• I received notification of a page about me on Encyclopedia.com> let me cite them as they suggest I should

    “Rayner, Hugh (Shoo Rayner).” Something About the Author. The Gale Group, Inc. 2005. Encyclopedia.com. 13 Dec. 2009 .

    While I’m very flattered to be on their site, this is a cobbled up load of stuff from other sources. It’s not up to date and refers to me as Hugh Rayner writing as Shoo Rayner.

    Go to their entry on Elton John and they refer to him as: Elton Hercules John 1947-, English popular singer, pianist, and composer, b. Reginald Kenneth Dwight. (I don’t need to cite them – that’s fair usage!) Why Can’t I be Shoo Rayner 1956 – Children’s Author and Illustrator, b. Hugh Rayner, for those who want to try and find me in the future?

    I’ve spent all my life being called Shoo. At school I was merely known as Rayner, such were the times and the school regimes. When I was old enough and realised I could, I changed my name by deed poll to become, legally, the person I am. I don’t know this Hugh Rayner. Encyclopedia.com are claiming that he wrote all my books!

    I want this stopped or else it will go on and on for ever. It’s probably too late already. I’ve sent them an email, but what[‘s the chances that anyone ever reads anything there, let alone does anything about it.

    Reference Information you can trust, they say. Well obviously you can’t. Someone, or more likely a semi-intelligent program has scanned my site, mis-read or mis-interpreted the information and decided it knows best.

    Our identity is all we have and Encyclopedia.com has just given mine away to someone else – what’s worse, that someone else doesn’t exist.

  • I’ve received a birthday card from Direct Line Insurance and it almost made me feel ill! Do I know these people? Do they know me? I am a faceless e-customer and occasional telephone caller – not a mate. I’m friendly with their staff when I call, but I’ve never had the same person and have never built up any kind of personal relationship. We do have a lot of policies with them, but they can’t be that grateful.

    And then there is the design. Bland, bland, bland and deliberately inoffensive. The font is bleak. It may follow their corporate style, but this is not supposed to be a sales leaflet – or is it? That crass addition of my name on the front – different colour – no one puts the name of the birthday person on the front.

    The the inside is even more bleak. So as not to identify the manufacturer of the party popper, they have taken the wrapper off, making it look cheap and tacky – it took me a while to work out what it was meant to be.

    Enjoy your special day Shoo, of course, should have a comma before my name, but let’s forgive them that. The words are suspended in a sea of white space with no attention to optical alignment. The words hang in that space so that the little bits of snot can dangle from the E and the y.

    There are codes printed at the bottom, repeated on the back and there seems to be a related raffle number at the top on the back – do I win a prize if I have the right number?
    These numbers make me feel like they are data gathering – not the right spirit.

    Oh yes – it arrived much too early, which adds the the thoughtlessness of it. You either put do not open until the specified date on the envelope, or you send it to arrive on the date with a pre birthday postmark or you are late and apologise.

    Am I being ungracious?

    Uh- uh! Direct Line – you failed – miserably.

  • To celebrate having gone over 10,000 views on my drawing school, here is a video to show you how to draw cute little kittens!

    Click here to find more lessons including how to draw Santa and Reindeer. Seeing that Manga lessons attract so many viewers, I think I’m going to experiment and add the word Manga to the tags and see if it has any effect.

    Interestingly, my daily website stats are down. I guess everyone is shopping or getting ready for Christmas carol concerts at school.