Running in the Rain

This morning I had my first real run in the rain.  I’ve run in light showers before but nothing like this.  And I found it refreshing.  To go out into the rain and not be bothered about getting wet was lovely.  My feet might have got a bit wet, but not much worse than they get with the dew in the park sometimes, and once I got going they soon warmed up so that I couldn’t feel it and could imagine that my shoes might steam once I took them off.

I can’t remember the last time I went out in the rain and wasn’t trying to hide from it – can you?  It might have been in the New Forest about 20 years ago, I look forward to making it a new habit.

Hooray, results

I have finally received my marks for EA300 Children’s Literature from the Open University.  Its taken them a while to get the results out and mine were a little later than everyone else’s, but I’ve worked in an Exams Office and know the effort that goes into getting marks ready.  The good news is that I’ve passed and although the mark was a little lower than I’d been hoping for; the pass is the important bit.  Now I really do need to decide what to do next.

This Week’s Writers Group

This week’s writers group saw a good turn out considering it’s the middle of August.  We actually ran late discussing ways to help improve our editing skills, something we all lack.  The best suggestion – reading your work out loud so you can hear when things don’t work.

I read out a very short piece that I’ve been working on for the local libraries creative writing competition – ‘Holiday heaven or holiday hell’.  It’s quite hard to get to the heart of something in only 250 words but everyone seemed to think I did ok.

The homework this week – Imagine you are the mother or father of an infamous person (real or fictional).  Now write something (a monologue, story, poem) in the first person about what that person is (or was) like as a child, in a way that explains how s/he later turned out as an adult.  (borrowed from Mslexia)

Wild Creations stamp

I have two amazing men in my life, which I am very grateful for.
In Feb 2009 I wrote an entry about the fact that I, with a lot of help from my Dad, had created a stamp for marking my handmade books as mine.  As we played with it we came up with the idea of heating the stamp and using gold foil to make the stamp even clearer.  But then I had course work to do and started looking for a flat and dad had work to do and so the project got put to one side.  Dad was still working on it, but only when he had time.

So imagine my excitement when he told me it was done.  Created from scraps of shower units and other things from his shed, it is the ultimate recycled project.  Nothing has been bought; I even managed to scrounge the springs from the workshops at work.

He dropped it off with instructions on how to use it, then ‘im outdoors bolted it to the work bench for me and with a little fine tuning I now have the tool for marking my books and I guess anything else the foil will stick to.

Without the men in my life this project would never have even been dreamed of.  Thanks guys.