Goodbye!

People, I have gone. But fret not: I have reappeared here, with a new permanent blog, where everything frabjous will happen. Please come and join me there. There be parties and cake. Well, not cake, because I prefer chocolate, but chocolate.

Patience, my friends, patience a while

My move to a new blogging home is taking a little longer than Andrew Brown (Design4Writers) and I had hoped, due to the unforeseen oddities of the set-up of my main website. I'm soon going to be asking Andrew to do a whole redesign of that - he didn't do the existing one, sadly - but meanwhile he's trying to get some of the oddities smoothed out before the blog goes live. And when it does go live, it won't be as sparkly and pretty as we'd like. (Well, OK, it's only me that wants sparkly and pretty; Andrew wants sensible and well-designed. Men - kuh!)

What we're aiming for is a blog seamlessly embedded in my main website, which will be better for SEO - yawn - and will be better adapted to my redesigned career as a retired advice-giver and a newly energised writer and speaker. Hooripity-yay!

It will still be purple. And it will still have chocolate. Obvs.

Moving again!

I'm moving! And I hope you'll come with me. No, not move in with me - I couldn't take all the extra washing - I mean come to my new blog home. Soon. (The decorators are in at the moment.)

I know, I know, I've been messing you around horribly with all this constant flux. But we will soon settle down together into a comfortable co-existence and, if I explain, all will become clear.

As you know, I started Crabbit At Home as a place to kick off my shoes and talk about more varied and more personal things than my Help! I Need a Publisher! blog allowed.

Then, as you also know, I very recently stopped blogging there, after tidying everything up so that all the lovely free info remains for anyone who wants it, along with links to the pretty books which convey that info so much more organisedly.

But when I did that, I said I had a plan. Because, as you also also know, I'm redirecting my career back towards being a children's writer. But I still want to carry on blogging. Just try to stop me!

And Crabbit At Home just doesn't have the right ring for my life as a children's and YA writer. Since there is to be no more crabbit, Crabbit At Home becomes redundant.

So, my wonderful tech expert / new website manager / cover designer / personage extraordinaire, Andrew Brown of Brown Media and Design4Writers, is working to integrate a NEW blog into my main website. (Blog coming soon!) Andrew didn't design that website and there are some complications caused by how it was built, so it's not a simple matter. I'm going to be asking Andrew to do a major redesign, probably next year, but meanwhile the blog will be there and I'll be able to do everything I want with it.

I can also run screaming to him at any opportunity. I have built that into our agreement. (Andrew, did you not read the small print? Silly man. *capers*)

At my new blog - which has a special name, a name which you will not know until you arrive there because it's currently a secret - you will find all the same sorts of things I have been blogging about here, same voice, same person. One blog, one place, one life. Tbh, I can't guarantee that there won't be a residual crabbit flavour occasionally.

How will you know when this house-move is taking place? Because I will tell you and because we will have a PARTY. Of course! Some things do not change.

Wonder if anyone can guess the name of my new blog? It's a single word. A word that's very important to me.

Parenting Teenagers - my talk today

Today I'm in Lancashire, doing a talk on the teenage brain for professionals as part of the Lancashire Children's and Young People's Trust. Before I catch the train, I thought I'd quickly put some tips up here, as I won't have time to go through them today. The main part of my talk is NOT parenting tips, because I am NOT some kind of older Supernanny, but the programme does say that one of the outcomes will be a better understanding about how to parent teenagers. I don't much like seeming to think I'm some kind of expert parent (ask my daughters about that) but I know it tends to be what people want. What I mostly want to talk about is how fascinating the brain is.

These tips won't make the fullest sense if you weren't there to hear me talk about what's going on in the brain during adolescence, but you know you can always read Blame My Brain for that...

Some tips for being a parent to teenagers

1. Understand some of the reasons for adolescent behaviour – this removes a sense of blame. (Lots of explanations in Blame My Brain.)

2. We have to learn to be parent of a teenager after being the parent of child. The parent of a child has a mission to protect. The parent of a teenager has to go against her/his own nature and resist that paramount desire to protect. The teenager needs to push against that in order to attain the evolutionary goal of both sides: independence.

