2# Visiting New Zealand Schools

Following the wedding we were beginning to become acclimatised to the lovely summer weather in New Zealand which was, according to news reports, enjoying its warmest February for years -

not something I was about to complain about as I thought about the freezing cold we had left at home in Scotland.

It was now time to start the series of school visits that had been planned.

The lovely people at the New Zealand Book Council (which works in a vaguely similar way to our own excellent Scottish Book Trust)  contacted schools in their network just before Christmas.

Being on the other side of the world their schools were just about to start their long summer break but the response was wonderful with 21 schools asking if I could visit them when I came over in February.  I decided to visit 9 schools, all in North Island in a kind of loop that would lead us back to Auckland in time to fly out later in the month,  I was going to visit two schools in each place, and three when we returned to Auckland.

They were a mixture of primary and secondary schools and the teachers happily offered to get in touch during their holidays so that the details could be finalised before I left as the visits would be taking place at the beginning of their new school year (early February).

I wanted to speak to a mixture of ages of children but also in a variety of types of schools.  The first I visited was in Palmerston North, and after a visit overnight with friends in Whanganui we headed to Awatapu College  a High School where we were mat by a Scot whohas been resident in New Zealand for many years now, it was a nice touch! 
Mike Tuck the Head of English at Awatapu College had organised two classes of 13-14 year olds for me to speak to  about Dead Boy Talking and Spider, and there were some interesting questions.


After lunch there was a change of age group with a visit to a primary school to do a creative writing session with a small group of keen 8-9year old writers at the Central Normal School. 

I was curious about the name and discovered that it comes from it being a school there student teachers are trained, the purpose is to establish teaching standards or norms, which is where they get the name.

Leaving Palmerston North we headed South to Wellington, a beautiful city on a bay.  We left Palmerston North in glorious sunshine but when we arrive din wellington the rain had arrived just before us and it was pouring.  But by the time we had checked into our hotel the rain had stopped.  Wellington is known to be a windy city and it lived up to its name the following day when we made our way to the New Zealand Book Council offices but with the sun shining it really didn't matter. 

1 - From Snow to Sun - An airport, a February summer and a Wedding

Winter snow arrived early in 2010 and the snow was still with us in January 2011, at times so deep that it was impossible to go anywhere.  This all made building snow teddy bears








amazing icicles






and musing at tyre hearts on the street, the main activities.





But luckily  we had other plans and by the end of January we had swapped the chilly snowbound UK for sunnier climes. 

After 12 hours on a plane waiting at an airport for a connecting flight can be daunting.  But there is one airport I really quite like, because it seems to have been designed with human beings in mind...


This is Singapore Airport,

where there are carpets and trees, an outdoor  swimming pool, a butterfly garden and you can go for a shower or even hire a room for a few hours sleep between flights.  Most civilised.

When we arrived there was even a chap playing gentle jazz on a grand piano as if he was in the lounge of some top hotel.




Flying on we landed in Brisbane airport and took the train south to meet friends on the Gold Coast.

It has been a strange time with disasters hitting all around.  Our trip had been planned before the dreadful floods hit Brisbane and we saw little of the devastation that had hit the city and further north, by then the floods had mostly subsided.

Arriving in Auckland we were met by Wayne Mills who is the quiz master of the Kids Lit Quiz .  Wayne was about to leave for the quiz heats in South Africa and then he was off to the heats in Canada where they were joining in the quiz for the first time this year. 

The World finals are being held in New Zealand This year and in July the national finalists from all over the world will come to Hamilton NZ for a fabulous world final event and a chance to see some of the amazing sights in New Zealand.  Teams from two schools, Cockermouth School and Bristol Grammar  in the UK will be there!





The next highlight of our trip was a wedding.  The kiwi bride was beautiful and the setting an amazing stone built family chapel and there was a contingent of Scots there on the groom's side, the men resplendent in their kilts!

