It's That Time Again

Aaah eight o’clock on a Thursday night! My favourite time of the week.

I love being a Woodcraft Folk leader but I find preparing for and running the sessions a bit of a stress (especially as I have a day job doing something else and no child-wrangling training what-so-ever). Tonight was our Halloween party and it all went really well (Fancy dress, Zombie Games, a Pumpkin Assault course, Apple Bobbing (“You have to hold his face under” “No you don’t!”) and a Baba Yaga story at the end. Now I can relax with a glass of wine and not think about the darling little Woodies again ‘til after half-term.

This time last week I was still on a high from our writing group’s night of “public readings of our stuff” at a local wine bar. It was fab. A couple of hours before it started I was having big concerns - I knew that half the group weren’t actually that keen on doing it and I was worried that they either wouldn’t turn up or would have a horrible time. I was asking myself "Why are we doing this?” and couldn’t remember the answer.

In the end everyone turned up and did brilliantly. Having to read to an audience had really made us focus on our writing and the pieces were all polished to their shiniest best. We started with a couple of poems about pants then went on to ‘Duelling Haiku” - two men reading out alternate haiku - to great effect. We had stories, poems and excerpts from novels (one of which is to be published next year).

I read one of my SAF stories (about a woman dancing naked in her conservatory) and a micro-fiction piece published in a Leaf Books anthology last year, about a woman who gambles away her lover. I was also the compere and I was in my element. It was my birthday, I was wearing my favourite floaty green nylon vintage dress (how did they manage in the ‘70s with all that smoking in close proximity to flammable material?) and I had a microphone.

Everyone seemed to really enjoy themselves and we had some wonderful feedback from the audience. We all ended up on a big high, feeling really confident about our writing. And that’s when I remembered why we had done it.

Buy this Book

It's fab, it really is. And Lovely Leigh is in it and so is Spiral Skies. I love it even though it has already made me cry. It's not all sad, or even mostly, there are lots of uplifting heartwarming stories too.

If you buy the £12.50 paperback £6-7 goes to the charity WarChild - an international charity that works with children affected by war in Afghanistan, Iraq, Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda. They work with former child soldiers, children in prison and children living and working on the streets to give them support, protection and opportunities.
If you go for the download they get a whole £10 ('fraid I opted for the pb as I have yet to read any book that I have downloaded except of course for Disraeli Avenue which somehow worked that way (buy that too!))

Short post but it is Thursday and I was on Woodcraft Folk duty tonight. Helping to supervise twelve children as they leapt shrieking into the murky pools of a woodland river seems to have exhausted me for some reason.

They did look lovely and carefree though - I wanted to photograph them and send the picture to those Grumpy Olds who say children don't know how to have fun anymore. But my phone memory was full because of the videos hubby took of him and daughter faking skateboarding accidents for You've Been Framed. If I had the right sort of brain I would upload said vids here and you could rate their chances of ever making it on to the show. Let's just saying I'm not making plans for spending the £250