3. Boundaries – if we set boundaries, they know we care (even though they may not show it!); they also like something to fight against. So, set your boundaries carefully and be prepared to be a bit flexible. A negotiated boundary is stronger than a rigid autocratic one.

4. Choose your moment to have a conversation - do you like being interrupted when you're relaxing or engrossed in something. Negotiate when the conversation will take place, if necessary.

5. Modelling good behaviour - we learn partly by imitation. As your teenager watches you managing to control your emotion, his own brain is preparing to imitate that. And vice versa...

6. Choose the battles to fight - do untidy bedrooms matter? On the other hand, some battles over less emotional/critical issues are safer grounds and may be satisfying to the teenager.

7. Sleep – operate sleep hygiene rules (certain activities to be avoided or encouraged during hour before desired sleep time); set bedtimes. (Interesting research suggests this may help a lot).

8. We are less responsible than we think. We can get all this right and still our teenager may struggle. Don't beat yourself up.

9. Put ourselves in their shoes – recognise how we bristle if given advice/criticism. So, treat your teenager more as an adult than as a child in how you talk to them. This takes a long time for parents to learn to do!

I'll have more details later but just now I must rush to my train...

Do comment!

Tears in the morning

You'll think I've gone a bit mad if I tell you that entering my garden office (The Crabbit Hutch) this morning made me cry. It was caused by two things. Well, three but let me tell you the first two first. Astrantia Masterwort and Stimulus Generalisation.

Let me explain.

Back in May, you may remember that I was lucky enough to acquire my amazing garden office. From day one, it revolutionised my working life. (I'll talk about that in more detail one day soon.)

In June, I went to visit a friend called Jane, at her home in Edinburgh. Jane was very unwell, but she and her husband and my husband had a lovely afternoon discussing lots of things, some of which were about her illness and some of which weren't. We stayed much longer than we'd planned, because a) we were all having a nice time and b) Jane and Ian were adamant that we were not outstaying our welcome.

Astrantia Masterwort from the garden

I took with me some flowers from our garden, which included some which we didn't know the name for. They grow outside my Crabbit Hutch, and I can see them as I sit at my desk. We discussed why it is that Jane and I were usually able to remember the names of plants when we'd heard them once, and our husbands usually couldn't. Jane was a highly experienced clinical psychologist and I'm interested in the brain, so there was lots to discuss here.

Another thing we discussed was how my new office had instantly changed my whole working life. Jane said, "Ah, that's Stimulus Generalisation," and she explained some more and suddenly everything made sense, in deep and clever ways that I've come to understand more and more. In very short, it describes how our brains link the cues around us to our behaviour and if we want to change our behaviour we need to change the cues around us. There's much more to it than that, but that's the essence.

The day after that lovely afternoon, Jane emailed. She'd identified the flowers. Astrantia Masterwort. Neither of us would forget the name.

So, why the tears when I entered my Crabbit Hutch today? And why the tears as I type this?

Jane died at the weekend. We knew she was going to and we knew it would be soon. I hadn't seen her since that afternoon, though we had emailed quite a lot, until she wasn't able to. She had been quite incredibly brave. I got the news while I was at the York Festival of Writing for the whole weekend and, because I had to do a load of really exhausting events and one-to-one sessions, I couldn't process this information. I guess I blocked it. That makes me feel bad.

When I walked into my office for the first time this morning, a new manifestation of Stimulus Generalisation kicked in because a part of how I understand how my Crabbit Hutch works for me is linked to Jane. So I cried. As I look out of the window, the Astrantia Masterwort are still flowering. And I'm just really, really sad.

(I've disabled comments, because I don't want everyone to feel they have to say something. I hope you understand.)

Blame My Brain - new cover coming!

I love the new cover that Walker Books have designed for the new edition of Blame My Brain, which will be relaunched in May next year, with an updated paperback version and an ebook version. I'll be doing events to support it. And I may have some special news, soon, too!

What do you think of the cover?

I also have another book about the brain, Know Your Brain, aimed at anyone from 9+/families, showing you how to look after and respect your brain. It features references to my dog... Great idea for a present for an enquiring 9+ child.

