The joy of the school visit

I spent much of last week in the delightful Isle of Wight, visiting schools as part of their Isle of Wight Story Festival schools’ programme.

It’s me and Madame le Pig!

I always enjoy visiting schools. It makes writing books so worthwhile, especially when you get such lovely feedback from the children.

(And getting to the Isle of Wight involves almost every form of public transport, which makes me especially happy!)

You also get to make new friends, and I always enjoy that.

This time round, the day I returned home I fell ill, and I’ve been pretty much laid up since. This is absolutely not a perk of the job, but very much part of the territory. However, in the moments I’ve felt up to it I’ve been reading either reading a book or playing a video game.

Those who know me well will know I rarely sit still, leaving reading to the half hour before bed, and video games to those times when my daughter wants to play or, again, the evenings - and usually in winter. So it’s great to just while the hours away doing things I rarely do, even if I’m feeling down in the dumps.

I wanted to read something unchallenging, so picked up the Lord of the Rings. I’m always planning one fantasy book or another (I have about ten of my own fantasy books part started never finished, and one day I’d like to return to older fiction like my Mousehunter books,) so it’s fascinating to look back on past reads with a slightly older more critical eye.

LotR is obviously very much a children’s book, that with some judicious editing for length could fit very nicely into a middle grade book shelf. I think I was 14 when I last read it, and the films have totally obscured the original text for me, but blimey, there’s a lot of eating, going to bed then waking up over the first 300 pages. At least the songs they all sing provide the reader with the chance of a metaphorical toilet break.

Tolkien has some beautiful description, mind, and very quotable lines. One particular that I like is Bilbo asking:

‘Don’t adventures ever have an end? … I suppose not. Someone else always has to carry on the story.’

I’m skim reading it, I suppose, but as you get older, lines like these do take on greater meaning. I like to think the seeds sown at my school events might one day blossom into new authors or illustrators, continuing in the long tradition of storytellers and artists in the world. Someone else to carry on these stories!

As for video games, I’ve dipped into No Man’s Sky, newly updated for the Switch 2. If you’ve never played it, it’s a massive open world (galaxy?!?) game in which you’re a lone astronaut, roaming planets with a ship, learning about yourself and the entirety of existence.

I played it a few years ago, never quite taking off, but now it’s been super enhanced I’ve really enjoyed pootling about the planets, occasionally bumping into an ominous alien monolith while learning a few words of a foreign language. It’s super chilled out, populated with other friendly, if bizarre space beings and traversed by all sorts of wonderful ships.

Pretty much the same as the Isle of Wight, I suppose.