In my children’s story, Three Pounds Fifty in Change, Julian, an artist down on his luck, sketches a five pound note on a napkin — the note he wishes he owned. Nancy, the cafe owner, generously decides to accept his drawing as the genuine article, in payment for his cup of coffee. The magic happens […]
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The Sprog Log: A Parent’s Odyssey
November 20, 2010: I was walking to the post office with Ali, musing nostalgically that this is our last month of constant mum-and-son togetherness before the Yuletide arrival of his baby sister, when a woman walked past, pushing a Bugaboo. Ali burst into tears, blurting in anguished outrage, “EVERYONE has their baby already except ME!” […]
Letting Down My (En) Garde!
“Of course you can’t beat me. I’ve been fencing half my life,” my son consoled me, after another of our lopsided bouts. “The question is, can you beat you? At the end of your lesson, can you thrash the fencer you were when you began?” How did I find myself cast in this generationally reversed […]
Two Scoops of Ice Cream and a Side Order of Empathy
How I Celebrated Empathy Day Can an outrageous act of everyday kindness change someone’s life? I put this question to the Year 2 class at Vinehall School, Robertsbridge, E. Sussex, to kick off our Empathy Day workshop. Empathy Day is a bold experiment spearheaded by Empathy Lab, a grassroots UK educational organisation dedicated to using literature to foster […]
Collaboration with Jane Whelen Banks
I’ve always loved collaborative art forms — playwriting, journalism, and now picture books, where author and illustrator drive the story forward together. So I was thrilled when author, Jane Whelen Banks agreed to produce some illustrations for my Family Lexicon of words that my family has introduced to the English language. But as with all effective […]
Write This! competition – November entry
When my 9-year-old falls short of a goal (and even when he succeeds), I usually say something along the lines of, “The hard part isn’t making it across the monkey bars. The hard part is not making it across the monkey bars 999 times, and then trying again.” This is a loose variation of an Edison quote, I think, […]