I'll see some of you in York today, at the York Festival of Writing. I'll be the one looked exhausted.

Of mice and a man and woman

(Warning: although there is no flash photography, there are scenes which may be disturbing to some.)

Normally, I use poison. (I did warn you.) But yesterday, Mr M and I managed to catch a mouse humanely (if having a large plastic box thrown on top of you and a larger piece of cardboard slipped smoothly under your bottom while you leap around like a giant flea counts as humane, which apparently it does to vermin-lovers.)

We managed to do this by a combination of speed, teamwork, planning, tupperware and enormous bravery, along with a determination to show this mouse exactly who should be afraid of whom.

I then carried it gently and almost lovingly up the garden while marvelling at it pretty eyes and how high it was managing to jump inside its box. Also its fatness and roundness and possibly pregnantness.)

I carried it a very long way up the garden, which is a very long garden. And I let it go amongst some shrubs that seemed to me to be either very good mouse habitat or else a very good place for it to meet a "natural" (and apparently therefore humane) death. (In fact, more likely a feline one, or else a freezing one.)

Mr M and I congratulated ourselves on a job well and humanely done.

An hour later, Mr M called me to the French windows, where we watched the mouse watch us. I think it was saying, "Well, that was nice, as far as it goes, but I'm back now." It practically knocked on the door, I tell you. Then it vanished. Last seen heading towards a tiny crack in the wall.

Last night, Mr M and I were woken by the home-coming party. What a scampering and popping of tiny champagne corks there was in the hall! I am absolutely convinced that while that mouse was outside, it was rounding up a whole load of garden mice and inviting them back to its (our) place for a hooley. Possibly, judging by that mouse's round belly, even to celebrate the imminent birth of a load more mice. How many mice can one (or, to be fair, presumably two) mice produce in a year? Don't answer that.

Next time, I swear, it's poison.

Today I...

1. Spoke to an audience of 150ish teachers who  displayed varying degrees of interest (but mostly, it has to be said, interest) in my talk about reading, reading for pleasure, teenagers, brains and more about the brain.

2. Managed, mostly, to block the fact that one man in the audience was shaking his head most of the time.

3. Sold a book. And gave away masses of posters, postcards and info about dyslexia. Hooray!

4. Went to M&S on the way home and bought some scrummy ingredients for dinner, but then got a text from Mr M to say his train wouldn't get in till 9.30. And he'd have eaten. Never mind - there's always tomorrow.

5. Re-read and attempted to process an email from my agent yesterday, re a publishing decision which surprised me, and not in a bad way.

6. And took a phone call which included the word "television".

Well, Mr M may not be back, but I'm, frankly, celebrating.

Cheers!

Name that character!

Ideas, please! I need a good name for a character in a children's book. An lady in her early 70s, aristocratic by origin, eccentric, mysterious, elegant. A name which resonates and is striking, but not too comic. Not a villain, though she is somewhat scary and aloof. Not cuddly. Emotionally somewhat fragile or fractured, though she's built a strong shell around herself.

The only other thing you might need to know about her is that her life was saved by a horse when she was a child, and she's horse-obsessed, so it's possible that she might have taken a horse-related middle name upon herself as an adult.

Ideas, please, in comments below!

If I use your suggestion, I'll credit you... If the book is ever published.

New term, new school, new girl, new books, new readers

Doesn't September always feel like the start of something? Dates back to when we were all at school and September meant new pencil cases and shoes and jotters. It's all full of hope and resolutions and a little bit of fear.

As many of you know, I'm about to start a new direction, too, stopping my writing-advice blog and books and emails and consultancy and all the other ways I found myself offering help to fellow writers. (The advice is still there, and so are my books for writers.)

And as many of you know this is not because I've had enough of it: it's because I want to get back to the real writing. For children. Focusing on story, on readers, on gorgeous books with exciting covers, and all the face-to-face, heart-to-heart, eyes-wide excitement that goes with children as readers. And I can't do the blogging and the writing, or not as much writing as I want.

