Category: Blog

As you all know, the human who usually writes these blogs belongs to me, but today we’ve agreed that I should blog instead. The reason is, that this blog is all about me so for accuracy’s sake, it should come from me – “straight from the dog’s mouth” so to speak!

So I’ll start at the beginning. I struggle with the concept of past, but my human is helping me out. I found it quite easy to choose my human family. The Hairy Human came to the farm and looked at us pups. I liked the look of him, he was very calm and laid back which to us dogs, means easy to wrap around our little paw. So I marched straight over to him and placed my paw on his foot. He picked me up and took me home the same day!

I thought I was going to be in for a relaxing peaceful life with this new-age, short-haired, hairy hippy. I had absolutely no idea that the rest of his family would be nothing like him – I got placed in a manic household with so many kids coming and going it was confusing, yet invigorating and exciting. You see what I’d been hiding from the Hairy Human, is that I’m manic too! So I was just added to the heap of children and we all played manically together. It turns out only two of the children belonged to the Hairy Human and his wife, (The Happy Human), the rest were all borrowed and would go home to their own families each night. Me being special though, I stayed with the Hairy Human’s family all the time.

I soon found how to make the little humans laugh, I would stretch my front legs flat on the floor with my chin between them and shake my bum or I’d lick fresh snot from the baby’s nose, they even found it funny when I’d lie across all the toys they were trying to play with.

The original plan had been that I would live outside in the garden. The Happy Human thought that’s where dogs live! Obviously, I had a lot of training to deliver. I just stared and stared at her through the glass door, making her feel guilty to enter the kitchen, so she relented and said I could come into the kitchen on cold or wet days and put me a little bed down. I refused to lie on the bed and laid on the cold hard floor instead, whilst making little whimpering noises and putting my head on one side with my ears up (my mum taught me that). She decided I could lie on the living room carpet, but only while she was there. I let her think she’d won and accepted this for a day or two, then when she was sitting on the sofa one day, I sprang up next to her and gave her a big lick across the face then cuddled myself across her legs. She gave in straight away. I’d won. She was so easy to train. Good girl!

Once I’d had all my special puppy visits to The Vet I went for my first ever walk in the park. I had a complete sensory overload, I just wanted to see and sniff and touch and taste everything. Apparently licking poo as it’s coming out of another dog’s bottom is a definite no-no and I was never allowed to do that again!

Luckily, they kept taking me for walks, in fact there’s never been a single day that I haven’t been taken out – even when I didn’t want to go. Have you tried pooing wearing a rain-coat? It’s awkward and undignified. My humans take me everywhere with them, we go to parks, rivers, moors, beaches. I’ve even been on holidays with them in caravans. When they holiday abroad, I go on holiday to the Hairy Human’s parents. They are my favourite Old Humans. They feed me crisps and biscuits and cakes. Every time I come home, my humans have to give me extra-long walks to work the extra weight off which is just another bonus to me!

One of my favourite things is when anyone comes home from The Outside. They laugh at my excitement and say things like “We’ve only been five minutes” but I have no idea what these mysterious “minutes” are so it makes no difference to me. I just love to see them come back to me. They always come back no matter what, because I’m irresistible you see!

Another favourite thing of mine is Dog Agility. Can you believe, until we started doing Dog Agility, my human didn’t even realise how clever I was! She’d spent years trying to teach me to walk to heel and shut the living room door and thought my lack of progress was down to my intelligence! How silly – didn’t she realise I trained her to walk faster and close the door for me?

A few years ago, I stopped enjoying Dog Agility which is unusual for me because I love EVERYTHING! It wasn’t that I stopped loving it, but it had just become too painful for me. I’d always had pain for as long as I could remember, but as I’m a Labrador, I’m tough and never told anyone. When it became too bad, I started to feel miserable so my human took me to the The Vet (we dogs know him as The Interpretor) and he explained to her that I had arthritis and my Agility days were over. This didn’t bother me at all, because I was given special medicine to make the pain go away and I was given longer walks, swimming and even more cuddles. I loved arthritis!

Another of my favourite things is visiting The Vet. I always get lots of attention there and sometimes I’m given a special sleep which I love. Just a word of warning though – one time when I woke up, they’d pinched two of my teeth, so keep an eye on them. The most recent time I went to The Vet, was the day I woke up feeling the most poorly I have ever felt. I didn’t even want to go for a walk, in fact I couldn’t stand up properly. The Hairy Human, the Happy Human and the Funny Human all started crying and making such a fuss! I was almost happy to be so poorly because they were all cuddling me at the same time. I get lots of cuddles but usually only one human at a time. To have all three was lovely, I just wish I felt well enough to appreciate it. They took me to The Vet who spoke very kindly to me and he did all kinds of tests, then all three humans cuddled me again as he put something cold into my leg. It made me very sleepy and as my humans’ tears fell on me, I started to dream. I saw the most beautiful bridge sparkling over water. The sun was shining off it and making beautiful rainbow colours. All my pain drifted away and I was able to run towards the bridge. As I crossed over I saw lots of other dogs on the other side, all running around in the sun and having fun.

