It all began 3 years ago today

Three years ago today, Suzanne Short (a Year 10 student from Cumbria) started out on a strange and wonderful adventure. You can read her story in my time-slip novel, The Boy with Two Heads. Her best friend is Bernadette, known as Bernie. This is an extract from Bernie's blog:

From Bernie’s Blog. Feb 15th 2010, Monday 

School trip to Greece, Day 4 

Athens. Hotel Artemis.

THIS HAS BEEN THE WORST DAY OF MY LIFE!!!!!!!! 

Where do I start? 

Poor poor Suzanne. Will she be OK? Why did this happen? And in a country where I don’t understand anything! 

So… Concentrate! Start at the beginning … 

This morning we all got our backpacks together with packed lunches from the hotel, and water bottles, and questionnaires, and all the usual tourist stuff. And Suzanne seemed a bit quiet. Yesterday she was leaping around and like ‘We’re gonna see where it all began.’ Meaning the Olympics, of course. She’s obviously still obsessed, even though she gave up the idea of competing because of bloody Ian. 

But today she was really quiet. Then she told me that Ian had dumped her. Up at the top of the Stadium! By text! Right in the place she’d been so excited to see. ‘Where it all began’. 

And now, maybe where it all ends.
OMG!
Pause for tears. Oh help … 

Right. Trying to get it together now. 

We were all crossing the road along the open end of the stadium. We’d all got across except Suzanne. She missed the light so she could take a last photo. I was just teasing Gina about there being no cake in the packed lunch, when I heard a screaming noise from an engine and a load of shouting. I turned round and saw that Suzanne was lying on the tarmac near the pedestrian crossing. The traffic was stopped dead. A motorbike was on its side in the middle of the road and Mr Green had his arm round a man’s neck. ...

Panathenaic Stadium pedestrian crossing

And this is where Suzanne's story began, on the pedestrian crossing by the Panatheniac Stadium in Athens. (As you can see, crazy motorcyclists are not a common occurrence.)

The Boy is free!

The Boy with Two Heads e-book is a free download from Amazon this weekend. 

Lovely Tweet about it:
"Got the Olympic bug? Looking for children's books with an Olympic theme? Try this (10 yrs+) - free download this weekend"


More than 100 downloads overnight. Thanks to all!!

The London Eye looks on ...

Part of the view from my seat in the Horse Guards Parade arena

We spent a happy morning yesterday, watching four beach volleyball matches in the rare sunshine. As you can see, the view was spectacular. I doubt there'll be another chance to see it from that angle ever again, as the arena is temporary, and will be dismantled after the Games. 

Beach volleyball never seemed very competitive to me. When I lived in Greece, we spent many happy times on sandy beaches bashing a ball backwards and forwards over a net, rarely forcing our opponents to dive for a save. But it is taken very seriously and is extremely athletic when it is an Olympic sport. The snatches of surfing music that burst out between points, and the exhorting of the crowd to clap and shout Ole! and do Mexican waves, all seem to uphold my original opinion, but the effort and skill of the players cannot be denied.

Photo of the big screen showing a dramatic save

It also occurred to me that this was probably the only sport in the modern Olympics carried out in almost the same physical conditions as boxing and wrestling in the Ancient Olympic Games - a precisely measured rectangle of soft sand under the (blazing?) sun.

However, the umpire does not hold a whip and everyone wears some kind of clothes. Strange that for the women these cover so much less of their bodies than for the men ...

Olympic Games, here I come!

Today I'm travelling down to London for the Olympics. I'm going by car, not by ship, like Themis in The Boy with Two Heads. And it will only take six hours, not six days. 


We have tickets for three events: beach volleyball on Monday ("the hottest tickets in town"), athletics on Friday evening, and trampoline on Saturday (these must be warm tickets, at least!). We decided against boxing, in spite of its relevance to my story. The weather looks dryer there ...

Horse Guards beach volleyball venue

Since I last blogged, Connie has overcome the technical difficulties and up-loaded the e-book of The Boy with Two Heads to Amazon. She decided the price would be £3.99, with a 'free day' sometime soon, when readers will be able to download it for free. I'll blog the date when I know.


Meanwhile, I've been writing the first draft of a new reader manuscript, probably for Cambridge. 