I also want to put on record my commitment to supporting libraries and librarians, physical bookshops and enthusiastic booksellers. I want to be part of that again. I have had some decent success with self-publishing but my heart is more in writing than publishing and I want to publish less and write more. Publishers can help me do that. (If I can get another contract, of course - and that depends on my writing a book they think readers will want. I'm prepared to take that chance.)

So, am I writing more teenage fiction? No! Well, I'll never say never, but it's not what I'm doing right now. You may think we're none of us getting younger but in my writing I am. *swallows cod-liver oil* Back to the age group that Chicken Friend was for. Chicken Friend did really well and, although out of print, is still my most borrowed book from libraries. I often asked my former editor if she'd like me to do more along those lines but she always seemed not to hear the question, as she wanted me to do more teenage stuff. But now, I'm returning to that wonderful, enthusiastic age group with a vigour. Maybe someone else will like my new ideas for that age group.

So, I've written a new novel for 8-10s and have a load more ideas in the pipeline, including a highly commercial high-concept series. My agent wants me to hurry up and get on with these ideas.

So I will!

Watch this space.

If you want to bamboozle me, now's a good time

If anyone wants to deceive, bamboozle or mug me, any time over the next five days I'm going to be a push-over. I probably won't even see you coming. My head is going to be dizzied by debate, confusticated by conversations, and buzzing with b...b...b... ideas. It is the much-heralded (and in my case somewhat dreaded) World Writers' Conference as part of the Edinburgh International Book Festival and I am in it. And it starts today. From lunchtime. Hence my slight earlier-than-usual posting. I will not be fit for anything later.

I am sure the only reason I'm in it is because I'm crabbit and I think we are expected to be crabbit and indulge in near-fisticuffs because that's what some internationally-renowned authors did at the previous one, fifty years ago, on which this is scarily modelled. (Even the new one's website looks scary, don't you think? I have no intention of being crabbit in public, so the idea of being expected to be eloquently crabbit is scary.

Then all the bumpf came a couple of days ago and I became a bit less scared and a lot more excited, because I discovered that they have laid on a vast and exciting programme of social opportunities to discuss anything we want (well, book-related, I guess, but who knows?) with fellow delegates. And I very much do like the idea of discussing (even crabbitly) book-related things with other writers and to be given many opportunities to do this with writers I mostly haven't met before is an exciting idea.

As I say, hypnotised as I will be by all this probably-lubricated discussion and the effort to avoid fisticuffs or tongue-tied moments, you could probably get me to sign anything.

Wish me luck. I shall report.

My experience of work experience girls

I've had two girls with me, doing work experience - Alex Brogan and Mairi Chittleburgh. They've been wonderful! Later, I'm going to get them to blog here about their experience.

When they first arrived, I spent time explaining all the parts of publishing, agenting and writing. Then I told them about all the projects I'm involved in at the moment and I identified some they might be able to help with.

Their main task on the first day was to go through the whole text for my recently finished novel, Lizzy Invisible, and a) make notes of every fact about every character b) check for consistency of facts and c) tell me if there were any aspects at all that I should change. I must say, I did like hearing choruses of "awwwww" and "OH NO!" coming from the next door room! Late that night, I incorporated their (few) suggestions and sent it to my agent, who has now pronounced it fit to go to publishers. *shivers*

They also started brainstorming names and characters for a commercial series I'm planning.

Then they made lists of schools I can tell about a competition I'm organising for the Highwayman books. And researched the authors I'm chairing at the Edinburgh Book Festival.

Next task is to start planning a marketing campaign for my proposed ebooking of Sleepwalking and The Passionflower Massacre. They have already had some good ideas. And they will be commissioning the covers from my designer!

They will be spending a day or two at the Edinburgh Book festival with me next week. Unfortunately they can't come to my school event or workshop but they are coming to the event I'm chairing on Monday - Sally Gardner and Celia Rees. Do come!

They are both starting their final year at The Mary Erskine School in Edinburgh, a school I've had many links with. Girls from the year above them helped write Deathwatch and launch The Highwayman's Curse, for example. Fantastic school and the girls are a credit to it.

And they will get their names in the acknowledgements for Lizzy Invisible, if it is published...

