So I went, and talked. I think I went under time because once I sat back down I realised I’d left out whole chunks of content and these forgotten nuggets glowed back up at me from my palm cards. I did get a fair few questions at the end though, which was nice, and so got to rectify that little imbalance.

[Hello new and curious folk from the festival who’ve come along to take a squiz at my blog! Introduce yourselves in the comments, or email me if you’re shy. Tell me what you thought of the panel session. I thought it was smashing.]

All in all, I thought it was a great weekend. I met some intensely interesting, and interestingly intense, writers. I just enjoyed being among a group of like minded souls as myself. I remember standing there at the lecturn, out at the thirty? forty? fifty? people and just feeling…accepted. I don’t recall a hostile or virtuously smug face staring back at me. (Although B1 - the banana, yes, I’m not joking - at the back of the room was quite distracting with his luminous, pointy head.)

Then, at the end, a lovely woman with a striking resemblance to Jodi Picoult, came up to me and my fellow panellist, Alice, to wish us a Happy Mother’s Day.

And, I did. I met my family. We went and strolled around Federation Square. We took a horse-and-carriage ride around the streets of Melbourne as I deliberately tried to forget for those 15 minutes just how I feel ethically about letting those horses clod daily along the hard bitumen. We shared lunch as we gazed over the Yarra, watching all the tourist cruisers make a killing.

It was lovely, lovely day.

I hope yours - whether you are a mother or not - was just as nice.