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Misadventure: A Very Louis Theroux Dinner in America
While I was in America, I had a bit of downtime between a couple of book conferences so I decided to head to a lovely beach town in Virginia. I booked ten days at a beachfront hotel which was delightful but left me with a lot of free time. I was working hard on marketing,…
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Misadventure: Brook jumping
When I was six, seven and eight, Saturdays were always housework. Usually, that meant spending all morning cleaning and tidying. There was dusting my stepdad’s collection of beer taps (what? Your house wasn’t full of these?) and my mum’s… random collection of shite like an owl dressed to play cricket draped with random offcuts of…
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Ten ways to engage an ADHD child with homeschooling
How on Earth do you get a child with ADHD to do their schoolwork? Is homeschooling a recipe for disaster when ADHD is involved? This article is focused on actionable strategies to help get ADHD students engaged with homeschooling. The big superpower of having ADHD is hyperfocus. It’s also our biggest weakness. See, attention deficit…
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New ASD research changes everything
TW: neurodiversity, swearing, other people’s ablism making me mad A researcher did brain scans and found out: “…brain scans could not distinguish children who had been diagnosed with ASD from those who had been diagnosed with ADHD or OCD.” (i.e. neurodiversity is visible on scans as “neurodiversity” as a whole) I certainly know I have…
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Misadventure: I fell off a cliff
If you’re from Cheadle, you’ll probably know about Hawksmoor. If you’re not from Cheadle, you won’t. If you take the Oakamoor road, just after the turn-off signposted to Rocester, Hawksmoor begins with the funny parking area in front of a big cliff with a wood around and above it. It’s where the fields end and…
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Writing prompt: Marmite
If you’re in Australia you have the better version, which is vegemite. If you’re in the US/Canada you’ll have to do some writing research on this one. Don’t embarrass yourself (as a writer I know did) by describing it as “green” because it has “veg” in the Australian name. It’s not green. Do your research.…
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Survivalist practice: Life without running water
On Monday a thin sheet of paper was shoved through the letterbox. It said the council were doing work on our street’s fire hydrants and the water to the street would be turned off from 9:30am to 4pm Wednesday. At first I was irritated but then I thought, I have all these systems in place…