It's in the news again. First the book. Then a second. Finally a trilogy (kerching, naturally). And now... the film. The Guardian asks 'why women love Fifty Shades of Grey.' Erm... we don't - well not all of us. Not those of us who can string a decent sentence together.
The sex? Dress it up how you like (and boy, how its dressed up) - its kinda rape-like, isn't it? Doesn't that reduce women?
Please, lets get back to some worthwhile novels! Or nice, happy films! Disney! Unless Mickey Mouse is getting into S & M with Cinderella... now there's a thought. Your next blockbuster, Ms James?
Wednesday 30 July 2014
Tuesday 29 July 2014
Dylan Thomas country perhaps...
We have been sunning ourselves in, of all places, North Wales! Our previous experience of camping in the Welsh mountains was one of driving rain and heaving, beating, relentless wind - hence our surprise at the warmth; the sunshine...
'Stand on this hill. This is Bethesda, old as the hills, high, cool, and green, and from this small circle of stones you can see all the world below you sleeping in the first of the dawn.
You can hear the love-sick woodpigeons mooning in bed. A dog barks in his sleep, farmyards away. The hills ripple like a lake in the waking haze...
The morning lightens now, over our green hill, into summer morning larked and crowed and belling.'
Heavily adapted of course - grateful thanks, Mr Thomas, for your welshsome words that help us capture the heady space and breathing, soft fox-padded summer hills of Wales (I reckon we heard that dog...)
We have been sunning ourselves in, of all places, North Wales! Our previous experience of camping in the Welsh mountains was one of driving rain and heaving, beating, relentless wind - hence our surprise at the warmth; the sunshine...
'Stand on this hill. This is Bethesda, old as the hills, high, cool, and green, and from this small circle of stones you can see all the world below you sleeping in the first of the dawn.
You can hear the love-sick woodpigeons mooning in bed. A dog barks in his sleep, farmyards away. The hills ripple like a lake in the waking haze...
The morning lightens now, over our green hill, into summer morning larked and crowed and belling.'
Heavily adapted of course - grateful thanks, Mr Thomas, for your welshsome words that help us capture the heady space and breathing, soft fox-padded summer hills of Wales (I reckon we heard that dog...)
Sunday 20 July 2014
Comments...
Here's a funny little thing... this morning on the radio a discussion was taking place concerning comets; they are, apparently, made of 'ice and muck'. We misheard this - and thought the subject was 'comments' instead. But thinking about it... so true. Negative comments are hurtful and unnecessary. And they are nothing more than that: ice, and muck. Just saying!
Here's a funny little thing... this morning on the radio a discussion was taking place concerning comets; they are, apparently, made of 'ice and muck'. We misheard this - and thought the subject was 'comments' instead. But thinking about it... so true. Negative comments are hurtful and unnecessary. And they are nothing more than that: ice, and muck. Just saying!
Friday 18 July 2014
David Mitchell: Cloud Atlas
Hearing that David Mitchell is to serialise his latest work through Twitter, brought to mind his novel Cloud Atlas; it is a clever construction with multiple narrators - six of them actually - linked through time, so the reader is transported both into the past and the future. It works, too - though we found the device of the birth mark a little clunky.
Reading it (or seeing the film, come to that) leaves you pondering the fact that one small act, in one small place in a corner of our world can, in time, connect humans in a way that is both disturbing and uplifting.
One to dwell on...
Hearing that David Mitchell is to serialise his latest work through Twitter, brought to mind his novel Cloud Atlas; it is a clever construction with multiple narrators - six of them actually - linked through time, so the reader is transported both into the past and the future. It works, too - though we found the device of the birth mark a little clunky.
Reading it (or seeing the film, come to that) leaves you pondering the fact that one small act, in one small place in a corner of our world can, in time, connect humans in a way that is both disturbing and uplifting.
One to dwell on...
More Storms Forecast...
In view of this weekend's stormy forecast, it seems only right to share a little more 'storm writing' by our younger writers. So here goes...
'The skies darken as clouds pile up like layers of earth crushing a dinosaur's skeleton.
There is a low rumble of thunder that rattles the ground like a sudden tremor.
A pitter-patter of rain settles into tiny snickets in the grass.
A blast of lightning, then more thunder.
The atmosphere crashes.
Tiny raindrops have turned into the size of grenades that explode and make a huge splash of water when they hit the earth.
An earthquake has passed.
The clouds start to spread out and the sun finds a gap to shine its sunshine through.
It pushes away the clouds; dries up the tears that the clouds have been crying.'