It’s strange, I thought I’d miss my humans, but because I have no concept of time, I’m happy to play while I wait for them. I know that they will be with me again and the other dogs have told me that I will know when that time has come. In the meantime, I am completely pain free and having so much fun. My only worry is that there is nobody to lick my humans’ tears and comfort them. I hope they find a doggy who needs them as much as they need him and they can share all their love until it’s time to play with me again.

If you work in a school and intend to host an author visit, I recommend you read through this blog carefully. If you’re not, I recommend you don’t read it at all – this really is an example of writing to inform and not writing to entertain!

Every year I book three authors to visit our school. Our Patron of Reading always visits our Year 7s then I choose a different author each year to visit our Year 8s and finally we are “given” an author at discount price through the “Crossing the Tees Book Festival” for our Year 9s. I was pretty daunted the first time I had to organise a visit; worried sick I’d forget something important. Having done it several times, I thought I’d set out everything I do here so you can use it as a starting point for your author visits 😊 This list is pretty intense although not exhaustive. However, most of the jobs are just little jobs and don’t take long to do. It’s more a case of making sure you don’t miss any of them out, so tick them off as you go!

1. PERMISSION FOR THE EVENT: Win over your Head Teacher. If you’re lucky like us, your Head Teacher will totally understand the qualitative value of having a visiting author and you can skip to 2). However, if your Head Teacher needs educating about the magic of visiting authors, I will be doing a separate blog on that shortly.
2. CHOOSE AN AUTHOR: Do your research. It’s not enough that the author is an amazing writer and has single-handedly turned Dave Smith’s reluctant reading boy into a book-devouring monster. Can the author hold an audience? If the students aren’t engaged, they won’t receive the message. Sorry, but it’s true – your author also needs to be an entertainer. Ask English teachers and librarians from local schools for recommendations. Ask Facebook and Twitter. When you think you have the right one, read one of their books.
3. CHOOSE A DATE carefully, you need to make sure that it’s not school Exams month, Sports week, Injections day or anything else that will get in the way. When we have an author for a whole year group, we try to choose a day and period when the whole year group are having English at the same time to avoid disturbing other subjects. This isn’t always possible in very large schools, but you can still go for majority in English to keep disruption to a minimum.
4. OFFICIAL PERMISSION: Put in an event request (ours is online through our Intranet).
5. COST: Confirm price with your chosen author and put in a purchase order request to your Finance Department. Currently in the UK the price seems to be £450-£500 for an author to give a whole year presentation followed by two workshops of about twenty students in each. I always add on the cost of two or three books for the library as well. Some charge travel and accommodation on top of this in which case it’s often worth getting in touch with local schools to book for the following day and halve the travel and accommodation costs between you. If you think your school cannot afford this, don’t worry – I will be blogging some top tips very soon. There IS money, it’s just knowing how to get your hands on it!
6. BUILD EXCITEMENT: Liaise with the English Department and pastoral staff on how to get the students involved. For example, students could research the author and their genre(s), read blurbs or extracts from some of their books, think of questions for the author.
7. ROOM BOOKINGS: Book the hall/sports hall wherever you’re having the presentation and notify the PE department (if they normally use it). Also book a really nice room for the two workshops.
8. IT: Check with the author whether they need a laptop, speakers, over-head projector, microphone, headset, etcetera. If they’re bringing a presentation on a USB they will probably need to come early enough for it to be checked for viruses by the IT team. Book any equipment necessary. Most music or drama departments have microphones with amps.
9. SITE TEAM/CLEANERS: Notify the site team about the room you are using – will they need to set the chairs out for you? Will the cleaners be required before/after the event? If like us, your Main Hall is also your Dining Hall, do they need to be in to set up for lunch?
10. WORKSHOP STUDENTS: Select the two sets of twenty students who will be doing the workshop. Different authors offer different workshops and this will affect your choice of students. The presentation should have done the inspiring part, so now you need to decide which students you want. For example, you may be selecting PPG only (if that’s how the visit is being funded), More Able, weaker students, students who are already interested in writing, etcetera. You could even run a competition for the chance to work with the author.
11. INFORM TEACHERS (WORKSHOPS): Give advanced notice to all the teachers affected by the students going to workshops and check that this doesn’t cause a problem. Also diarise a reminder for the teachers the week before and again the day before and finally on the morning of the event. Notify them by email, briefing, and bulletin.
