• I’m in Poole for the whole week this week. I started out in the Lighthouse Arts Centre Yesterday, storytelling, along with Children’s Librarian,Julie Noble, for their Open Day. It was very busy and quite noisy, but we persevered. Julie read stories for the young ones and I found myself doing drawings of the Gruffalo and the rainbow fish and Maisy the duck. Luckily the under fives aren’t to worried about copyright or who the blokes is that’s doing the drawings!

    Creekmoor Library
    Creekmoor Library

    Sue, Julie, Helen, Rosie and Laura looked after me at Creekmoor Library today. It’s a hard job, but someone has to do it.

    Today I visited Broadstone Library and Creekmoor Library. I forgot to take a picture in Broadstone, but Will be back on Saturday at 10.30 for an open session if you want to come along. I had a great time and think my throat might last out the week if I’m careful. Very tiring though.

  • I had a great time last night at Gloucester Royal Hospital. I was asked to help present copies of a poetry anthology to the poets involved, all of whom have been looked after by the education department of the children’s ward.

    The children had all been through the ward at some time. Some for broken bones some for more life-threatening reasons. It was a joy to meet them all, as I’d been reading their poems for a while, as I was deciding which ones to read aloud at the event. There were clever poems and sad poems and happy poems and funny poems. Matching up the writers to the poems was interesting and I felt very pleased when assumptions I’d made about the poet and their inspiration was correct.

    The book was illustrated by Poppy Roberts, a sprightly young woman who is now doing Fashion at Uni. Her designs will be used as the Hospital Trust Christmas card. Good luck to her. I feel we will hear more from her.

    I was really impressed by the poems. It’s good to read poetry now and then and be reminded of what it has to offer both to the writer and the reader. We don’t read poetry fro fun much. maybe it seems to much hard work, but like most things a bit of hard work usually brings its own rewards.

    It was a bit of a party and I think everyone had a good time. The Staff are all lovely and obviously very caring and involved in the well-being and continuing education of their charges, who at times must not feel like doing school! Then again, a bit of school might be a welcome relief from the day to day routine of the ward.

    Thanks for having me!

  • It’s been a few years since Rose Impey wrote the Animal Crackers book and I first illustrated them in black and white. Since then I’ve redrawn and coloured them in and now they are on a new set of covers.

    So yesterday Rose and I did a double act in front of 275 children at the Cheltenham Festival talking about Animal Crackers and our more recent solo publications. I had a Visualiser to play with. This was a camera on a rostrum. As I drew the audience could follow on the big screen. I normally use a flip chart which allows me to shade in with pencil. This was a bit like a live youtube drawing school session.

    We had a great fun and it was good to catch up.

    The cheltenham Festival is a great mishmash of things. I was thrilled to see June Whitfield in the green room, but was to embarrassed to say hello. You never know if famous people want to be left alone or not. I’m sure there is some sort of protocol, but I don’t know the rules. Does anyone know or does one just instinctively know these things?