For matters of national security....

I have this exercise for students in Writers' Gym which is:

For matters of national security, an undercover spy has to impersonate you in your everyday life. Write instructions. (1000 words)

When I first set the exercise, I chortled to myself. I was so pleased, in fact, I stopped and had a wee lap-of-honor coffee.
Because, to be honest with you, one of the greatest bonuses in teaching people anything, is that you can set them lessons you don't entirely have to do yourself.  ....read more

Truth Be Told

I was out walking Arthur this weekend, and a neighbor stopped me to introduce their relative.

"You're Craig Ferguson's sister." said the relative.

"Hello. Yes, I am," I replied, "Though I find it's more convenient to operate under the name of Lynn."

Not particularly interested in this information, he continued. "I have a Craig Ferguson story."    ....read more

The Dangers of Children’s Literature

We read all sorts of bedtime stories to the kids when they were younger: the Gruffalo, The Gruffalo's child, even the slightly dodgy, and astonishingly award winning- "Rasta Mouse and Da Bag O Bling", but the one that always sticks in my mind, is "Small Brown Dog's Bad Remembering day."

I don't know where we got it, - I suspect it was a gift. It seemed inoffensive enough - the story of a little brown dog who was having a bad remembering day.
Turned out though, when I read it, the small brown dog couldn't just not remember stuff, he couldn't remember his name. So, he spent the entirety of the book, wandering around asking all the other dogs in the neighborhood, if they could help him work out who he was.
Most of the other dogs don't know his name, but they do know stuff like he likes chasing squirrels, and jumping in puddles, and eventually after recognizing all the things that make him who he is, the small dog remembers his own name.

After the first read I said to Mark that the small brown dog was frankly a black-out drunk and should be taken off the reading repertoire. But as with most things, ...read more

How To Keep A Dog And Bark Yourself

Our Dog Arthur likes to bark at stuff: The doorbell. Anyone knocking on the door. The mailman. Delivery man. Kids asking us to buy cookies.
Those are his favorites, but he's not fussy. If it moves, knocks or yells, he barks.

When we're out in the back yard he likes to bark at anyone who has the audacity to walk past on the road outside.
He's even not beyond barking at cars.

When we first collected him from the dog pound he was silent for 10 days. Nothing. Not even a low growl.
Now, a year later, he's all about noise. All the time.

I've been told he thinks he's protecting me. He wants to alert me to possible dangers. He wants me to know that he's there.
It's all with the best intentions but it's been doing my head in a bit of late.
I want to know where he learned it. How can he have gone from silent to going on and on and on?

Though here in Tweddley Manor we all have our own behavioral issues.

My eldest, for example, is a kid who never does school work. Ever. Actually that's not strictly true. He doesn't do his school work until the situation gets really out of hand, and then he spends a couple of weeks cramming everything until eventually it's all fine.

That does my head in too. The denial. The discovery. The nail-biting. The cramming. It's a process I could well do without.

This spring break was all about the catch up. 4 months of work was apparently caught up with is as many days.

This time though ...read more

Can you really enjoy a Bake Sale?

I sometimes struggle to enjoy "special" occasions because there's so much pressure for them to be "special". I find myself asking throughout the day, "Am I enjoying myself? Am I enjoying myself enough? After all, this is a 'special day' and so I should be enjoying myself significantly more than I do on other days."

It was my birthday this week, and I don't think I asked any of those questions at all.

You see, even on my birthday, the kids need packed lunches. The dog needs walked. Turned out I had a client in the morning. It was full on busy till around noon, so my birthday lunch was leftovers from the night before. 
And then it was all about cake.

This year there was a lot of cake. But not for me. ...read more