Just pleasantly floundering around.....

A draft post I wrote ten years ago that I thought i would publish... I have never been to the Outer Hebrides but somehow have still managed to feel a (very) mild affiliation to them on account of the following.   When I was about eleven our dad returned from work one day with the weighty speculation that we might move to Benbecular so that my dad could run the airport there. Apparently the airport traffic amounted to about one aeroplane a day. The move was carefully and seriously considered over the following few weeks. I remember feeling extremely unsettled by this idea and the more I learned about the Outer Hebrides, the more resistance I felt. Aside from being told most island children go to boarding schools on mainland Scotland for their education and that its young residents usually do very well academically because there's nothing to do but study (this really scared me) my main fear was centred around the fact that devout religion on the islands meant people were not al...

  For so many reasons: Who exactly gets to decide which ideas are allowed one the table? If people don't get the discuss their views, how will they be able to take in new information? Censorship increases polarisation. Polarisation seems to make people less able to discuss ideas outside of their own. 'Toleration' of views other than your own, can help develop understanding.

Once upon a time humans lived in tribes: of 150 people at most. Everyone would have known and felt some responsibility for everyone in that tribe. There would have been a balance of evolved traits so some people were more adventurous than others (which was good for hunting and finding new foods) and some more neurotic than others (which was good for the tribe because someone was always on high alert for any danger that might arrive). Emotions evolved for us to live like this: to optimise chances of survival and as part of that survival, to make us socially palatable to others so that we were not kicked out of the tribe. The tribe lived to serve each other and of all was well, would survive to reproduce. Then we learnt how to farm. This changed things and introduced the capacity for inequality as some people could accumulate more than others, and they did. Thousands of years later, for example, a miller had accrued enough wealth to build a mill. This meant he could work less by chargi...

This is a very special event that I have been to four times. Three of those times I told stories, but the last time I was in the audience. It's hard to explain just how special this event is. It's like people watching plus! And because the audience is - quite rightly - primed to be kind and compassionate towards the speakers, you get a sense that the room fills up with love as more speakers add their stories. Some people's stories are funny, some haunting, some astonishing and others heart-breaking. You certain feel like you've been on an emotional journey by the time it finishes. Here you can find the last story I told: I am not a pyromaniac . You can judge for yourself. And here is the song that goes with the story: Closet Pyromaniac Ooo the incongruence shows already!

  I just read an article about how rape prosecutions were in decline. So, the article went on to explain, there was a (long overdue) government review and fundamentally the outcome was that some targets were set for more prosecutions. No more funding, no more preventative or proactive measures put in place such as education, training or raising awareness, no more resourcing within the police to support rape victims. At best, this will bring the lack of rape prosecutions into focus for a while. It reminded me of a time when Accident and Emergency Departments were given the target of seeing anyone who walked in their door within the first ten minutes. I heard anecdotally that this resulted in someone being given the job of holding a clipboard and ‘booking in’ new arrivals within said ten minutes and then the patient had to wait the same amount as time as before. Totally ineffective, and what’s more, the ‘clipboard person’ was actually a resource removed from elsewhere. With no furt...

For many years now I have been reading absolutely everything I can get my hands on about emotional literacy/intelligence and resilience. It's not just because I write books for children about the stuff, it's also because for personal development as emotional literacy is pretty key to self-awareness, self regulation,  and generally finding life more manageable! I didn't have great role models in my childhood for emotional literacy and I suspect this triggered my perpetual search for answers. So recently, I decided to compose some videos aimed at - not the age I write for - but the age I have always taught: Key Stage 2 aged children (7-11) although I think some of the videos could be used with older children. My aim is to support parents, carers and teachers with helping their children develop emotional literacy. All of the videos can be found, described and added to each week here.  If it helps one person - I am happy!