Which is why I haven't been focussed much on my Boy! But he's been selling gently all along, and I did take two days off to go down to London two weeks ago to go round the bookshops near the Olympic Park and in Central London to raise awareness of him. I wore my promotional T-shirt. I hope to have more to say about that when I've had a chance to see if there have been any results. Waterstones' website says he is available to order. Blackwell says he is 'not in stock - our special ordering service will try to obtain this title for you'. At least, they've stopped saying he's only available from the USA!


So now I'm all set to enjoy the Games. We watched the Opening Ceremony on TV last night. The papers are saying it was "a Triumph". Thank you, to Danny Boyle and all the thousands who took part!  It was fascinating to be reminded of the variety of human cultures and styles as the athletes paraded into the stadium. My favourite moment (from among many funny and touching and enthralling ones) was when those 204 copper petals rose up and became a burning flower. The London 2012 'cauldron' was designed by Thomas Heatherwick, truly thinking outside the box. No bowls on sticks for him. Wow!

Ballet and bridges

At Words by the Water today I went to the session where Deborah Bull talked about her book, The Everyday Dancer. I learned that ballet dancers find it difficult to know when to eat during their busy days because they are supposed to leave four hours between their last meal and class, rehearsal or performance. As their day consists of all three, the only time when they have four hours after a meal is last thing at night.

Deborah Bull is impressive. She is bright and fun and intelligent. She starts this month as Director of King’s College Partners. According to the Royal Opera House's website, she "will continue to work closely with the Royal Opera House ... to deliver the ROH’s Olympic activities, including the free exhibition, The Olympic Journey: The Story of the Games." This exhibition will be staged at the ROH during the London Olympics and will include many artifacts and much material from the Olympic Museum in Lausanne, Switzerland. It will trace the history of the Games from Ancient Greece to the present day. 


Which was one reason I wanted to see Ms Bull's session. As it turned out, the Olympics were not mentioned, but I learned yet more about looking after your body if you want it to perform for you every day, all day. Not that that is something I can ask of mine at this stage in my life ...


However, I did go for a lovely walk between talks - and showers. And the sun did come out later. But I heard a complaint that there weren't many daffodils yet. William Wordsworth has a lot to answer for! 
Here are some of the things I saw as I walked through Keswick:

Derwent Water in the distance

Penrith Road and crocuses

Stone road bridge over River Greta

Spring flowers in the municipal gardens

Causey Pike from an
old railway bridge

Skiddaw from Borrowdale Road

The Boy is nearly there.

We were in Carlisle shopping a couple of days ago and came across this sculpture of chairs. It’s beside one of the paths towards the stadium where Suzanne used to train in The Boy with Two Heads, but the story is set two years ago, and this is quite new. It seems unlikely for this part of the world, more reminiscent of Barcelona or Lisbon. The weather was so cold and windy that I didn’t manage to find out if it has a name and who made it. I’ll have another look on a better day. 

On a completely different note, it seems there’s to be an award ceremony at the IATEFL (International Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language) conference in Glasgow in March at which I will be given a certificate for winning first place with Dragons' Eggs in its category. When Nelson’s Dream won, it was a very small affair at the CUP stand, but this time it will be a bit more public and involve people having drinks and making speeches. I’ve known about winning the category since August, but had no idea there would be this celebration. Brilliant!

Eastern Highlands, Zimbabwe

Yesterday there was an email from the friend in Zimbabwe who checked over the text of Dragons’ Eggs for me to make sure there were no cultural mistakes. He jokingly mentions Juliasdale, a small town in the Eastern Highlands, where Brian and I climbed a granite hill and looked out across miles of mountains. It's not where the action of Dragons' Eggs happens but it is such a wonderful place, I want to include a picture here. I'm really looking forward to the better weather when we can do some more walking in the hills here in Cumbria.

My work on The Boy with Two Heads is almost done now, except for letting people know about it. There will be checks of text and so on till the last minute, but that looks like being within three weeks or so. I have made a proposal to CUP for another Reader for them. Their Readers are not timeslip novels, of course, but they can be just as complex to write because they are for young adults learning English, so the language and structure are carefully controlled, as well as the content.

We've been trying to get some more tickets to the Olympics in London, but the website seems to be having trouble dealing with the traffic. We wanted to see some of the athletics but haven't managed as yet, in spite of Brian spending hours on line. 

I shall be busy with other parts of my life for the next couple of weeks, so won't be posting anything here until later in the month. Thank you for your interest so far!