stands for pop-up social enterprise think-tank, more or less. I’m taking part in it throughout this week. More details here. The ‘pop-up’ part of the title refers to the fact that we will be based in what was until recently an active commercial space. Like any pop-up shop or enterprise POPse plans to take over – on a temporary basis – a redundant property. In this case, the former Subway sandwich shop on Exmouth Market.

As with any pop-up venture the lifespan of POPse is going to be short. Come Friday 13th POPse will vanish into the night, leaving, we hope, a bank of provocative ideas and critiques. It begins today. Hope to see you down there.

last night from my talk in Lincoln – which was fun, I like Lincoln – I caught a bit of Tony Livesey on 5 Live. It was coming up to midnight and they had a feature on what made people happy. Of the four people to call in two of them said that it was the small groups they belonged to that made them happy. One of these was a running club, the other a book group. Someone should write a book about this.

is what I have before me. It starts tomorrow in Swindon, before heading cross-country to Lincoln for a talk the following afternoon. Obviously the drive isn’t that far but it takes a while to pack up the show and get my entourage loaded up – think several coaches emblazoned with the book’s cover, in-coach sleeping areas, dieticians, a make-up team, pyrotechnics, sound engineers etc. In Lincoln I’ll be talking about eccentrics rather than groups, and the following day the nationwide tour marches on London for a homecoming gig at the Big Green Bookshop. Very much hope to see you at one of these.

p.s. turns out that some authors really do live like this. Here’s the bus used by Eoin Colfer, author of the Artemis Fowl books (image from babygotbooks blog).

there’s a Guardian review of Together here, from yesterday’s Review.

appeared today in the Independent, by Jonathan Sale. Which is great, a relief. This was after an extremely interesting and considered review of Together by Lord Wei (alongside his review of Rachel Botsman’s Collaborative Consumption, a book I’m looking forward to), as well as a piece in the Liverpool Daily Post.