in glowing terms to the unconvinced guide, and left in the realisation that there’s always another point of view.

A view that was shared by the ‘Scalded Alive’ personal memoir team on Saturday – Douglas Wright, Augusten Burroughs and Alice Sebold. These dark heavyweights were a pleasant surprise – it was a hilarious show, with Augusten dominating it with his camp witticisms and Alice down-to-earth, self-deprecating and somehow wholesome and cosy, in her big cardi. Douglas just looked tired and bored for most of it, but came to life here and there with some good stories. One in particular I remember: after he’d done his rather confronting, but beautifully written (God, he’s good) reading from Ghost Danceabout New York underground gay bars full of orgies, pistoning penises and piercings, he said he’d read the first chapter of his book to Janet Frame. After prompting from Peter Wells, he revealed that she’d said it had some ‘nice … moments’.

But back to the point of view angle … they had all experienced the effect of their books on other peoples’ lives: Alice Sebold said that when a printing glitch put the date of her mother’s decline into alcoholism at ten years later than it was, she let it slide as a kind of gift to her mother, but much later, her sister told her how much it had hurt her that ten years of her own terrible alcoholic-abused childhood had been negated because of it. It’s a fine line, they agreed; one must be careful, but you’ve got to get this stuff out. But Augusten said that if his own mother decided to do her memoir, he’d sue her.

Finally, the travel writers. American Eric Hansen, and our own Grahams both Reid and Lay, chaired rather archly by Peta Mathias. She had a great quote from Bruce Chatwin though: ‘Drugs are for people who have forgotten how to walk.’

Graeme Lay’s (The Miss Tutti Frutti Contest) books belong by his own charming admission to ‘the craven school of travel writing’ that involvs first class travel if he can get it, and nice hotels, but he was nicely set off by the madly adventurous Eric Hansen and the comfortably middle of the road Graham Reid (Herald travel writer). Just being in Graham Reid’s familiar long-haired, nerdy presence is like slipping on a pair of old jeans and putting some good old rock’n’roll on the stereo. His first book, Postcards from Elsewhere was out the day before this event, and I see it’s happily reviewed in the Herald’s Travel section today.

I have a sickening fascination with travel writing as it happens. I had a ‘sliding doors’ scenario happen to me when I was in my early twenties and living and working in a chateau, or rather Schlöss, in Kitzbühel, Austria. I sent letters home detailing the lives of the rich and famous amongst whom I had washed up (dishes, that is), which were shown to the editor of a certain newspaper, who asked me for more. ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ I cried, ‘I’m having far too much fun to write,’ thus firmly closing, I have always imagined, the door in the face of my glittering travel-writing career. Oh well. There had to be a Reason, right? And it’s never too late …

Anyway, I have no idea how these four manage to also sustain a relationship (except for Graham Reid, who takes his partner with him), and travelling with three small children would pose obvious difficulties. Especially when trekking with Mongolian nomads for months at a time, á la Eric. I’m guessing that a mere few days of ‘it’s MY turn on that reindeer’, ‘no it ISN’T!’, ‘MUUUUUM!!’ and ‘I’m NOT eating THAT’ would trigger the sort of tension in the ger that you just can’t ignore.

Eric Hansen has undoubtedly had some extreme experiences and it is certainly poetic that his latest book is partly based on seven years of travel journals, which he retrieved from their hiding place on an island in the Red Sea after being shipwrecked there, then rescued by a gang of Ethiopian goat smugglers. That last bit sounds a bit Monty Python if you ask me, but it all makes for a good yarn, and perhaps it’s no accident that Eric’s favourite travel writer is Bruce Chatwin, who apparently never let the facts get in the way of good storytelling.

Well, that was it for me, I stumbled home to bed enlightened, stimulated and completely off my nana. Anyone else with any festival hightlights, don’t be shy. And if you’re feeling all down, remember Montana Poetry Day is not too far off. Wonder what kind of over-the-counter drug combination I can come up with for that …