12. REGISTER Copy the list of workshop students to the Attendance Officer and ask for a tag to be put on the students’ names on SIMS so the classroom teacher remembers why they’re not there, or if the students forget and turn up, the teachers can send them to the workshop. Also keep a copy of the register for you, so you can take a paper register at the workshop. Make sure you have a runner who can take the register to the Attendance Officer on the day as you cannot leave a visitor unsupervised with students.
13. INFORM TEACHERS (MAIN PRESENTATION): Give advanced notice to all teachers who will be affected by the whole year presentation. Explain that as it is during their lesson, they will need to take the register then accompany the children to the Hall and MUST remain with them for the duration of the presentation. This is REALLY important otherwise you may find yourself in charge of 300 students on your own! You must give them chance to contact you in the case of a problem – such as a planned assessment you were unaware of. Also diarise a reminder for the teachers the week before and again the day before and finally on the morning of the event. Notify them by email, briefing, and bulletin.
14. LETTERS HOME: Send letters home to students’ parents/carers about the event, let them know how exciting and inspiring it is to have an author visit. Most authors have something on their website you can use to help show just how amazing they are. Indeed, some authors even have draft letters you can adapt. Make sure you mention on the letter that students can buy signed books and inform them how they can do this.
15. BUYING BOOKS: Find out whether the author is bringing books with them or if you need to pre-purchase the books. Your local bookshop might like to provide the books on sale or return. Give them plenty of notice to get the order in.
16. PARENT PAY: If you are using Parent Pay for students to contribute towards the visit or to buy books, make sure you set this up in plenty of time and make sure the wording is very clear.
17. ADVERTS: Prepare adverts to create a buzz about the impending visit. Share adverts as posters around school, in tutor trays, on plasma screens, on school’s social media and in particular get the English teachers on board to promote it. Share your adverts with them to make it easy for them as they’re very busy people! Some authors will have ready prepared PDFs you can use for advertising so check their websites.
18. PHOTOS: Arrange to borrow the school camera for the event. For the presentation take backs of heads shots with just the author’s face showing (no students’ faces). For the workshops, check on SIMS and make a note of anyone who does not have permission to be photographed for the website.
19. COVER: Organise cover for yourself and another member of staff for any lessons and duties you’ll be missing whilst shepherding the author and students around the school. Inform the person in charge of cover and send a reminder to all a week before, again the day before and finally on the morning of the event.
20. LUNCH for the author: where will they eat, what will you provide, who will they eat with? We invite the author to spend lunch with our student librarians as a special privileged treat after all the hard work they put in week in and week out. Students bring their own lunch, but I always bring some cake to help make it feel more special.
21. BOOK SIGNINGS: where and when? Do you want your author signing books during break, lunch, after school? Who is providing the books? Some authors bring their own, but if not, you may need to ask a local bookshop to provide some on a sale or return basis. Who will be taking the money? Have you got a float if necessary? Do you know what price the author/bookshop is selling for?
22. THE DAY BEFORE: As well as the regular reminders to the teachers, it’s also worth texting/emailing parents/carers to remind them about the event and that their child will have the opportunity to buy a signed book.
23. AFTER THE EVENT, thank the author and send reports to those you need to send reports to about the success of the event. Create a write-up for the school website and link to the author on social media. Go home. Put your feet up. Pour a large glass of wine!

This does seem a lot and it is, but it is a lot of little jobs. The day will be exhausting, but worth all the sweat and tears. To hear the excited chatter of students about the author and the books on the day and hear the continued rhetoric around books days later is wonderful. Anyone who can inspire students to read is welcome in our school!

* Disclaimer: Always check with your school in case there is anything else that they need you to do and add it to your list.

What if I’m deluded?

How do I know whether I’m a sane person with great talent or a complete basket case and hopelessly deluded? I used to laugh at those poor people on X-factor in the early days who thought they were the best singers ever and then they’d do the strangest, weirdest, sometimes scary things. After a few years I stopped laughing because I gradually realised they were being exploited and I wondered what happened to them after the world had laughed in their face. Were they deluded enough to carry-on in their happy place or did reality crash down on them?

I’ve written a book. It may well be a book of utter, entire shizen! But I love it! So, am I gifted or deluded? How will I ever know?

