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The Liebster Award

SarahFindlay's avatarGeek With a Pen

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I’d like to thank the lovely Kate Loveton for nominating me for this. Her blog is always a joy to read. This is a great way to get to know more about the bloggers we follow. As well as answering the questions below, I’ve also been asked to give ten random facts about myself. So, without further ado:

  1. I drink lots of tea and coffee. Not so unusual for a writer but I will nearly always pick a hot caffeinated beverage over anything else, including alcohol.
  2. I don’t like onions. Apart from the fact they make me cry, I’m not fond of the taste or the texture. I can eat them in dishes like curries and spaghetti bolognese, lasagne, etc but not on their own or where they are the main component of the dish, like onion soup or an onion tart.
  3. I have a Buzz Lightyear toy that talks…

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Gym Babe or Tai Chi Wannabe

gym adventure

My new year’s resolution to get fit has been in the pipeline for a very long time. It is now May. When you start to feel out of breath running for the bus you know that its time to join a gym. I’ve signed up to LA Fitness on a Groupon deal, ten sessions, its a start. I decided not to drive there but bus to the gym and use the time to read too, multi tasking. I was feeling pretty virtuous. So what’s the problem? Well I’m a bit of a yoga, tai chi, type of girl, who finds all those sweaty bodies working out, pumping adrenaline alarming.

My first visit was a bit of a disaster. I managed to get lost when I got off the bus, (how is this even possible?) My excuse is I walked through a building site, trying to find a short cut. I ended up asking one of the builders if he knew the way! He responded in a Geordie accent, “Sorry love, I’m not from here.” He went out of his way to help me and managed to point me in the right direction. At reception I asked for a towel and the young man behind the counter looked at me as if I had a screw loose. LA Fitness don’t supply towels. I should have known, I used to be a member in the past. Yes, my memory is on the decline too. All wasn’t lost, I remembered a padlock, and my gym kit too. I could shower at home. So not too bad after all. I did a work out, or what I consider to be a work out, it was a bit faint hearted I suppose. I walked over to the water fountain and tripped! I didn’t break anything. It wasn’t the tripping that was mortifying it was my own sense of embarrassment. How would the super fit, super cool gym users react? Well, they hardly batted an eye lid, their eyes were still trained to the overhead tv monitors, absorbed in work out mode. So I was ok. After this catalogue of ridiculousness I thought that nothing else could happen. Wrong. I couldn’t work the drink’s machine after my workout, not rocket science, but somehow it was beyond me. Just to complete my day, I had an irritating bus driver on the way back that told me off for having the wrong ticket. “Your ticket is only valid from the town,” he said pompously. I explained to him that I had bought the ticket from the driver and asked for a return to the station, so it wasn’t my fault if the driver hadn’t printed out the right ticket. He waved me on.

I do seem to attract unwelcome attention sometimes. Echoes of a previous gym visit cross my mind. I had a visitor’s pass. I was looking forward to a pleasant swim, sauna, and steam room. What I experienced in its place was unpleasant to say the least. I was in the swimming pool trying to see my way, squinting, (I am very short sighted), when this older lady harangued me for getting in her way. This couldn’t have been more ridiculous. We were the only two swimmers. I am a slow swimmer, I barely break the surface of the water, let alone cause a tidal wave of swimmer’s distress! She must have been having a bad day. Or she had sharing issues. It was a shame really because her bad day became my bad day. I wondered if she quite possibly had a screw loose. An unfortunate side effect of being a writer is you always imagine all sorts of scenarios. So just to be on the safe side I stayed well away from her. I was glad to make out her hazy form leaving the pool. Liberation. Thank goodness.

Nothing like this ever happens to me when I am going to tai chi or yoga! Is it a sign? Or am I just being paranoid. Similar things happen to me in other places, even library visits can be frightening! Whatever you do don’t park your car down a narrow road near a library especially if the library is near a primary school. You are asking for trouble. Even if your car is parked legally, and it’s not blocking anyone, it doesn’t matter. You are in the no go zone believe me. Unless you want an angry person to shout at you and follow you all the way to the library. I’m not kidding this has really happened to me. Again my writer’s imagination was in overdrive. Is he going to kill me? By the time I walked into the library I was trembling with fear. I stayed there a long time, fearful that he would still be there waiting for me, plotting ways to murder me. Luckily he had vanished. I made my escape.

The trouble with living near libraries and schools, residents get easily riled. I know my mum and dad live near a school, and they do get annoyed by inconsiderate drivers. My dad still remembers open fields, grass, and trees. Now the neighbourhood is full of cars, and woman stopping for a chat after they drop their kids off at school, cluttering up the sidewalk. So I sympathise. But in my defence I wasn’t inconsiderate, I think I just met someone who was having a bad day. Anyone his day became my bad day too.

