The Apprentice

Well, after yesterday's Budget we all know for certain that this country is in a huge financial mess. And then we watch wannabe future leaders of industry on reality TV and all becomes clear...

Pants Man?! Bright green cereal packaging they didn't even get round to designing? And to top it all, a self-combusting team with two apparent passengers and not the slightest spark of creativity amongst any of the members.

It's difficult to pick potential finalists this year. Debra is manipulative, Ben too pushy and Philip a bulldozing bully. The there's Lorraine, who seems like a fish out of water. I'm quite liking Kate, she did well yesterday.

But at the end of the day The Apprentice is compulsive viewing, one of the few programmes we all watch together in this house...

Day tripping

Yesterday I travelled into central London to have lunch with the lovely Helen, who is my hard-working co-editor at bookersatz. We had only met in person once before, very briefly, so it was great to have a long leisurely meal on a sunny terrace in Islington, chatting about lots of writerly things and life in general. Sadly I had to leave all too soon in order to get home for the school bus, but I hope we'll be able to do it again in the not too distant future.

Today I spent much nearer to home, catching up on the phone and then over coffee with local friends I hadn't seen during the school holidays.

So tomorrow, in order not to have a guilt trip, I will have to get on with my writing. My novel and final OU assignment ( a 4000 word story plus commentary) await me...

Substance over style

I was tidying up last Saturday and half watching Britain's got Talent at the same time, when this stopped me in my tracks.

In an age where everyone seems obsessed by appearance and designer goods, it was lovely to see someone turn prejudices upside down and inside out. Susan Boyle has made the news, rocked America and at the time of writing has over 12 million hits on YouTube.

It is too early to predict whether she will win the series but she is already a star and the pound signs were almost visible in Simon Cowell's eyes as he listened. Yes, of course she would benefit from a little makeover, but as an unemployed person she won't have been able to afford to pamper herself in the past. What really counts is that she has personality and huge talent, unlike most of the bland celebrities we are bombarded with on a daily basis.

It made me think about my own friends who, like me, are mostly very ordinary. I realised that the ones I get on with best and to whom I would entrust my children and my life, are those slightly older friends from a 'make-do and mend' generation, who have no interest in fashion fads and can run their households on a tight budget, within their financial means. They might not have designer homes and wardrobes, but they are selfless and freely give their time and energy to help others. They are the ones who have stuck by us during a few very difficult years when others disappeared. One in particular has literally been a lifesaver.

It may be a generational thing, but give me substance over style any day.

Amazon antics

There appears to be something nasty going on at Amazon.

If you haven't already picked up on this via Facebook or Twitter, then Anne's article will explain the apparent censorship far better than I can.

Read, read, read

How Publishing Really Works is a blog I always enjoy for its perceptive views on writing and the publishing industry.

Today's post on the importance of reading is spot on. Whilst I do think writing can be taught, at least to an extent, reading widely and in more than one genre is also critical to both new and experienced writers. A taught course or even a how-to book will inevitably reflect the personal views and style of the teacher. However, a depth of reading will introduce writers to a huge array of styles and subject matter, which can improve their own work as they discover what works for them as a reader.

So get books for free in the library, buy them cheaply in a charity shop. Experiment with books you would never normally choose. If you don't like them by all means give up, but not before you've worked out what you don't like. It can only improve your own work.

Don't forget autism

Today is World Autism Awareness Day.

Of course there are lots of other things happening in the UK. The G20 Summit and the accompanying protests in Central London are considered far more newsworthy, so there is perhaps only a slim chance of seeing a representative of The National Autistic Society on TV or radio today.

But the world financial situation will impact on autism. There are already far too few services for people on the autistic spectrum, particularly adults and those of all ages at the more able end of the spectrum. The hugely increasing national debt resulting from bailing out the banks will inevitably lead to a further squeezing of funding for public services and some existing schemes are likely to suffer or be lost altogether. Many services are run by charities who are also suffering in the current economic climate.

The current rate of diagnosis is around one child in a hundred, but as no comprehensive records have been kept nobody actually seems to know how many people in this country have autism. It's a demographic time bomb of vulnerable people needing help and support and it is difficult to see where the money for that help is going to come from.

Don't forget people with autism today.

Word counts

I've just updated the word count for my novel and am amazed to find I have now written 31%, that's nearly a third of it completed! I don't update the counter daily or even weekly, but perhaps I should, it's a great motivator.

If I add the words I'm writing on my novel to those written for my OU course, then it doesn't look too unproductive. We are in the finishing straight of the course now and I'm looking forward to being able to concentrate on the novel and perhaps even eventually write some shorter pieces to submit to print or online magazines.