Mind you, what I hadn't realised is that Alex Brogan has another claim to fame. And they both eat chocolate, so they will do well as writers.

Mondays are Red and the lovely trailer

I came across the trailer for Mondays are Red the other day. My younger daughter made it and I think it's very wonderful indeed.

Mondays are Red is currently an ebook only. It was my first YA novel and had some fabulous reviews. You'll either love it or think it's weird! It's challenging and different, with weird language because it's seen through the eyes of a boy not only waking from a coma but discovering that he has synaesthesia.

And my daughter who made it is now looking for a proper job in the film industry, making documentaries. She now has enough great work experience on her CV that she's ready for proper, paid work as a researcher or production assistant.

Let me know if you have any ideas or contacts for her!

If you'd like to buy Mondays are Red from Amazon, it will make my day! ONly £2 at the moment. If you write a review, it will make my week ...

UK link

US link

Lulu link for non-Amazon purchases

It's written for teenagers but very often enjoyed by adults, especially those interested in language. Teachers will also be interested in the examples of inspired creative writing from pupils at the end of the ebook.

Here's that spooky trailer again!

Don't read on if you don't want to read any reviews:

I'm Going For Gold

So, the London Olympics begin today. I'm looking forward to watching the opening ceremony on TV and heading to London tomorrow to see some events over the weekend. With my unsponsored packed lunch!

What you don't realise is that I'm also taking part. I'm proudly representing my country in the heavyweight category of the How About You All Stop Carping? competition. This is a little-known sport but the rules are this: every time you hear someone being cynical or disparaging of the achievements and hopes of others, you get one point for rolling your eyes, two points for yawning, five points for temporarily blocking them on Twitter (with a conversion giving two extra points if you also hide their Facebook updates) and a whopping ten points for writing a blogpost on the subject. I'm going for gold.

I was pretty ashamed earlier this week to read this article in the NYT. Is this really how others see us? How embarrassing. I plan to fight it. I may be crabbit, and that may mean I’m often grumpy but it does not mean I’m negative or mean-spirited. I see I have competition from the Guardian, where there was an excellent piece today which probably guarantees them a place in the final of the How About You All Stop Carping? comp. I was also delighted by the BBC coverage at lunch today, both the UK news and the Scottish one. No carping there, not a spot of it.

It strikes me that those who take such pleasure in focusing gleefully on any mistakes that are made (or that they expect to be made) are usually those who not only couldn't organise the proverbial piss-up but wouldn't even get off their backsides to try. They tend to be those who don't join organising committees, don't get involved in community activities, don't attempt difficult things. They don't have time because they are too busy disparaging the efforts of others. And that is time-consuming; it also drains the ambition and creativity out of you.

I've loved to bits the wonderful sitcom, Twenty Twelve. And some of the truths they've parodied are real things to discuss and criticize. And yes, some of the things that have been mirrored by reality have been brilliant. The buses getting lost because the drivers had never been to London, for example, hilariously mirrored the first episode. No, I'm not saying we can't laugh when ridiculous things happen or are said or done. I loved the Orwell quote in the Guardian article - when asked why Britain doesn't have the goose-step: because people would laugh.

But there's laughing when something silly goes wrong and then learning from it. (I'm sure whoever showed the wrong Korean flag has learnt from it...) And then there's sneering in advance and doing sod all about it except carrying on sneering and looking out for more and more things to sneer about.

To be clear: I'm not saying you shouldn't complain when things are done badly or that you shouldn't argue against something happening if you think it shouldn't happen. Begin against something or criticising mediocrity is fine; it's the mean-spirited, lazy, dour-faced carping and sneering while doing so that is what I'm on about.

Yes, so, some people who hate sport will become sick of the focus on something they find boring. Some people who work in London or one of the other venues may have their journeys to work affected for three weeks. Yes, drivers in London may well be irritated by the Olympic lanes. And the issue of not being allowed to eat unsponsored crisps or wear unsponsored clothes (let's see, shall we?) is an important one, and one we can fairly argue about.

Yes, it's has cost a lot of money. Things that are worth doing often do, and they are worth doing well.

