..a large, brown, cardboard package containing letters, CDs, a study guide, a study calendar, a TMA form (a what?!), and a Serious Looking Book. My Open University Creative Writing course is about to kick off. So what was it about signing those papers, ticking the box marked yes and sending off a fat-ish cheque made them think I meant it?! Continue reading In the post today..
Look at that, two watershed moments in one title! The first, the NOT, is a bit of news I’ve been sitting on for a couple of weeks now – an actual, whole, bona fide ( or in this case, more aptly perhaps, bony fido) *publication!! Ok, so another 79 people won the competition too but what good company my junior offering is in! Fancy a look at a real feast of bite-sized fiction? Get yourself over to Michael J Solender’s blog ‘NOT from here, are you?’ and download the e-chap. The out-and-out winner was Sam Adamson whose story ‘The Pit … Continue reading Got NOT-ted!
Reunion Out on the terrace of their friend’s rather magnificent home following their 10 year class reunion…continued here Continue reading Reunion
This time last year, I signed up for a twelve week Open University course on writing fiction and, hey ho, I’ve done it again. Thirty two weeks this time, creative writing, WITH POETRY – am I mad?! Sweepy Jean, your Gil Scott-Heron entry may have come in the nick of time – that kind of poetry I can relate to. But what’s this about biography and autobiography? Will I have to follow Fabio Cappello around while he negotiates his exit from England management? Or Rooney? Please, not Rooney, I don’t speak Scouse! Beckham though.. I’ve been faffing about considering this … Continue reading Gloves are off, now it’s serious..
Poetry by the Numbers. Courtesy of Sweepy Jean. Pleb that I am, I was drawn first by the rhythmic undertow. Continue reading Poetry by the Numbers
VR has moved another step forwards with developments at the Computer Vision lab in Zürich. Using a special sensor arm, the operator can touch and feel the projected image of an object while viewing it through data goggles. There are many ways now of using simulation for skill development, task rehearsal, and remote operations. This development adds another layer of reality to the virtual representation and so gives rise to an exponential growth in the potential for health applications. Continue reading Getting your hands on a virtual frog
I’ve seen this debate elsewhere, publish on your blog so you have a ‘presence’ or keep your work to yourself so that it remains saleable. So far, I’ve just put up early pieces; exercises, bits and bobs that might entertain but that wouldn’t make it into a slush pile, never mind a magazine. Last week though, on leave and with only myself to entertain, I wrote what I think is one of my best short stories EVER (nah – doesn’t take much!) and, it being under 500 words, I was about to sling it up here for my many thousands … Continue reading If not the blog then, where?
Tick all that apply It’s becoming pretty clear to anyone who isn’t living in a cupboard or a Jane Austen serial that there’s something of an information explosion underway and that finding what you want to know could be exasperating to say the least. Where do you start? Who do you ask? At one time, our main source was the newspaper held proprietorially by the man of the house while he puffed quietly on his pipe behind his printed screen. Then there was the TV and the Six o Clock News. We pretty much stood to attention for that, newscasters, … Continue reading You have a question, where do you look for answers?
This is a new publication in the same vein as Mencap’s ‘Death by Indifference’ shocker of a couple of years ago which exposed the scandalous way in which people with learning disabilities are often treated by the NHS. Not generally through malignance or harmful intent but through ignorance and blindness to their difficulties. Something called diagnostic overshadowing makes it difficult for many health care professionals to see beyond the learning disability so that other conditions, often physical or psychological and some of them as basic as being unable to eat without prompting, are over-looked. Jo Lee, physiotherapist in our team, … Continue reading Specialist, palliative, and rehabilitative care for people with learning disabilities
model steam engine Continue reading When did you last walk home barefoot?
Dr Suzanne Conboy-Hill 