I’ll let you into a little secret – sometimes I used to wonder if the world was real and my life was real or if I was just the object of an elaborate hoax and everyone around me were actors. Then I watched a film called “The Truman Show”. At first I thought, that’s great, this means my life is real, because someone else, a film writer no less, has had a similar thought to me. It must be normal to feel this way. I’m fine and everything is real. Then I thought – NO! What if everyone watching my reality show is absolutely killing themselves laughing that the writers have dropped me the biggest hint ever that I’m just an unwitting star of a show and I STILL haven’t worked it out!

Still, I can’t complain: they haven’t killed me off yet, they gave me a hot husband and hopefully my contract won’t run out for another 50 years. Here’s hoping they write a fantastic book deal into the plot …

Shh! I’m not really a grown-up!

If Facebook is a gossip magazine, Instagram is an art gallery and Twitter is a business and political convention for grown-ups only. That’s how I see them anyway! This causes me a problem: you see I’m not really a grown-up. Yes, I have been alive for 48 years, but I haven’t actually grown up. Sometimes I’ll be walking along the street and I’ll see my son’s friends with their parents and I’ll think – ooh look, grown-ups. I have never, ever, looked in the mirror and thought – ooh, I’m a grown up. I have the same wrinkles around my eyes and silver streaks in my hair as grown-ups. My middle is spreading which I believe is another sign and has nothing to do with chocolate! But I’m just not a grown-up. I don’t think like one and I don’t act like one. When my son said he was going to have a few beers at his friend’s house to celebrate the end of exams, I launched into an attempt at a grown-up speech warning him of the dangers of excess alcohol and he cut me off saying, “don’t worry mum – I’m not like you!”

I’ve been on Facebook for some time now. I understand how it works, and I enjoy it. But … I’m trying to get my novel published and the advice is to get yourself out there on as many social media platforms as possible. Bear in mind my target market is Middle-Grade and the Middle-Grade students at school informed me that Facebook is “only for old people in their 30s and 40s”!!! So off I trotted to the virtual world of Twitter disguised as a grown-up and started following authors, publishers and literary agents. Very mature. I also followed a few immature comedians but I think some grown-ups do that too and I’m sure nobody will notice anyway! And then I had to tweet something! What could I tweet? My mind went blank which is weird because I don’t normally get writers’ block when I’m writing my stories. I can sit down and let the thoughts pour out of my head, down through my fingers and onto the keyboard. But that’s just it. My stories are for Middle-Graders – not for grown-ups. After a few poor attempts which disappeared into the ether unseen and unheeded by the world’s millions, I decided to retweet important sounding messages from grown-ups and respond on other people’s tweets. It’s working really well. Real authors are replying to me as though I am one of them and all grown-up and stuff!

So guys and gals! I’m just putting it out there – if you tweet me I will definitely respond because I am ridiculously excited about this new persona I have created. Just please don’t “out” me. Rachel Coverdale is a very grown-up girl! 😊

Dear Toyah,

The 80s shaped me. I became a rebel without a cause and my poor parents didn’t know what to do with me! I sang your songs at them, dyed my hair a myriad of colours mixed and matched the most outlandish clothes, cast off any preconceptions about who I was and who I should be and had the time of my life. I should blame you for me dropping my A levels before I’d barely started them and for drinking, smoking, riding motorbikes and generally behaving like a punk. I do blame you. I thank you! You see I had to get it wrong before I could get it right. I had to find out who I was before I could be comfortable with myself.

Now you’re in trouble with me again. You are touring and misbehaving – not toeing the line. You are perfectly capable of selling out large arenas, yet you insist on playing some absolute dives enabling people like me to go your gigs. You are putting enjoyment before money! Your fans before your wealth! You really don’t fit in well to the “rich and famous” brigade do you! Screaming along to a gig at Middlesbrough rekindled the rebel in me.

Then, to completely tip me over the edge, I attended the Film Premiere of “The Unfortunate Woman” at The Forum in Darlington, and there you were, giving the most inspirational talk to the audience about the next PIMM film and the part you are playing in it. You stood on the stage and reminisced about banging on a film producer’s door, demanding that he give you the part you’d auditioned for in “Quadrophenia” and I thought YES! Never mind me sitting back all lady like and demure, hoping that someone will publish my book, hoping that I can reduce my hours at work to spend more time doing what I love, wishing that I could set up my own business. I’m not giving people choices anymore. I might be an ageing hippy, but inside me, there’s still a feisty punk. Punk Never Dies! So I’m off to bang on some doors! If I get into trouble for being a nuisance or too demanding, I blame you! Thank you 🙂

Yours sincerely,

Rachel HippyPunk Coverdale