Anyway this coming week is an OU week, another assignment due in on Friday. It has been worth it, I am improving my skills all the time and it will be lovely to hopefully come out at the other end with a formal diploma in literature and creative writing as well as another degree. But it will also be nice, just for a while, to be able to write freely on the novel and not within the tight word limit constraints of the academic course.

Science exams

A report has just come out saying that GCSE science exams have been devalued. This comes as no surprise at all. In the last couple of months I have heard the following:

AS Level students in Son 1's old school, a science college no less, having to be sent on a crash course elsewhere to learn the basics of Chemistry that they need to tackle the subject at the higher level.

A university lecturer in a medical related subject saying that even post A level students come up to university with sufficient in depth knowledge and have to take additional classes to bring them up to scratch.

Son 1 hasn't taken science GCSE yet. But I am reliably informed by other parents that were he to sit the new double-weighted Combined Science exam tomorrow, with no preparation, he could easily pass just on general knowledge gleaned over the years from the Discovery Channel.

I'm no scientist, but it's really not good enough, is it?

On Mother's Day...

RIP Jade Goody.

I've never been a fan, but no one deserves to die of cancer at the age of 27. And no children should lose their mother at such a tender age, especially not on Mother's Day. In her last days Jade used her 'celebrity' status to provide for their future and no one can blame her for that. She showed an unexpected dignity to put OK Magazine to shame and has left the legacy of an increased awareness of cervical cancer in young women. Hopefully she will be remembered for that and her courage in tackling the illness, rather than some of the less savoury episodes in her life.

To Julie Myerson I would like to say that many teenagers are confused, lazy and have habits we would rather not know about. Some may even have more deep-rooted problems which need appropriate specialist intervention. With the right support, however, even the most troubled can turn their lives around successfully, but the impetus to start this process has to come from them. The path they choose to move forward on may not be the one we would have chosen but it doesn't necessarily make it wrong.

Tough love is not always the best approach, especially with a child who is legally a minor. Washing dirty linen in public is definitely not. It might have been better to wait and fictionalise the experience when it is all less raw. I hope you have a second chance, though if this is correct, it would seem unlikely.

The Secret

Yes, I know I'm years behind the rest of the world on this.

I was given a copy of the book The Secret a couple of years ago. I had a quick flick through it and realised that it was just the Law of Attraction, as promoted by Oprah Winfrey, Noel Edmonds and many others, packaged up in a glossy pseudo-historic manner to attempt to appeal to fans of The Da Vinci Code. Unconvinced, I put the book away, but for some obscure reason I picked it up again last weekend and read a bit more.

I have no problem with most of The Law of Attraction. It encourages positive thinking, which is a good thing and the foundation of CBT, which is scientifically proven to work. On the whole The Law of Attraction is harmless and little different to the traditional use of prayer, though I am still not convinced that just asking the Universe for something will bring it, unless you put in some personal effort too. After all, the Universe is not going to get my novel published unless I finish writing it first, is it?

The part of The Secret that I really didn't like, however, was the premise that if something bad happens, it does so because you have been thinking about it and negative thoughts attract negative occurences. Now to me that is psychologically dangerous...the truth is that in life bad things often happen to good people for no reason at all, not because they have thought or done anything to attract them. For that reason I do have my doubts about the whole package.

BUT.

Last night Hubby, out of the blue, commented that we hadn't heard from a friend for a very long time. The husband of my old university friend who died of cancer, we care very much about him and his daughters. Remembering that he had sent a new email address and not sure if I had saved it properly, I said I would have a look today and if I couldn't find it I would post a letter to him instead.

This morning I opened our inbox to find an email from that very same friend, apologising for not being in touch for so long.

A coincidence, or the Law of Attraction in action?

Support Red Nose Day

One of my children has been lucky enough to receive help from a project funded by Comic Relief, so I am now even more of a fan of Red Nose Day.

This year why not buy a copy of TwitterTitters, a charity book of funny stories which was organised through Twitter to support Comic Relief. It even contains stories by two of my lovely fellow Novel Racers and blog friends, Calistro and Lane. Why not have a laugh and support a good cause at the same time?

TwitterTitters can be purchased here and we have a great review over on bookersatz.

Literary loss

I was sad when I read this report about the collapse of an archive building in the German city of Cologne and with it, the expected loss of the archives of the writer Heinrich Boll (apologies for lack of the Umlaut but writing his name as Boell just doesn't look right!)

Now this probably won't mean anything to most of my readers. But for me it holds all sorts of memories. Cologne is a city on the Rhine, famous for its cathedral and of course, Eau de Cologne. It is also the city where, when I lived in Germany, I had to change trains on every journey to and from the UK.

