• [slideshow]Coming back from Dewsbury on Thursday, I took ther opportunity to stop off at Hardwick Hall near Chesterfield in DerbyShire. Built by Bess of Hardwick the second most powerful woman in England after Queen Elizabeth the First.

    The Main Reception Hall upstairs is quite extraordinary. I think it must one of the most fabulous rooms in the world. The walls are almost all glass, the huge plaster frieze is like another little world and must have been amazing when it was freshly coloured. With the wall hanging tapestries too, it must have made jaws drop when it was first built. Made to impress, it does its job. The rush matting adds a sense of smell to the whole. I love it. What a fantastic studio it would make!

    Go see if you are passing, its well worth the visit.

  • On Wednesday I visited Widnes, near Liverpool, for an event called “An audience with an Author” in the sport’s hall at the Viking’s Rugby League Stadium. Widnes is a very Viking name, so I started off talking about Viking Vik, which seemed very suitable. Some of the audience looked as if they coulld have just stepped of a longship. Their families have probably lived locally ever since the Vikings came the first time!

    The hall had quite a low roof with acoustic tiles so the sound was quite good. The afternoon session was double booked so I had to share the hall with the OAP table tennis club! We were behind a curtain at the boxing club end of the hall. The tickety-tock of the table tennis balls turned out to be not too much of a distraction after all – bizarre, but quite soothing. We hid the automatic boxing punchbag man behind one of my banners as we thought it would either scare the children or mesmerise them. I didn’t get a go on him, but I imagine if you punch him in the right place, an electronic voice says, “Owww!”

    Thanks everyone for a great day.

  • I had a wonderful day at Headfield Junior School in Dewsbury today. I was asked to come and talk about The Ginger Ninja. It turns out I wrote the Ginger Ninja fifteen or sixteen years ago. I haven’t talked about those books in schools for a long time and they have been out of print for more than five years.

    The Ginger Ninja is unlike everything else that I have written since. It is really quite autobiographical – yes, I was a ginger kitten when I was young. Writing it is was quite an emotional experience, so much so that I think I decided not to write anything quite as deep again.

    I’ve not forgotten it, but I’ve moved on. So It is amazing to find that Ginger is fresh and alive and well in Dewsbury. The children were real fans and wanted to get on and read the rest of the series. The school had been bidding away on ebay to get extra copies! I think I signed one of every edition that has ever been printed. They even had a semi-hardback library edition I’d never seen before.

    The children had been doing cover designs and had been writing Ginger’s diaries, charting the story from Ginger’s daily point of view. They were really fab and really quite moving.

    It’s extraordinary to me to think that Ginger is continuing his life out there, on his own without my help – Thank you Headfield Juniors for taking Ginger and Tiddles to your hearts.