• The great thing about book festivals is meeting up with old friends. I arrived in Rotherham this evening to find out the the cartoonist, John Byrne is staying in my hotel.
    I’ve not seen john since he visited my son’s school, probably about six years ago.
    Anyway, we had a nice evening, putting the world to rights and catching up on each other’ news.

  • I’m on my way to the Rotherham Children’s Book Festival. The trip begins along what I possibly the most beautiful stretch of railway track – Lydney to Gloucester along the banks of the River Severn. At this time of year, with the sun blazing down, it seems to be the esscence of England. I feel that at any moment the train could halt at Adlestrop and the steam would his from the engine. No such luck, just a two car, cross-country diesel.

  • Having to rebuild my website recently has given me the opportunity of sorting out various things.

    I’ve had all sorts of ideas on the net over the years. For some, I’ve started whole new websites. This has the effect of halving my efforts on the previous site. On the net, you can really spread yourself so thin that you cannot keep up with what you are up to.

    I’ve instinctively reproduced parts of my sites because they used to be there before, but I realise that I now have the opportunity to rationalise everything and bring all my web obsessions under one roof. They say you can be whoever you like on the internet, and it is true. I’ve tried pretending to be a corporation, referring to myself as we. This doesn’t work. Users expect things from the site I’m not able to keep up with.

    So I’m re-thinking lots of things at the moment. It’s quite invigorating, because I can now just do stuff for fun without thinking of a long-term profit motive – selling a site for millions in time. I don’t think I’m ever really going to do that. I’d get bored of having to do the business side very quickly.

    So My site should start to grow again now. You may notice the Library tab tat has appeared. I have so much material to put here that has appeared before but is just lying around on my hard drive.

    It will be nice to bring it all under on roof as my own work and not have to split my self and my mind.