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SPECIAL SCHOOLS AND SHOOTING ANIMALS

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We have now got our off-grid farm to a point where we are able to welcome visitors. I am also very excited to be the writer-in-residence at a special school, three or four miles away from the farm. Once a week, they will be bringing ten teenagers with various learning difficulties who aren't quite fitting into a classroom environment for some outdoor learning experiences. I have just employed two people to manage the visits and deliver a mixture of lessons, activities and jobs to help around the farm. There are also some other special schools in our part of Essex who are interested in visiting too. It looks then that through following the river of possibilities, we might be turning into a place where children can learn about permaculture and sustainable food production and we will specialise in catering for those who are recovering from trauma, are autistic or have other flavours of neurodiversity. I'm writing this in my notebook on the side of a mountain in the southern ...
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THE UMBRELLA TREE

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  You might have noticed that I'm raising money to self-publish my story The Umbrella Tree. So what is this story? And why am I publishing it myself? It all started when I was a tiny, twenty-one-year-old person. I was living in St Ives in Cambridgeshire and I wasn't sure what to do. I knew I was a writer (I'd known that since I was seven) but wasn't sure what I should actually be doing. I definitely wanted to write for children so I volunteered to be a kind of unpaid learning support assistant in my local infant school. It was called Thorndown Infants. I went there three afternoons a week for about a year I think. My jobs included washing out paint-pots, tying up shoelaces and helping children blow their noses. My favourite bit however was story time! At the end of each day I would get to read a story on the carpet area. Sometimes with Reception. Sometimes with Y1. Sometimes with Y2. It depended what day it was. At first I would just read one of the ...
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Robert MacFarlane

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  ROBERT MACFARLANE I first discovered Rob MacFarlane when I read his book Landmarks about five or six years ago. I think it was reviewed by Resurgence Magazine which is where I get a lot of book recommendations. The book explores various examples of language that is used to describe place. Not only did I love the book, I also bought all the books that he talks about in Landmarks. I subsequently read The Peregrine and Arctic Dreams by Barry Lopez – which I also really enjoyed. One of the things Robert MacFarlane does is talk about words from particular dialects. My favourite word that he introduced me to was smeuse . This is a Suffolk word for a small gap in a hedge made by the repeated passage of wild animals. The great thing is that once you know this, you see more of them. If we know what things are called, we are more likely to be able to save them. There's also a great way of describing kestrels but I can' t put that one on this website. Of course, Robert's ...
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  FIREMAN SAM I love the TV show Fireman Sam. I'm very lucky to have a wide range of children which has meant Fireman Sam has blessed my life many times over. I'm also blessed to have a younger brother who was just the right age when the first series came out – when everyone was fuzzy and there was an Italian lady called Bella Lasagne. All in all, I think Fireman Sam has been in my life for almost all of it. In fact, I reckon I have seen every episode at least ten times and I could probably write a PhD on the subject. I do however, have quite a few problems with Fireman Sam. I don't know if you've noticed but there are actually only about five or six people who live in Pont-y-Pandy and yet there is a fire or other emergency, almost every day. It must be impossible to get home insurance. Has there ever been a flood in the village where you live? Yes. Has there ever been a forest fire? Yes. Out of control go-cart? Yes. All of the above? Yes. And of cours...
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Cardboard and Woodchip

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 I'm very lucky to live in the corner of three acres of previously unused farmland that we call Thistle Doo. The plan is, over the years, to turn this into an amazing food forest where children and real people can come and learn about growing their own food in a sustainable and permacultury kind of way whilst stuffing their faces with berries and fruit and weird green things that they're not supposed... don't eat that! It is currently the middle of winter so most of our jobs around the place are structural.  I am mainly making paths.  My method is to lay flattened cardboard boxes on the ground and then cover them with woodchip. The cardboard I collect from outside people's houses the night before recycling day and around the back of petrol stations and supermarkets.  So it's free. The woodchip comes from strange, elvish tree surgeons who frequent the area.  I registered a corner of our field on a website called www.arbtalk.co.uk which is where tree surgeons hang...
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Intergalactic Mermaids

 Here is what I am writing at the moment.  I'm just putting together the first ten chapters or so and synopsis of Intergalactic Mermaids!  Then I'll send it to my agent who will hopefully show it to some publishers.  We'll see what happens.   I'll share the first chapter with you.  It's only a first draft. Yvette, the oldest of the children, stood on a large rock and let her gaze fall on the cool rippling waters of the lagoon. The rock was slippery but there was something about her feet that gave her complete mastery over their grip. She bent her knees and lifted her hands to a point above her head, then her powerful legs propelled her high up into the air. The others watched as she tucked her knees into her chest and then opened up into a straight line and like a knife, she stabbed into the water, making barely a splash. As soon as she was under the water, the magic within her began to work its hidden mystery. What had been the sort of pair o...
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Flustered Custard

 I spent far too much time the other day wondering about the words custard and flustered and similar words that happen to rhyme. If you take the word mustard , it sounds exactly the same as the word mustered . Mustard is weird yellow gloopy stuff that you put on on sausages.  Mustered is the past tense of to  muster, meaning to gather together.  He mustered the troops ready for the attack.  She mustered her courage before confronting the mice about what they'd done with the mustard . So custard is also yellow stuff but if you put it on your sausages, people will become worried for you and suggest you take a holiday or see a professional.  As far as I know however, there is no such word as custered .  As in the past tense of custer . So I'm wondering what could such a word mean?  To custer .  I think it's a verb that means to have one's army or other forces surrounded and taken apart.  As in Colonel Custer, the American cavalry office...
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