WORLD BOOK DAY- Do not disturb- I'm reading!

My favourite picture for World Book Day!

Abigail - 15mths

Giveaway launch for new Crime blog

Crime Central
http://crimereading.blogspot.com/
A blog about crime books...and more,,,, for teens

If Crime is your thing why not drop in and see what devious thoughts we crime writers are having and why. Have your say about......

Your Favourite crime novels, old or new,


Your favourite characters


Find out what drives writers to the dark side of crime 

......and so much more.


There are four criminal masterminds leading the way and they are -

  Anne Cassidy

                   

Keren David                           

                                     
  

Gillian Phillip


                   

                                                

                                    Linda Strachan        

  (that's me, in case you didn't realise!)

 We will be joined by a host of great writers of mayhem and mystery.

But most of all we want you to join us.

 And what better way to start than with a great giveaway competition. 

TEN people will win a signed copy of one of  Anne Cassidy's great books.  

It's too good to miss!

Drop by Crime Central, read a fantastic blog by our very first special guest Malcolm Rose.

Christmas gifts for booklovers -how did you fare?

TODAY on

What bookish delights did you get or receive this Christmas?

The north wind shall blow and we shall have snow - again?

Sue Purkiss, in her excellent blog about snow Dark Lords,Witch Queens, and Snow on ABBA yesterday, said -
'Snow changes what happens, we all know that: ordinary life holds its breath. You can't work any more, so you might as well play. 

But there's something else, something much deeper than that. We are taken back to an older time, when we were bound more closely to nature; to a time when people must have wondered if winter would ever end, and if they could possibly survive it even if it did.' 


We have just had almost two weeks of incredibly deep snow.  When it arrived so early it seemed quite beautiful and a lot of fun, but soon almost all travel was impossible, except on foot through snow that lay a foot deep.

That was when, as Sue says, ordinary life held its breath.  But it felt much more than that.

When day after day we looked out on this altered landscape through snow-crusted windows it should have been an opportunity to get lots done at home, but perhaps we are more instinctive beings than our modern lives would suggest?

Are we more tied to nature, making this deep wintry weather trigger some kind of survival instinct or dread that it would never end?  Is that why some people seem to have reacted strangely to the enforced holiday.

After the first day or so when we cleared paths only to have them as deep in snow by the following morning, it should have been easy to settle down to working at home or doing all those things that there never seems time for.

But instead I was unable to concentrate on anything for very long, as if life was on hold, breathlessly waiting to see when this force of nature would melt away and everything would return to normal.  My friends and neighbours reported the same sense of  waiting, of not-quite-holiday, when day after day we woke to more and more snow, just when we thought it was beginning to disappear, it all came back again, worse than ever.

Most of it finally melted away leaving behind small mountains of hard-packed ice and snow where it had been cleared from the roads.  Most of the deep snow may have gone but many icy paths and pavements are still covered by snow, hardened to solid ice by sub zero temperatures.  It is currently -7 outside  but the latest fall of snow seems to have avoided our little corner of the land and is currently immobilising the north and south.

The forecast threatens - as the nursery rhyme goes -    ' The north wind shall blow and we shall have (more) snow...'   Will we still hold our breath until it all goes away again? Will our instinct for survival make us fight the lethargy or make us want to hibernate until the spring?

Presents - what would you buy your characters for Christmas?

Do you know what to give your nearest and dearest this Christmas? Do you find choosing gifts a pleasure or a chore.

Perhaps there was a present you desperately hoped for as a child, but never got, or one that delighted you so much that the memory is still vivid?

Do you remember the worst present you have ever received or the present you wish you had never given someone else?

A great way of creating real, living, breathing characters is to get to know them as well, or better, than we know the people around us.  So here is a thought - what to get them for Christmas. or what would be their ideal Christmas present?

If you understand your characters well enough to breathe life into them on the page,  you should be able to think about what they would want for themselves, but also what some of the people around them would choose for them as a present.