Despite living in France, it's always good to be asked to help out in the Old Country:  just before my last visit home to Wales I was contacted by the Save the Children charity to ask if I'd help out in their "Read On, Get On" campaign.  This is aimed at getting Welsh children reading, and more important, enjoying reading. I wrote a short story for inclusion in STC's book, which will be launched on 30th October at the Millennium Centre in Cardiff, and on the day I was packing to leave for the ferry that afternoon, I was asked to write an article for the Western Mail's Authors' Notes page featured in the Saturday colour supplement. So I sat down in the middle of piles of clothes, teaching stuff (I was going home to visit some schools to workshop and to launch my new book which, serendipitously, was about a dyslexic child) and wrote it.  Which is probably why I arrived in Wales with only a pair of sneakers, one top and no socks ~ that was my excuse for the new stuff, anyway!  The launches, one in Waterstone's bookshop in Abergavenny and one in a Welsh-language school, went brilliantly, and so did the schools visits.  I'm also Patron of Reading to three Welsh schools, which means that I write a monthly newsletter telling the kids what I'm doing, encouraging them to read and setting challenges ~and if there are any Americymru members out there with school links I'd be glad to get involved with a transatlantic school too, though I can't promise to visit!

One of the schools was a Cardiff one that has around 27 different ethnic languages in it, and I arrived the day they were going to have a party to celebrate Eid el Fitr, so all the children were wearing rainbow saris or brocade tunics ~ it was like teaching a cloud of butterflies.  I had my story bag with me, and one of the items in it was a seashell.  I was astounded to learn that the children didn't know that the sea lives in sea-shells, and the shell was pressed to so many ears and produced so many wondering faces that the session became one that I shall remember for a long time to come.

I must apologise that my appearences in this forum are infrequent ~ I'm supposed to be retired, but as most retired people say, I've never been so busy.  As well as writing (that's something I'll never retire from) and the Patron newsletters I also produce another for our little English-language multi-faith church out here and have just taken my first service.   I may recover from the trauma some time in the future...

Now I'm going back to the new book I've just started writing...