• I’m going to be inThe New Forest on Empathy Day, this 12th of June. So will Sue Hendra, author of the wonderful Supertato, that I have enjoyed reading with children before. We will be at Netley Marsh CE Infant School, talking about and encouraging the skill of empathy with the children there, using ur books, stories and drawing.

    Empathy day has been championed by Empathy Lab who have been researching the effect that reading has on empathy. A book is like no other medium. Movies and TV show you. We watch as observers. Empathy is about getting inside another person and seeing the world through their eyes. Nothing does this quite as well as a book.

    We create the pictures inside our heads as we read, slowly filling the shoes of the characters and viewing the world through their eyes. This is a deep, sustained form of empathy lat lets us experience this world, and others – from the point of view of people, animals creatures and inanimate objects we might never encounter in real life.

    Building the skills of empathy allow us to see the world through the eyes of our nearest and dearest, our neighbours and our foes. This understanding is the base point of sympathy, compassion and, most importantly, understanding, which is the root of peaceful negotiation and agreement.

    On Empathy Day itself, I’ll be blogging about a book – a diary – that made a terrific impression on me, allowing me to see beautifully drawn Victorian characters in an awful situation as real human beings. I’ve always thought of the Victorians as stuffy, stupid or cruel. Reading the book allowed me see and feel the humanity and share the trials and tribulations of the people involved.

    So, I’ll be thinking a lot about empathy over the next couple of weeks and may well come back to the subject. If you could look outing through someone else’s eyes, who would that person be and why?

  • I’m registered with the Telephone Preference Service, but that doesn’t help when the caller is phoning from India.- they aren’t covered by UK law.

    There’s always a pause when I pick up the phone to a nuisance call. They have called me randomly. On pick up, software allocates me as to the first free operator, who then starts reading from the script.

    They used to engage when you began asking questions, but not any more. If you ask what company is calling…click! You are left holding a dead line. You are not worth wasting time on.

    I used to argue and complain and inform them that they are breaking the law, cold-calling someone on the Telephone Preference Service, but they don’t care. Am I really going to follow up and report them and go though some great legal process? Of course not.

    So I trained myself to answer civilly and, as soon as I am sure they are a scam or cold-calling about something I have no interest in, I put the phone down and move on.

    So why do I still have a knot in my stomach?

    Why do I find my muscles tensed?

    Because cold-calling is an invasion of my time and privacy and an attack on my intelligence. I’m feeling tense because I’m protecting myself from an invader.

    Then follows the lingering doubt – maybe they wanted information for a good cause? Maybe it was just some poor student trying to pay their way through college?

    Maybe.

    Perhaps.

    Possibly.

    But I truly don’t think so!

  • Bombassa, the lovable rhino, wants to stay in bed, drinking tea and eating biscuits, but Aunty Daz is coming to visit for tea!

    Can his best friend, Millie, shake Bombassa awake before Auntie Daz finds out just how lazy he is?

    Sit back and let Shoo tell you this wonderful, warm, story with glorious colour picture.