I’ve been to the gym several times now. I have to say that there are some definite positives. The sauna and steam room are a wonderful source of inspiration. It is amazing what people will talk about when they are half naked and dripping with sweat. It is a confession zone. A place to literally let off steam! There is no way that you can’t eavesdrop. The tiny space, is made for eavesdroppers!

After my last session at the gym something happened that made my day. The gym session had all gone well. I was on my way back to the bus, so I stopped in a supermarket to pick up a few groceries. Just as I was about to pay, the guy at the till asked me if I was a student. I said no. He didn’t seem to believe me, he asked again, “You not at Anglia Ruskin University?” He obviously gets a lot of students in his shop. It was almost as if he wanted to believe I was a student at Anglia Ruskin. Me too. Perpetual student, sounds good. Then to my astonishment he said “Are you at Sixth Form!” Can you imagine, whether or not he was delusional or taking the micky it made my day. I said, “I wish!”

Photo courtesy of Google Images.

Futurelearn – Free online courses.

[Alternative Text]

Futurelearn. Start Writing Fiction Course. I started this free on-line course at the end of April. There are a wide array of courses to choose from.

“At FutureLearn, we want to inspire learning for life. We offer a diverse selection of free, high quality online courses from some of the world’s leading universities and other outstanding cultural institutions.

Our aim is to connect learners from all over the globe with high quality educators, and with each other. We believe learning should be an enjoyable, social experience, with plenty of opportunities to discuss what you’ve studied, in order to make fresh discoveries and form new ideas.

Courses are delivered one step at a time, and are accessible on mobile, tablet and desktop, so you can fit learning around your life, rather than your life around learning.

We are a private company wholly owned by The Open University, with the benefit of over 40 years of their experience in distance learning and online education. Our partners include over 20 of the best UK and international universities, as well as institutions with a huge archive of cultural and educational material, including the British Council, the British Library, and the British Museum.

FutureLearn is in beta and the courses we’ll be running this year – there are many more on the way – are all pilot courses. This allows us to shape and refine how it all works, using feedback and ideas from our learners. It is important to us to craft a high quality product which is tailored specifically to our learners’ needs, so we want to spend the time listening.

What you’re seeing is the smallest number of features that can deliver our vision for a new form of education. Over the coming months, as we unveil new courses, we’ll be developing new features and evolving our offer.”

 

A page from Great Expectations by Dickens

I have also signed up for the Literature of The English Country Rose course which begins in June.

“On this course, we’ll be introducing you to literature from 450 years of English country-house history and we’ll be seeing together how that literature shapes our understanding of country houses. We’ll be joined on the way by guest experts from the University of Sheffield School of English and tapping into their specialist knowledge.

We’re going to travel on a historical journey through literature, visiting notable country houses around Yorkshire and Derbyshire. You’ll gain insight into life in these country houses and will learn about some common misconceptions. You will see the magnificent seventeenth-century wall paintings at Bolsover Castle, often held to be the best of their kind in England. You will visit Haddon Hall, a house frozen in the time of William Shakespeare and an inspiration for the great Gothic novelist, Ann Radcliffe.

We’ll be using a wide range of texts spanning the history of literature from Thomas More’s ‘Utopia’ to Oscar Wilde’s ‘Canterville Ghost’. Along the way we will examine sections from a play by Shakespeare, poetry by Margaret Cavendish, and brief passages from novels by Jane Austen, and Charles Dickens. We will even look at fiction by a country house resident Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire.

During this course you’ll learn to analyse literature using a technique called ‘close reading’. It will help you to make your own connections between country-house literature and its historical backgrounds.”

Photos and Course Information via Futurelearn Website.

Mother in Laws and Black Sheep

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Whatever we think of our mother in laws there is no doubt that they are here to stay. When we take the plunge and say “I do,” should we pause for a moment to reflect?  The implications of those simple words are enormous,  blinded by love we carry on, without a care in the world. “I do,” should be re-worded to I take you and your family, and promise to accept them wholeheartedly, black sheep and all.

In every family there is always a black sheep. Often they are referred to in hushed whispers, a hidden family secret, or else they are tolerated in a jovial kind of way.  In our family we tend to have the hushed whispers type of black sheep.  In my husband’s case he fits the jovial type of black sheep, the youngest of five headstrong children. His father would call him “Davy Black the Coalman’s son,” denouncing his son was the fruit of his loins. Who could blame his father? His son was and still is,  a bit of a rascal. He would climb out of his bedroom window to go out for a night on the town, or water his dad’s whisky when he fancied a drink. Whether or not he deserved the term, Davy Black the Coalman’s son,  it stuck.  He liked to push the boundaries and still does.

