Champagne, Croissants and George Clooney

Up at the crack of dawn this morning, well actually that's not true, up BEFORE the crack of dawn, it was so dark at six thirty a.m. that it was like midnight, and all for the sake of a Champagne breakfast celebration. Still, some people will do anything for a drink!

My publicity photographer was celebrating 25 years of being in business. The party was held at Spinnaker Tower, Gunwharf Quays, a spectacular setting on the waterfront at Portsmouth (which is actually called Oyster Quays in my detective crime novels, Tide of Death and Deadly Waters). It was held in the cafe on the ground floor, which doesn't open to the public until ten a.m. There was also the opportunity to go up the Spinnaker Tower. Pity it was so misty because on a clear day you can see for miles and miles and ... sorry, slipped into song there like the mortuary attendant in my detective series, Tom, only his favourite past time, apart from cutting up bodies, is whistling tunes from musicals rather than singing them.

There was this luxury super yacht moored up at the quay! This would set you back a few bob. When I sell as many books as Dan Brown maybe I could afford one, ha, ha! Watched the crew doing a drill. Lots of speculation as to who owned it but it was called One O One. I wondered if it was the owner of the mobile phone company, One to One, but aren't they T Mobile now? Or it could be a director of One to One Personal Training at the Apple Retail Store. Never heard of them before, but found them on the web. Someone hoped it was George Clooney (I'd have got out of bed at two a.m. for him - or should that be into bed!) and that he'd drop by for a glass of Champagne, talking of which, there was a business card draw and guess who won a bottle of Moet? Yes, yours truly. It was well worth getting up before the dawn, after all