Heinrich Boll was a notable post-war German writer. Many of his works chronicled how ordinary Germans coped in the aftermath of the war, in the painful period of rebuilding and trying to come to terms with the past. One of his books was a slim volume called (in English), The Bread of Those Early Years. A simple and moving love story, set in one day, it uses the leitmotif of colour symbolism to great effect. It was part of my German A Level syllabus and made a huge impact on me. I still have a copy, in German, on my book shelf.

Perhaps his most famous book, The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum, chronicled how the tabloid press can destroy lives, by stirring false suspicions in a time of paranoia about terrorism. Writtten in 1974, its subject matter could equally be relevant today. I studied that book, and the film adaptation, on my degree course.

Although Boll was perhaps never significantly well known in the UK, he was hugely influential in his own country and won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1972. The probable loss of all his private papers and unpublished work is a tragedy.

I feel a need to revisit his books soon. I wonder if my German is up to it?

Coffee mornings

Oh dear, another week has passed with no blog post. I've been busy catching up after the half term and there was really nothing to say.

I may have forgotten to tell you that I finished the OU Introduction to Counselling course a few weeks ago. The official results will be out later this month but, as there was no exam element, I already know I will have passed.

It was an interesting course and parts of it will be very relevant to my voluntary work at the support group coffee mornings I have helped run for many years. Although we are all volunteers, we represent a major national charity and therefore we have to be as professional as possible. The listening skills learned on a counselling course, even a largely academic distance learning course as mine was, are invaluable. It is not rocket science, these are just the basic communication skills that many of us will have been taught as part of employment over the years, but a refresher is always timely.

We don't pretend to be trained counsellors, we are not. In any case, our branch can also offer a proper counselling service with a professional counsellor for those who need it. But we have to be able to listen to parents who are often distraught after receiving a diagnosis of autism for their child. We have to be able to offer practical information without seeming patronising. We have to forget that we have answered the same questions so many times in the past and not lose patience. We have to remember not to keep bringing the conversation back to our own child. We have to make our members, especially newcomers, feel welcome and to do so we have to gently discourage cliques and attention hogging.

It can be hard to support others when you are going through difficult times yourself. The experience in our small team is that at any particular time at least one of us will be dealing with some sort of family crisis or transition. At these times we may step back and let others cover to allow a breathing space. But because we believe we offer a valuable service, most of us return. I took last year off and just attended the meetings to receive support myself, but I'm back doing more this year.

If I can help just one other parent, it is worth the effort.

Following on ...

...from yesterday, I like this article by Libby Purves.

School was back today, after a week of half term and three staff training days. So how did I arrange to spend the day? Attending a National Autistic Society branch committee meeting this morning and giving a talk to parents of newly diagnosed children this evening!

Brightening a sad day

Today has been a sad one in the world of special needs and I would like to send my condolences to David and Samantha Cameron on the death of their beautiful son Ivan. The loss of a child is something no parent should have to bear and as someone said on an internet forum today, we will all be hugging our children a little closer tonight.

But the day has been brightened a little by receiving this Best Blog Thinker award from Sue Guiney. Thanks Sue!



Now it is my turn to pass it on. As my blog is about both special needs and writing I would like to pass it on to bloggers representing both areas. So firstly I give it to Casdok at Mother of Shrek, for probably the best blog on autism I have read. Secondly I would like to give it to Graeme K. Talboys at grumblog, whose wisdom has influenced my writing over the last couple of years more than he probably realises.

When is inclusion not inclusion?

According to the Daily Mail, the BBC has received nine complaints about new CBeebies presenter Cerrie Burnell, who has part of one arm missing from a birth defect. The complaining parents apparently claim that she frightens their children, but what are they doing to take this wonderful opportunity to educate their children in diversity and disability? Nothing, it appears, except pass on their own prejudices.

Disability is a fact of life. For far too many years it was hidden away, but we have moved way beyond that. The education system in the UK positively encourages integration. In any school in the country you will find children with disabilities, both obvious and hidden. So these toddlers who are being 'frightened' will encounter disability elsewhere soon enough. Children are very accepting, they usually only need the simplest of explanations that another is different. It is so often the adults who are not understanding.

The BBC does a good job of showing disability, from Something Special and Balamory on CBeebies, through various mainstream disabled journalists and presenters...Frank Gardner and Gary Donoghue on the BBC news, Ade Adepitan on CBBC to name just a few. None of these appear to be there as a form of PC tokenism, but rather on account of their ability to do the job well. I know, from having met staff who run the CBeebies website, that they also have a strong commitment to make it as disability friendly as possible and welcome suggestions to improve it.

