SPARE A THOUGHT FOR TURKEYS

I walked by a barn in the fens in the summer and heard a great GOBBLE of turkeys coming from inside.

I walked by the barn in the winter and the GOBBLE was gone.

ALL PARTY WRITERS GROUP

Every year around this time the All Party Writers Group holds its winter drinks reception at the House of Commons. This year the invitation came from John Whittingdale MP, Chairman of the Culture, Media and Sport  Select Committee.  We gathered, on a freezing night in a very warm marquee on The Terrace. Authors at this party are expected to take the opportunity of lobbying MPs and Lords about issues that matter to us -the current one being where PLR is going to end up after the cuts - hopefully with ALCS. I spotted Nicholas Allan and Michelle Magorian who, like me, hadn't found a Minister to harangue and were enjoying the wine and canopees. Then came the 2010 Educational Writers' Award presentation. ALCS and the Society of Authors created this award in 2008 to 'celebrate educational writing that inspires creativity and encourages students to read widely and build up their understanding of a subject beyond the requirements of exam specifications.' It's the only UK award that focuses on educational non-fiction and they always hand out the prizes at this party.

Bill Bryson won it with A Really Short History of Nearly Everything  - and was very generous to his publisher, Random House, when he was receiving prize money in a large white envelope, saying it was very little to do with him and mostly to do with them. So various people from Random House walked away with large white envelopes too!



THE SNOW, THE SNOW!

A little bit of snow can turn the world upside down.  As airports close and trains leave passengers stranded, global companies find they are running their businesses in unlikely places. This week  Plaister Press (a company in its infancy) has had to share its very modest premises in Cambridge with a Canadian Shipping Company,a Swedish Mining Company and a London Advertising Company. All were impressed by the excellent wireless connection on offer. Plaister Press, in return, received some good tips on accountancy, marketing and invoicing systems in the hope that ,one day, it too will be global!

MUCH ADO BOOKS

There's a a wonderful small independent bookshop in Alfriston, East Sussex, run by Cate Olson and Nash Robbins. It has recently moved premises and, as you can see from the picture, has a covered archway housing their second-hand books in a way that reminds me of the bookstalls along the Seine in Paris.  The new books are in the small shop on the right. Through the archway is a courtyard (where they keep chickens) leading to a renovated barn.  It is here that they put on events. 

I did a workshop there a couple of weekends ago, showing children my original arwork, sketches and roughs and getting them to make their own little books. It was a well organised, ticketed event, with refreshments laid on. The  price of the ticket included a signed copy of one of my books for each child. We all had a lot of fun and shared our stories at the end.

AUSSI SKETCHES

As I sit at my desk and look out at the November rain, conscious of an absence of light for most of the day, I recall where I was a year ago - travelling down the Queensland coast in a camper van named Rattles, with my middle son:

snorkeling on the Great Barrier Reef

bathing in a pool with white parakeets,

lying on the surf beaches

then meeting a dingo, driving Rattles down an isolated track, getting stuck in sand, digging in vain with a plastic dust pan for five hours, and finally being rescued -

so that I could return to my own safe, wet island to enjoy the November rain for a little longer.

THRALE'S

Last night there was a meeting of Thrale's; a newly formed group of writers - adult and childrens - meeting at Lady Cavendish College in Cambridge. There was wine and snacks and socialising and we all brought one of our books. Then the lights were dimmed and Chris Priestley entertained us with a ghost story; The Demon Bench End from Uncle Montague's Tales of Terror; a story set in Cambridge which starts to get nasty in Grantchester Meadows. Not very nice having to cycle home afterwards on a dark, wet, November night.
Thrale's

IMAGINARY WORLDS

There's a workshop I give in Primary Schools where I ask children to draw a place they know really well - where they can look around and know exactly what is there. It could be their bedroom, their garden, a playground. Once I have them in this familiar place, they have to think of something that could be the entry point to an imaginary world.  This task always grabs their imagination; even the most unimaginative pupils come up with a point of entry: a shaft of light from a window falling on a certain floor board in their bedroom; a particular wood pattern on the garden fence that looks like a door; a swing in the playground that, when it reaches a certain height, catapaults them into another world. The key point is to establish a very real and ordinary world before attempting to enter any imaginary world. 

    The illustrators here draw two such very ordinary places - Arthur Rackham, a rabbit hole in Alice in Wonderland and Pauline Baynes, a wardrobe in The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe. Neither of them show the entry actually taking place; that is left for the text to describe and the reader to imagine. But in a picture book, more is shown in the illustrations. I talk about this in the previous post GOING BETWEEN WORLDS where I illustrate the scary moment of entry into the world inside a tree in The Little White Sprite.