In view of this weekend's stormy forecast, it seems only right to share a little more 'storm writing' by our younger writers. So here goes...
'The skies darken as clouds pile up like layers of earth crushing a dinosaur's skeleton.
There is a low rumble of thunder that rattles the ground like a sudden tremor.
A pitter-patter of rain settles into tiny snickets in the grass.
A blast of lightning, then more thunder.
The atmosphere crashes.
Tiny raindrops have turned into the size of grenades that explode and make a huge splash of water when they hit the earth.
An earthquake has passed.
The clouds start to spread out and the sun finds a gap to shine its sunshine through.
It pushes away the clouds; dries up the tears that the clouds have been crying.'
Courtesy of Charlotte, Year 5.
There are some lovely moments in this - our favourite line: 'The atmosphere crashes'. If you've been caught in some the storms we've been having recently, you'll know that it does!
Friday 11 July 2014
Here's a great little snippet from one of our regular writers - a piece of classic Gothic and a new take on The Raven (enjoy, Mr Poe!). This extract occurs just as the bird attacks...
'It is only now that I realise there is another sound,
filled with awful meaning: it is the sound of wings - beating wings! It is
in! The raven is inside!
How could it be? I checked, but with timely horror I
realise - I had forgotten the fireplace – the study has a fireplace. It has
come in through the fireplace! I struggle at the doorway but cannot close the
door and the dreadful beating and flapping is all around me, at me. Sharp claws
rake in my flesh; on my head, in my hair. I try to run but all windows, all doors are firmly
barred - not keeping the raving creature out but dear God locking me in! I
become aware that I am screaming in the rip and gouge and smothering feathered
murder of it tearing at me, in me until I am wet with it, caught in it and its
beak is a vicious kiss until the dear darkness comes.'
Blimey! We love this. Vicious kiss - splendid! Enjoy, all!
Wednesday 9 July 2014
One of the Best
A more contemporary Gothic Great to share: Angela Carter's The Magic Toyshop is a heady mix of subverted fairy tale (this one is a 'from riches to rags' tale) with a hefty sprinkling of the Gothic. Uncle Philip's toy shop is a classic 'dark cavern' of a Gothic space, 'dimly lit' and full of 'murk', and its 'stiff-limbed puppets' dangle in the sinister darkness. Uncle Philip is a Gothic monster in the making: he is huge - he overfills the space with his menacing presence. The grotesque 'immense, overwhelming figure' of him roars and bellows like a beanstalk giant.
There is Bluebeard, and Leda and the Swan, and stirring sexuality. There is menace, and terror, and yet love of all kinds in this dark tale.
Read and enjoy!
A more contemporary Gothic Great to share: Angela Carter's The Magic Toyshop is a heady mix of subverted fairy tale (this one is a 'from riches to rags' tale) with a hefty sprinkling of the Gothic. Uncle Philip's toy shop is a classic 'dark cavern' of a Gothic space, 'dimly lit' and full of 'murk', and its 'stiff-limbed puppets' dangle in the sinister darkness. Uncle Philip is a Gothic monster in the making: he is huge - he overfills the space with his menacing presence. The grotesque 'immense, overwhelming figure' of him roars and bellows like a beanstalk giant.
There is Bluebeard, and Leda and the Swan, and stirring sexuality. There is menace, and terror, and yet love of all kinds in this dark tale.
Read and enjoy!
Monday 7 July 2014
Our current ‘Gothic Great’ – Edgar Allan Poe.
We love the arrival of Poe’s narrator at the House of Usher, where he ‘looked upon the scene… upon the bleak walls – upon the vacant eye-like windows… with an utter depression of soul…’ with ‘an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart’.
So much in here that is wonderfully, gloomily Gothic: those pre-modifiers ‘bleak’; ‘vacant, eye-like’; the intensifier ‘utter’. The triplets ‘iciness’, ‘sinking’ ‘sickening of the heart’ that emphasise and anticipate the diseased mind and bodily death that is to come; the sibilance that settles around us, wraps our own hearts in ice.
American Gothic at its best, perhaps, where we are into a more psychologically complex rendering of the genre. What is different about this crumbling old house from those earlier Gothic spaces of, say, Ann Radcliffe’s? Well here, we are treated to a house with a malevolence of its own. ‘Not so much haunted, as haunting its own inhabitants’ (Sue Chaplin).
Read and be thrilled!