Yes, we are in very difficult economic times, and spending a lot of money may seem like the wrong thing to do. But sometimes spending money on something special and luxurious rather than boring and essential is a right thing to do. Uplifting, exciting, worthwhile.

To all the athletes who have sacrificed and achieved so much to be selected, and the athletes who have worked so hard and been unlucky enough just to miss selection, to all the thousands of people involved in organising, planning and delivering these games, those in the public eye and those behind the scenes, you have my admiration, all of you. Whatever happens. None of the sneerers could have done what you've done. They are far too ensconced in their comfy sofas, throwing popcorn and spitting pips from the lemons they've just been sucking.

My older daughter, since you asked

Several people have asked me to say something about my older daughter. I blogged about my younger one, and very occasionally mention her on Twitter or FB, but I tend not to shout about D1. There's a simple reason for this: she's not a public person and she's rightly cautious about info being "out there".

Anyway, here's all you are allowed to know about D1!

She lives in London. She has a fab job working for the Tate, an organisation she's followed and loved for years. She works in the Director's office, and has been there for a year now, after previously working for Burberry. She's incredibly knowledgable about art and design. And the latest thing she's been involved in is the launch of this - the Tate Tanks. Job well done!

She's gorgeous, relentlessly modest, and has a heart of gold. She is not at all crabbit!

Both my daughters are great friends. They share similarities - particularly in their honesty, integrity and care for other people - but they are also very different in lots of ways.

And I'm equally proud of both of them.

Here endeth the boast of a proud mum. With apologies.

When language isn't beautiful

I love language. I love new words and new ways of expressing things. I love how it changes and adapts and is alive, how we find a way to express anything we want with it, how new generations put their own slant on it. Despite having a strictly classical education - including having a degree which required me to read and write in Latin and Greek - I am not one of those people who winces at a neologism or adaptation of a word or when someone turns a noun into a verb or whatever. I think that's what language is allowed to do. I also have a tendency to prefer style to correctness, although the fundamentals must be correct if the writer is to achieve the clearest meaning and communication.

However.

I can't stand it when people hide behind absurd jargon, thinking it makes them sound clever. Management-speak and Government-speak are ugly, usually quite unnecessary, verbose, exclusive and frankly rather pathetic when you deconstruct them.

Anyway, recently I was waiting for a train and couldn't avoid listening to a woman on the phone. She was speaking loudly, presumably to a colleague, and crikey, did she think she sounded clever! I wrote down some phrases that particularly struck me. The list that follows consists only of the phrases she used more than once:

"We need a starter-for-ten agenda."
"That's the absolute drop-deadline."
"...project-specific parameters..."
"Can you lean on the time-scales?"
"..at close of playday..."
"We should microwave that one but the other one's a slow-cooker." [She didn't mean a TV dinner.]
"It's a decision in transit situation, then?"

Yeah, I know what they mean, of course. That's not the point. The point is the clubbiness, the in-speak, and the ugly pointless messing around with words, in ways which don't make meaning clearer or more beautiful.

Self-conscious, affected. Ugh.

Until Mr M managed to stop working for a certain large company - speak not its name in my presence, unless I am armed with garlic and a silver cross - he was plagued by the ugly contortions of the language. He used to come back from work with tales of weasel phrases bandied about in the usually pointless meetings that held him back from his real work (and, indeed, the company's real work). Phrases wouldn't last long because "they" always had to create new ones as soon as anyone had got used to the old ones.

One I remember: "We need to schedule his on-boarding."

There were also a whole load of abbreviations, which one was supposed to know in order to avoid withering looks.

Can you guess the meaning of these:

AGAP = eg "It's an AGAP situation here."

CAC = eg "What is the CAC for your taxi?"

And probably the best: KSOR = eg "It's a KSOR issue." 

Any suggestions?! And do you have any management-speak phrases that annoy you? Amuse you?

Favourite places - and a chance for you to be published

I came across this today. Scottish Book Trust are running a competition in which you can write about your favourite place. It got me thinking about favourite places.

