Confessions of an Author

Hearing What Is Meant 2 When I was teaching at Limpsfield Infant School, I would very often look up from taking the morning register, to find a child standing next to me. “What’s the matter Tommy?” I would ask (though it might be Jane or Christopher or Matthew). “I’ve got a tummy ache,” they would reply. And I would guess that whatever the first subject of the day was, they found it difficult. Usually I would assure them that maths gave  me  a tummy ache too, and we would sit down together and try to sort it out. (Of course, sometimes they really did have a tummy ache, and I will never forget the day that a girl – whose name I remember clearly – vomited all over me. This was not helped when her mother – who I also remember – came to collect her and seemed to find it terribly funny, even though the child was ill because she’d just been taken to have vaccinations for a holiday. There is so much I could say here, but hey, I’m over it. Sort of.) Anyway, my point...

I had another rather nice treat (another of my: “you’re too difficult to buy for so we’re giving you vouchers for Christmas” ). I had a voucher for ‘Lunch in a Spoons followed by a trip to a gallery’ , a gift from one of my sons. Off we set. The travel was somewhat more exciting than anticipated, as neither myself nor the son who gave me the voucher are great at time-keeping, so catching the train involved a rather panicked abandoning of the house, a fast drive to the station, and a run onto the platform. But we made it. I then sat on the train worrying whether I’d remembered to get the dog in from the garden, and son checked his phone for directions to the gallery. We arrived at Victoria, and walked to the pub for lunch. I was expecting the pub to be called ‘Spoons’ because that is what my son talks about (rather more often than you might expect) but it’s actually called ‘Wetherspoons’ – which I suspect you and the rest of the world, already knew. I was also expecting a rather grea...

A Facebook Scam? 1 Does Facebook limit which friends’ posts we see?  Have they recently changed their algorithm so that now you only see posts from a tiny section of your friends? And will pasting the below statement on your Facebook account change who can see your posts? Well… no . Recently, several of my Facebook friends have copied the following statement onto their page: “Thank you for telling me how to do the bypass. This is good to know: It’s ridiculous to have over 400 friends and only some are allowed to see my post. I ignored this post earlier, but It WORKS!! I have a whole new news feed. I’m seeing posts from people I haven’t seen in years. Here’s how to bypass the system FB now has in place that limits posts on your news feed. Their new algorithm chooses the same few people – about 25 – who will read your posts. Therefore, hold down your finger down anywhere in this post and “copy” will pop up. Click “copy”. Then go your page, start a new post and put your...

I told you in my last last blog all about how the ancient Egyptians thought that if something was carved in stone, it was true forever, and how therefore if they didn’t like part of history, they simply never recorded it – because then it never happened. They also applied this to statues, so if the didn’t like someone they chipped the face off (hence ‘defaced’). There was lots of stuff in the museum which at first glance (to me) looked completely boring, but when I listened to the explanation of what I was looking at, was very interesting. We saw things like the wall tiles from the city of Nineveh (of Jonah in the whale fame). We leant about Jericho (the city the Israelites marched around until the walls fell down) and how archeologists have identified a ‘dead zone’ in the remains, showing when the walls fell. It was harvest time (shown by the amount of seed remains – which also indicate that the siege was very short. And not all the walls fell – which tallies with the story of R...

Deleting the Family Tree… 1 We began our tour in a large room full of Egyptian stuff. I didn’t know much about the Egyptians, and wasn’t sure how much I  wanted  to know about the Egyptians – but actually it turned out to be very interesting. We were on a Bible Tour at the British Museum, and although I wasn’t completely sure what that meant, I figured I might learn something useful. We met our guide next to the stairs, picked up a folding chair (which I was later very grateful for, as the tour involved a lot of standing for those people who didn’t have chairs) and off we set – to the Egyptian room. The ‘Family Tree’ of Ramesses – with all embarrassing relations deleted! Before we could begin our tour, we needed to learn a fundamental truth about Egyptian psychology, which was that  “If it isn’t carved in stone, it didn’t happen”  and therefore anything unpleasant or embarrassing about their history, they simply deleted. So, when we looked at the...

I hope you will love my new book: The Sarcastic Mother's Holiday Diary. I have always written a diary on holiday, so last Christmas, I decided to find all my old diaries and blogs, and make a book for my children. However, several other people also asked for a copy, so I have written a public version – it's available on Amazon and has been described as  "The Durrells meet Bill Bryson" ! The paperback version is currently available for £9.99, but as I will need to buy copies for book fairs, I will need to cover my postage costs, so this price is for a very limited time (I think it will be around £12 in the future, but I wanted to let you, my blog readers, know that they can buy it for the cheaper price, until March). It is also available as a Kindle book. Why not buy a copy today? I think it will make you laugh. The US link is here: https://www.amazon.com/Sarcastic-Mothers-Holiday-Diary-ebook/dp/B07N95281F/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1549015525&sr=8-1&...