Now I digress. Back to the subject of mother in laws. Well mine is without doubt a character. Well into her eighties, it doesn’t seem any time ago that she was in the play park, “beaming,” her term, for standing up on the swings.  She chats to every single person she meets so a quick trip anywhere takes a very long time! Even if she was just going  to pick up a few groceries, she would often disappear, leaving her husband staring out the window for hours wondering whatever had become of her.  I remember recently we were shopping for shoes, she was upset when she realised that my mind had wondered and  I wasn’t listening!  Like my father, she is a story-teller, a chatter box, an adventurer. Her  sense of adventure meant that she travelled abroad to work as a young woman. She is still young at heart, takes great store in her appearance, and likes it when handsome men offer her a helping hand with her luggage!

I do admire her sense of “joie de vivre”, and just hope that when I am in my eighties I am half as sprightly as she is.

Unfortunately, sometimes “joie de vivre” can be lacking and the joining of two families can be disastrous. This  can be evident right from the very beginning. Even before the cake is cut, the die has been cast. The symbolic cutting of the cake becomes like a dividing line, two separate teams warring for a slice. The marriage crumbles. The cake never stood a chance.

So whatever you do, check out your future husband or wife’s family, because marriage isn’t just about two individuals,  it is about a joining of two families. There will be disagreements, angry words spoken, this is part and parcel of life.  Even if two families have differing cultural and religious beliefs, respect, and tolerance go a long way to paving a long and happy union.

Photos courtesy of Google Images.

Spotlight + GIVEAWAY: The Tropic of Serpents (Memoirs of Lady Trent #2) by Marie Brennan

Here’s a giveaway from Refections of a Book Addict. Good luck fellow book lovers.

Kimberly (Reflections of a Book Addict)'s avatarReflections of a Book Addict

ttosmb If you’re a fan of dragons you’re going to want to get your hands on this book. Thanks to Tor Books I’ve got one hardcover copy of Marie Brennan’s  The Tropic of Serpents: A Memoir by Lady Trent  to give away.

From Goodreads:

Attentive readers of Lady Trent’s earlier memoir, A Natural History of Dragons, are already familiar with how a bookish and determined young woman named Isabella first set out on the historic course that would one day lead her to becoming the world’s premier dragon naturalist. Now, in this remarkably candid second volume, Lady Trent looks back at the next stage of her illustrious (and occasionally scandalous) career.

Three years after her fateful journeys through the forbidding mountains of Vystrana, Mrs. Camherst defies family and convention to embark on an expedition to the war-torn continent of Eriga, home of such exotic draconian species as the grass-dwelling snakes of the…

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Why Reading Makes Life Better

Debbie Young's avatarDebbie Young's Writing Life

Tony Robinson A ReadWell mobile bookcase, destined for a UK children’s hospital, with the support (or in this case supporting!) Read for Good’s patron Sir Tony Robinson (Photo by Read for Good)

The internet (God bless it) is awash with pithy sayings about the power of books to change lives, so it’s good now and again to be allowed to say something online about the subject without the constraints of the 140 character Tweet or the space allowed for a status update before Facebook cuts you off with a “see more” link.

My latest article for the monthly online parenting magazine Kideeko talks about the power of books to make life better for poorly children. It draws on my experience of three years working for the children’s reading charity Read for Good – parent of Readathon (which runs Sponsored Reads in schools) and ReadWell (taking books and storytellers to children in hospital).

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Hopping on a Blog hop

geoffnelder's avatarscience42fiction

frog This week is a hop on a bloghop and I thank Neil Stenton for inviting me to be part of this ride, please see his post at http://www.koobug.com/NeilStenton?p1583

The previous link is that of exciting science fiction writer, Mark Iles, at

http://markiles.co.uk/the-blog

1)    What am I working on?

I am toying with a prequel to science fiction trilogy, ARIA based on the unique concept of infectious amnesia. I love shorts and I am working on The Chaos of Mokii based on a city formed entirely in the consciousness of its inhabitants. It’s an entirely telepathic city and yet there is murder, mayhem, love gained and lost.

Xaghra’s Revenge is written and in the hands of literary agent, Rebecca Pratt. A friend in Malta suggests to me that a sequel could go along the lines of an alternate history fantasy where the Knights of Malta loses the Great Siege of 1565…

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