I feel I had to share this picture with you.
It’s actually my brother’s recipe, at least that’s where we got it from. The poor chicken is stuck on a beer can and cooked standing up. The can has some holes pierced around the top and a bout 2/3rds of the beer left in the can.
The chicken is covered in Paprika. It gets a lovely crisp skin and the beer makes a wonderful gravy, all of which is less in fat than the usual way of cooking.
The poor thing does look a bit alarmed when you bring it out of the oven, though.
On Friday, I was asked to cut the ribbon at the River Children’s Centre in Lydney, just down the road. I’m not quite sure how writing and drawing in a shed all day long qualifies me to do the job, but it was great fun. I started with a bit of painting and storytelling for the children, who were mostly 3,4 and 5. Then we went outside to cut the ribbon, flanked by loads of balloons.
Afterwards we retired to the kitchen for nibbles, where I cheekily asked when the ageing primary school might get rebuilt. I was treated to a in depth view of the national and local politics involved in the making of such a decision. Demographics alter all the time, which means that obvious solutions one year may not be so obvious the next.
Much more simple to understand was the fabulous cake made in the shape of the River Centre. Good luck to you all and thanks for having me!
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I can’t believe my lovely daughter is 19 but she is, and my wife made her chocolate and strawberry cheesecake cupcakes for her birthday. These come from the Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook, which my daughter bought for her mum in the hope that she would get some made for her. I suppose you could say her birthday wish came true!
![cakes.jpg](http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1845978307?ie=UTF8&tag=shoorayner&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=1845978307"><img border="0" src="51K-iFCVLNL._SL160_.jpg" "cakes.jpg")
I’ve just download MacJournal, which is like a blog, but it’s personal on my computer and not for the internet. A diary I suppose. But I can have a journal open that connects to my internet blog at wordpress.
Sometimes I want to write something to get it off my chest, but I don’t want to share it with the world. also I’d like to have a more personal diary that works like a blog.
It appears that I can have it on Mobileme, so that I can use it from anywhere I like. I’ll look into that later – I’ve got a story to write in the meantime and I’m just putting off the inevitable moment. It will be interesting to see how it works… Im on a free trial
Oh… and here’s a drag and drop photo of autumn-ness that I reduced on screen by 25%.
I’ll just add a bit more text to see if WordPress wraps the text around the picture, so I know how to format things in future.
Actually I got this bit to work thanks to a posting here at 58twelve http://www.58twelve.com/?p=647
I’ve just downloaded wordpress 2.0 for iPhone. So far it seems to be a massive improvement.
I stopped using it before because it would often hang while sending the post to the server and then it would wipe the post I’d written.
Hmm! That seems a much happier experience!
The wonderful illustrator, Sarah McIntyre, has been watching my drawing school and has done her own version of my Rhino. I hope she doesn’t mind me putting it here.
Go and see Sarah’s website or better still, get her wonderful book, Morris the Mankiest Monster
I’ve been over to Whitchurch C of E School this week, to discuss a project we’ll be working on together. They have an unusual year five – there are only four girls in the class! This cohort has moved through the school years.
I met them recently when we did a story planning session. I’m going to work with them on how I can release Dark Claw as a Creative Commons project. I hope that we will produce a body of work that will be of interest and a template to inspire other schools and groups around the world to have a go themselves. I think there is a lot to be explored – a whole alternative universe in fact. It is a writing project, but we’ll be using all sorts of modelling and technology to make it more interesting and relevant.
I’m really looking forward to it. I normally meet groups of 30 to 600 for an hour and talk about me! This time I’ll get to see how individuals and a class work on something over time and will get to know the students too. Planning things with their teacher, Beth Stevens, I realised how much I don’t know about what goes on in the classroom over the week. I’m sure it will all come out in the wash and I’ll learn to pace myself and my expectations. Either way I think it’s going to be fun and VERY interesting!
Today I visitednnsworth Junior School in Gloucester.
We did lots of drawing as well as storytelling. I should heave taken some pictures of the drawings. I love the way everyone draws the same thing and yet all the pictures are so different according to the way each child sees what I show them to do.
sometimes little mistakes or misreading of my instructions can be really creatively interesting. The best bit is when We’ve finished and go on to Q&As. some children carry on drawing – adding stuff and expanding their drawings.
I encourage a light touch for the planning and underdrawing. Then I show how to press harder for the finished drawing on top. If this was ink then the under drawing can be rubbed out afterwards,
What’s interesting is that at the beginning there are lots of calls for erasers. I tell them they don’t need them – just keep drawing.. By the end everyone is drawing and erasers and rubbing out are forgotten.
One or two teachers joined in and seemed more pleased with their efforts that the children were with their own!
Thanks for a great Day, Innsworth.
I nearly crashed the car this morning. I was listening to the radio when a news article about carbon trading came on. The Friends of the Earth claim that Carbon trading is now being wrapped up into derivatives by the financial world, setting us up for another crash.
The Financial expert came on and, with a patronising tone, said the the FOE lady obviously didn’t understand the complexity of financial markest.
What! I yelled at the cows in the field. It’s the Financial experts who do not understand the the financial markets. They have made that very clear. If they had the slightest clue of what they were doing we would not be in the mess we are in now. It’s the financial experts that created the crash and the recession. They are driven by greed and care only to rob those who entrust their money to them.
As for the carbon trading scheme – What a scam! Could anyone think up a scheme more open to fraud? Well, maybe the old milk quotas were as bad – similar scam really.
Why do we put up with it?
If you voted for the Pink Car rally on blingmycoach.com last Friday, many thanks. The pink Car Rally won the competition and so will have a pink coach join the rally next year, raising funds for the Little Princess Trust, who provide real hair wigs to children suffering hair loss due to cancer treatement.
