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I was invited to a business lunch at Penguin to pitch for The Eyre Affair in July of 1999, and that first meeting was mildly strange, to say the least. I'd heard the rumours, of course, but I just thought the stories were urban myths - wild fabrications invented by agents and authors who had had one too many pink gins before a meeting.

The first thing you notice upon entering the lobby at Penguin towers is a small man next to the elevators, who has a selection of outdoor clothes on a rack just beside him.

"Where are you heading?" he asks brightly, and when I reply 'Penguin' he gives a knowing nod and hands me a lined gore-tex jacket and woolly hat.

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I'm one of those people who feel inexplicably guilty when being questioned by anyone in a uniform, even when I haven't done anything wrong - and in all likelihood, never will. It's probably the coward in me. It makes me a pushover when Girl-Guides are selling me cookies at the door. They know me by now, and only have to insist I buy six tons of Brownies and I'm writing a cheque.

Anyway, a wonderful thing happened as I was being questioned, fingerprinted, cross-checked and photographed prior to entry at JFK yesterday. The immigration officer was a steely-eyed mega-serious woman of perhaps forty with a name tag that read 'Flint', which I wasn't sure referred to her name, or her demeanour. She asked the purpose of my visit and I gabbled:

"I'm an author. I write books. I'm on tour. Yes, that's it. An author .... on a book tour."

She stops what she's doing and fixes me with her grey eyes, which seem to bore into me like cork screws.