(Edgar Allan Poe: The Fall of the House of Usher, 1839)
Thursday 3 July 2014
Catching a Glimpse of the Secret Self
My twenty year old daughter - touching base with home between gap year and University place - had her hair cut short recently,which meant that the back of her neck - and those ears which are shaped just like her father's - were exposed for the first time in many years.
I couldn't help but stare, for suddenly I could see not the grown woman who stood before me, but my baby; there she was, each contour of brow, neck and head revealed in their exactitude so that, just for a moment, I recalled in heart-stopping detail the warmth of her small form held in my arms; her smell and soft fuzz of hair; her yawn, smile, baby-babble of just-forming words.
It was just a moment, of course. I blink and I am back with the young woman before me, in all her poise and beauty. As a mother, I have been privileged to know a just-born secret self of hers. I'm filled with pride... and the inevitable sense of loss.
My twenty year old daughter - touching base with home between gap year and University place - had her hair cut short recently,which meant that the back of her neck - and those ears which are shaped just like her father's - were exposed for the first time in many years.
I couldn't help but stare, for suddenly I could see not the grown woman who stood before me, but my baby; there she was, each contour of brow, neck and head revealed in their exactitude so that, just for a moment, I recalled in heart-stopping detail the warmth of her small form held in my arms; her smell and soft fuzz of hair; her yawn, smile, baby-babble of just-forming words.
It was just a moment, of course. I blink and I am back with the young woman before me, in all her poise and beauty. As a mother, I have been privileged to know a just-born secret self of hers. I'm filled with pride... and the inevitable sense of loss.
Wednesday 2 July 2014
When creativity is compromised by the needs of SPaG
We salute one Primary Headteacher for her valiant effort in setting up a creative writing group for Year 5 and 6, led by a published author, with the aim of encouraging young students to become more experimental and exploratory in their writing.
How sad then that the so-called 'creative' sessions became compromised by the demands of the tests in SPaG; the Creative Writing group became the Writing Booster Group, linked to the school plan for raising levels of achievement in writing. Nobody's fault - only thing you can do when the SATs are approaching.
Exciting sessions exploring, for example, different ways of using the senses through synaesthesia ('the green smell of hospital' - thanks Ross, Year 5) 'morphed' into lessons in sentence variety, banging on the drum of complex, compound, simple combinations.
How easily the word 'SPaG' now rolls off the children's tongues. Like swallowing a huge mouthful of Alphabetti Spaghetti.
It slips down so easily.
We salute one Primary Headteacher for her valiant effort in setting up a creative writing group for Year 5 and 6, led by a published author, with the aim of encouraging young students to become more experimental and exploratory in their writing.
How sad then that the so-called 'creative' sessions became compromised by the demands of the tests in SPaG; the Creative Writing group became the Writing Booster Group, linked to the school plan for raising levels of achievement in writing. Nobody's fault - only thing you can do when the SATs are approaching.
Exciting sessions exploring, for example, different ways of using the senses through synaesthesia ('the green smell of hospital' - thanks Ross, Year 5) 'morphed' into lessons in sentence variety, banging on the drum of complex, compound, simple combinations.
How easily the word 'SPaG' now rolls off the children's tongues. Like swallowing a huge mouthful of Alphabetti Spaghetti.
It slips down so easily.
Tuesday 1 July 2014
Sharing Good Writing
We love sharing snippets of great writing, and here's another, by one of our younger writers, Lucy.
The Battle of the Storm
'Clouds slowly build in the darkening sky.
The rumble of thunder screeches into pelting rain drops.
The first bullet snipes - all the others follow, opening fire, streaking to the shield of the dry earth.'
Great use of verbs in this piece: 'screeches' to convey the sudden onset of rain after that first rumble; 'snipe's; 'streaking'! The assonance in 'streaking to the field'; we can almost hear Lucy's 'pelting' rain in the sibilance. Great battle metaphor, too.
We love you, Lucy! She's already a writer - at YEAR SIX!
We love sharing snippets of great writing, and here's another, by one of our younger writers, Lucy.
The Battle of the Storm
'Clouds slowly build in the darkening sky.
The rumble of thunder screeches into pelting rain drops.
The first bullet snipes - all the others follow, opening fire, streaking to the shield of the dry earth.'
Great use of verbs in this piece: 'screeches' to convey the sudden onset of rain after that first rumble; 'snipe's; 'streaking'! The assonance in 'streaking to the field'; we can almost hear Lucy's 'pelting' rain in the sibilance. Great battle metaphor, too.
We love you, Lucy! She's already a writer - at YEAR SIX!
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