Back in the 1960's my father, as Head of a tiny, three teacher village school, appointed a teacher with one arm. He realised right from the start that there might possibly be one or two things this man would find hard. But he had a track record as a teacher, he was even able to teach football which my dyspraxic father couldn't, in fact there was very little he couldn't manage. The children were not in the least frightened or traumatised and it must have taught the children of that isolated rural community a very important lesson on diversity.

The BBC must continue to show and praise disability. Perhaps it should also make some programmes to educate those ignorant parents too.

Update: The BBC has a very perceptive piece on the whole storm in a teacup here.

Oscar, Oscar x 8

What a fantastic evening for the Brits at the Academy Awards last night. Success at last for Kate Winslet, but most of all Slumdog Millionaire sweeping the board.

Although I've not seen the movie we have a special interest, because Dev Patel, one of the stars, is a local lad who went to the same schools as son 1. What an amazing role model, showing that an ordinary kid can achieve huge success, just a couple of years after leaving school.

In other news, Hubby and son 1 are both ill with chest infections, and in Hubby's case a sinus infection too. We even had to take son 1 to the out of hours doctor at the weekend, as he has had so many chest infections in the last six months and had hardly recovered from the last severe one. I'm sneezing and son 2 has yet to succumb...

Family planning

So how do you decide how many children to have?

A report on the BBC website suggests that parents should take the future of our planet into consideration when planning the size of their family.

But that is probably not top of most people's agenda. The majority of my friends have one or two children, either by choice or medical necessity. But I have other friends and acquaintances with three, four or even five kids. They do say that after the second child, another makes little difference.

I loved having a baby in the house and I have to admit that after son 2 was born I instinctively wanted another. But Hubby was adamant that we stick to two, as we'd always agreed. There were of course many good reasons for this. A third child would have necessitated a bigger car, a bigger house, a bigger mortgage, not to mention increased day to day running costs of another to feed and clothe.

But above all there were other practical reasons I could not ignore. I knew from a very early age that all was not well with son 2. By the time we might have been thinking about another pregnancy, we were already caught up in assessments and appointments and his behaviour at home would have endangered a baby. So another pregnancy would have to be postponed until he started school, by which time I would not be far off 40. Although genetic counselling told us the risk of another child with autism was only around 6%, a 40 year old who has already had two premature births is not a good prospect for a healthy full term delivery.

It was actually the fear of another premature birth which put me off the idea for good, because I knew I could not go through the trauma of a critically sick newborn again. It is only recently that I have felt able to write about that time of my life. Some of you may have seen my poem here. And I have decided to do a piece of life writing on son 1's earliest days for my next OU assignment.

I may have conquered those baby demons at last.

Babies having babies

A lot has been written over the last few days about the baby born to a fifteen year old mother and allegedly fathered by a thirteen year old. Most people, quite rightly, find the whole scenario rather shocking.

Teenage pregnancy is nothing new of course. I can well remember the scandal in the very small town where I grew up, when one of my classmates dropped out of school at fifteen to have a baby. The UK currently has the highest rate of teenage pregnancy in Western Europe, so something is going wrong somewhere.

What I have found so scary about this particular case is that the girl's parents apparently allowed boys to sleep with her, in their home, when she was clearly legally under age. Not just one, but allegedly at least three.

Now we can't always control what our teenagers are doing outside the house, but we can within our own walls. I don't claim to be a perfect parent, indeed I doubt that one exists. But parents need to know how to set and enforce boundaries, otherwise how else do kids learn to be responsible members of society?

There are many parenting courses available, in fact before Christmas I attended one on parenting teenagers, run by a local voluntary organisation. The sad thing was that everyone who attended the course was in fact already a good parent, simply striving to be even better. The sort of parents who really need such help wouldn't attend, however much social workers or other agencies refer them.

Next week I am going to be speaking to parents on a course based around understanding autism. The same thing applies, the parents who attend the course are the good ones, who want to learn how to understand and help their child. But what about the others, and how might a young teenager cope with a child with autism?

Write what you know...

...is the conventional wisdom.

I know that my own writing is definitely strongest when it is based on this principle, because even when fictionalising the material the emotional truth shines through.

I am now faced with deciding what to write for the next OU assignment, which is a very big one in terms of the overall assessment marks. We can choose from fiction, life writing or poetry. So having discounted poetry as far too risky, I am left with a choice of the other two.

I am lucky enough to have experienced plenty of possible material in my life. But do I go with life writing or do I create fiction from my own experience?

Answers on a postcard please.