I have many. I love trees and this is a picture of some woods where I lived just outside Edinburgh two houses ago. The woods were why I wanted to live there. My husband wanted to live there because of a particular wall! *shakes head in disbelief*

I love hills, and this is the hill just through my garden now - Calton Hill in Edinburgh.

And:

I love my new garden office, the Crabbit Hutch, where I am at the moment. It's pouring with rain outside but so cosy and bright inside.

I love being in my bed with a book. I won't show you a picture of that, if you don't mind.


I love standing on a beach, looking out to sea. Any beach. Any sea. But here's one. Pringle Bay in South Africa, where I was earlier this year.

I love the Yurt at the Edinburgh International Book Festival. I wrote about that here. And here is me enjoying the sun while sitting outside it. It's always sunny there... 

Do go and enter the SBT competition but meanwhile tell me: where is your favourite place? 

Home foods from abroad

My younger daughter is returning home today after SIX months in various bits of Africa - SA, Mozambique, Malawi, Tanzania and Zanzibar. You saw her jump out of a plane a while back. That seems tame compared with what she's done since then and I'm sure she's shielded me from most of it.

The other day, I asked her to tell me what foods she's most wanting there to be in stock when she arrives.

She said:

kettle chips
dips - tzatziki, hummous etc
nice salad stuff
spring onions
yogurt
pickled onions
eggs
honey
orange juice - no bits
bagels
nice bread  - good toastie bread, thick sliced etc
fish pie ingreds - maybe have this on monday night?
maybe some chocolate

I love that list!

What would be on your list?

Why illegal downloading really does matter

I make no apologies for fighting for the rights of writers and artists to earn from their work and to be allowed to make decisions as to value and cost. So, I bring you perhaps the best, fullest, and most passionate and moving argument for why this is important.

Interesting point about fair trade coffee, too - it's why I created the idea of Fair Reading.

The end of the article goes to the heart and is worth quoting:

"Why do we value the network and hardware that delivers music but not the music itself?
Why are we willing to pay for computers, iPods, smartphones, data plans, and high speed internet access but not the music itself?
Why do we gladly give our money to some of the largest richest corporations in the world but not the companies and individuals who create and sell music?"

Please, parents and teachers, tell your young people. It matters. It's a moral issue.

It's theft. And there are victims.

All for books - George Watson's College off to NZ, representing the UK

I'm very very proud of a school in Edinburgh that I have strong links with. Actually, I'm very very proud of two schools in Edinburgh that I have strong links with. One is The Mary Erskine School, and I'll be blogging about them soon. And the other is George Watson's College.

I used to live within spitting distance of GWC, not that I'd ever want to spit at them, of course. And I have done a load of events there and have got to know the very supportive librarian, Jane Shankland, quite well.

So, I was DELIGHTED when Jane told me recently that a team consisting of girls from GWC had won the UK finals of the wonderful international Kids' Lit Quiz - something else I have strong links with. Yes, I am so strongly linked to things that sometimes I can barely move my arms.



So, these clever girls fly off to New Zealand this Friday for the WORLD FINALS. They must be so excited. I think they look quite excited, don't you? They are: Rosie Isaac, Rebecca Poon, Katherine Holdgate and Beth Miller.

Their experience began last November when the team won the Central Scotland Heat. They then progressed to the UK Final. in which they had a decisive victory. Essentially they’ve come top of around 700 teams in the UK already. *bows in awe*

Jane said, "We have had great fun coaching the girls and they all have a huge love of books and taking part in the quiz has definitely helped create a buzz about reading in the school. It is so encouraging to see reading rewarded in this way - not just sport!!"

And indeed it is. I wonder if the girls realise that their school was also where, in my mind, Deathwatch is set. The scene with the Madagascan Hissing cockroaches... And, coincidentally, that's the book that the other school I mentioned, The Mary Erskine School, helped me write. And that school recently won the UK debating championship - as I discovered when I bumped into them at the airport as they set off to Istanbul to make an official visit to the parliament there as part of their prize. Clever schools, and it's no coincidence that they focus so strongly on reading and books.

Good luck to the girls of George Watson's College! Have a wonderful trip and come back with memories to last you a lifetime! We are proud of you already.