Celebration!!

BIG DAY

This is my 100^th post on this blog. Should be something special to mark that, I think. I didn’t get no telegram from the Queen. (apparently you have to apply for these now and they ain’t telegrams no more). No bouquet of flowers from my nearest and dearest. No cards from mother or aunts or workmates.

But it is sort of special.

Followers will know that I am not a natural blogger. I don’t always know what I am doing here. I set this up because writer friends said I should. It would help get me known, they said. I am not sure that I like this medium for the knowing of a person.

I am a teacher and one of the things we have to deal with these days is cyber bullying and all the nastiness that goes with that. Behind the anonymity of a screen, children can be very nasty to each other without seeing first hand the effect of what they do on the victim. This means they do not have any of the natural inhibitors which might prevent them from going too far… and so they go too far not always aware of the deep harm that they do. If we add to that the fact that a person can be ‘anonymous’ then all restraint and accountability goes out of the window.

I did expect that adults would be better than children. Naiively, I expected honesty and intelligence and goodness. In some cases adults are no different from the children they were… just as nasty and just as prone to the patterns of behaviour I deal with every day in my work.

At least the lies of Doug Cheadle and Jane Smith begin to unravel.

So why do I bother? Why not at 100 bow out of the blogosphere? Why keep going?

It could be a good medium for discussion, blogdom. I can see that and I believe that. It could be a good place for a writer to exhibit his work without the hoop-jump of competitions or submission editors. It could be an exciting place for honest expression and the exchange of ideas. I will stay as long as Port Brokeferry runs… because I am so enjoying this project. After the conclusion of that I will review where we all are with this blogging thing.

So, with an expected 100 posts ahead of me, what should I do to mark this one? Eat cake? Drink wine? Dance in the snow that is falling outside? (I might do all of these anyway!)

A cheery piece of news to share: I have been approached to do a couple of children’s workshops. A museum has approached me and we have discussed the details of what they want. It will be a good wee thing to help promote my children’s novel published last September. But once we had discussed the format and dates and times, the nice lady at the museum (drinking lots of pink liquid because she was about to go for a pregnancy scan) then talked about a fee. I was to be paid for doing this! I am afraid I laughed. It seemed bizarre. Not the being paid for teaching kids bit (that is, after all, how I earn my daily crust!) But the being paid for having the opportunity to promote my book. So I laughed, and instead I negotiated for the fee (almost £200) to be given to the charity that half of the royalties of the book goes to support: The Vine Trust, which rescues abandoned young children from the streets of Peru. The damage done to these children is enormous and this charity tries to minimise this and to give the children a lifeline. You don’t need to buy my book to donate to the charity.

The next post will be number 101... I hope that this site will move forward and I can get back to the thing I do best: writing.

Now, where's that cake and wine? And turn up the music and avert your eyes... I am in the mood for dancing.