My, how you've grown!

I've been teaching for a while, so the Year 6 pupils from my first classes are now adults in their twenties. A person's appearance can change a lot in the ten years between being 11 and being 21 and when I run into past pupils, as I sometimes do, I don't always recognize them at first. Sometimes I don't really recognize them at all - I just have this vague I'm sure I know you feeling for a person who I can't put a name to. Then, if I do recognize them all of a sudden, I'm embarrassed to say that what comes out of my mouth is the same old nonsense that older people used to say to me when I was growing up. All that 'goodness - just look at you' kind of stuff. So I'm writing this now to apologize to anyone who has experienced this kind of thing. But, you should know that it just can't be helped - it just pops out of the mouth before the brain recovers from the happy shock of connecting that four-foot freckly boy with a grin to the six-foot bearded guy with a grin.
It's always good to see you.

Describing an elephant...

...you know, like you do. Some Year 6 pupils and I had a go at describing a pachyderm today. The KS2 SATs will require them to do some writing and we had been discussing the problem of not knowing anything about the subject that you're asked to write about. That's not a problem, I said, because you can always make it up. So we shut our eyes for a while and pretended that we were in a room with an elephant.
Everybody did a good job but I was especially impressed with Kane's description of the elephant's colour being as grey as the sky when it's about to rain and Harry's description of the elephant moving from side to side like an old man in a rocking chair gently throwing his weight about.

Good luck to anyone doing their SATs in May - just remember to try and make it real when you write.

I've not posted for a while because I've been teaching more and writing less but that will change after Easter when I plan to start a new book. I've already started it in my head - in fact I've been thinking about it for ages.

Hand-made Books and a New Year's Resolution

It's been a while since I made a book from scratch and my resolution is to make one. I'm going to write it, marble the end papers, stitch it up and give it a hardcover. When it's done I will post a video of it here.

Happy New Year.

Cold, colder coldest.

There is discussion in our house about whether or not it is cold. For teenagers who do not need to wear a coat to school and those who grew up in Cumbria, it is not cold. The dog is growing a winter shagginess and doesn't seem too bothered. I, however, am frozen. It is hard to write when your fingers and toes feel like they're being nipped at and it makes it tricky to play the Ukulele.
I have a few chords now and am speeding up moving between them. The mouse has yet to inspire a story but I think he will. I'm pretty sure he will.

Return of the Mouse

I am very pleased to have the little wooden mouse with the leather tail and ears back on my desk. So where has it been all this time? Earlier this year my daughter packed a rucksack and went to Thailand and Singapore, Australia and New Zealand, Fiji and America. It seems that mouse went too.
The return of the mouse has coincided with the arrival of my ukulele. I wrote about The Double Bass Mouse so perhaps I'll get an idea for a story about a Ukulele Mouse. I hope I can learn to play it - I'd like to be able to strum a tune while I sit at my computer thinking about what to write next.

I can, canoe?

I have been in the Ardeche region of France this summer - famous for its chestnuts, apricots and Rhone-Valley wine. One day my family, our friends and I canoed the Ardeche river (well, 32kms of it) along with hordes and hordes of other tourists and our dog.
It is called a descent because you paddle along with the flow of the river and every so often descend via a cascade of water between a tumble of rocks.
Skilled canoeists manage to make the descent inside their canoes, deftly manoeuvring themselves between the rocks and over the rapids. I, on the other hand, invariably hit the rocks, bounced out of the canoe and ripped downstream like some old pooh-stick only to bob to the surface with my swimsuit in disarray and my hair plastered across my face. No husband, no dog and no canoe in sight yet miraculously I still had my fist tightly gripped around my paddle. Happy Days.

The Lost Mouse

I don't know how long it has been missing but today I discovered that I no longer have a small, painted wooden mouse with a thin leather tail. I used to have two of these mice but I gave one to Vicky. The other one used to sit on the mantlepiece in my bedroom but when I thought to look for it today it wasn't there. Phil at Graham Hall happened to ask me if I had a mouse and that was when I went to look and found it gone. I have a large collection of small things and it is difficult to keep track of it all but I am certain that the small wooden mouse was around quite recently. I use these little things for story-writing workshops so perhaps I took the small mouse somewhere and left it behind. Or perhaps it's just off foraging for crumbs or making tiny holes in the skirting board behind the sofa. With a bit of luck it'll turn up - I'll let you know.