Merry Christmas

It's Christmas Eve and Vicky and I would like to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas... 2015 has been a busy year with lots going on. All the presents are wrapped and everything is prepared... we're looking forward to having a nice few days over the holidays before a busy 2016.

I've had a great time this year visiting schools and libraries all over the place and I'm really looking forward to visiting more in the New Year. There's going to be lots of travelling involved... but there's also going to be a lot more writing done in 2016.


There's a few little books due to be published in the early part of 2016 and I will tell you more about those in January. Have a lovely Christmas and a very Happy New Year...

Keep on coming to visit my diary as I will be posting a lot more in the New Year.... news of what I'm doing and what I'm working on. 

I've even got a story to be getting on with over Christmas... It's like having homework!!!

Better go now before Santa arrives... 

Have a great time everyone... 

Love Damian and Vicky

xx

P.S. hope you like the pictures of our Christmas Tree

Happy Anniversary

Today is our second Wedding Anniversary so there will be no writing, texting, tweeting or anything... phones and laptops are switched of and we're spending a lovely couple of days together in the same perfect place where we spent our honeymoon.
Happy Anniversary to my beautiful wife, Vicky...

If you'd like to see more pictures from our perfect day click on Our Wedding on my website.

 

Postcard from Paris (and London)

A couple of weeks ago, before starting off on school visits to join schools and libraries in their celebrations for World Book Day, Vicky and I got up early and caught the train to London. The sun wasn't even up but the sky was just beginning lighten. A crescent moon accompanied by one single star could just be seen over the top of the house... we were all packed and ready to go. 

We arrived in London nice and early, made our way to our hotel to drop our bags off and then set off on what we had planned to be the first of our relaxing days together. It was a gorgeous, sunny day so we set off walking through Hyde Park and made our way towards Kensington Palace. At the time I was busy working on a little book about Queen Victoria so I was quite interested to see the palace as that was where she was born and where she grew up.

The Palace stands at the far end of Hyde Park in London and has this large statue of Victoria by it. We didn't go into the palace but it was really interesting to see it and know that this was where Queen Victoria was born back in 1819. Today, the palace is home to the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge (Prince William and his wife, Kate)... They wanted us to pop in for coffee but sadly, we didn't have time so we carried on our little walk through the park.    

Further round the park we passed by The Royal Albert Hall and the magnificent Albert memorial. There are statues to Albert and Victoria all over London. I took quite a few photographs as we made our way around and will be putting more if them on my History Heroes web page soon. We had decided that, whilst in London, we would go and have a little lunch at Harrods as a special treat - so we carried on with our little walk - past the Museums and along Brompton Road. It was quite a long walk but it was well worth it as lunch was delicious.

Afterwards we carried on walking around London, hopping on and off the underground every now and then, and arrived back at our hotel with aching feet. I have said that we were having little walks but you don't always realise just how far you are walking when you are in a big city like London and are having so much fun. That night we were too tired to go looking for anywhere to eat so we bought a pizza and ate it in our room. YUM!  

We didn't have long to relax that night as we had to get up very early the next morning - too early for breakfast - so we could catch a couple of underground trains and get to St Pancras Station in time for our train to Paris. We got there just in time...

In a couple of hours we were in Paris - just in time for breakfast too... Unlike the day before, in London, today was wet but we weren't going to let that bother us. We knew we only had one day in Paris so we didn't want to spend our time looking in shops, museums or anything like that, we just wanted to have a little wander round and soak up the atmosphere.

We had planned to go somewhere to have a coffee and some pastries for breakfast but by the time we had wandered around a bit it was time for lunch. Not only had we soaked up some of the atmosphere but we had soaked up quite a bit of the rain too... my feet were very squelchy in my trainers. Lunch was delicious and by the time we got back outside it had stopped raining. 

We carried on wandering around the streets of Paris, slowly making our way towards the Eiffel Tower. We walked by the Louvre museum and art gallery but didn't go inside. It was wonderful visiting Paris when we did as there weren't as many tourists as there would be in the summer. In the picture above, you can just see Vicky standing by the fountain at the Louvre. I imagine that it gets very busy here in the summer.

We had planned to take it easy, just having a little wander around, but as with London, you don't realise just how far you are walking and after a while our feet were beginning to ache again. Instead of walking all the way to the Eiffel Tower we decided to catch the boat bus. One ticket meant that we could hop on and off as often as we wanted all through the day. And because there weren't that many tourists around we nearly had the boat to ourselves...

The Eiffel tower is right next to the River Seine so when we got off we didn't have far to walk - which was good. By the time we got there the sun had come out too...

The tower has over 7 million visitors each year - luckily they weren't all there on thee day we went so we didn't have too long to wait before we were in a lift and making our way to the top. It's a long way to the top... The tower itself is 324 meters high (if you include the antennae on the top) but we decided not to clamber up those. It was high enough from the top floor and you get an amazing view of the city. 

After our trip to the top of the tower we headed back down to earth and caught the next boat bus... staying on for a lovely trip along the river where we could take in the sights and rest our aching feet. Before heading back to the station to catch the train back to London we found an nice little restaurant where we had tea... it was delicious.  

We had a wonderful couple of days away together and can't wait for our next trip to Paris... We will definitely be going again. But before we do, we'll be visiting lots of other places and I'll tell you all about it - as well as telling you what I'm writing about and other things I'm doing.

A Day Together

Working from home can be great... it can also be hard work though. It's difficult making sure you give enough time to the writing that needs doing as well as the other non-writing, but still work related, tasks. And it's even more important to get the life balance right because it's so very important to make sure you get to spend quality time with the one you love, so I was delighted that Vicky was able  to take a day off from work on Thursday last week - we planned to spend the day together so we could do lots of nice things. The weather during the week had been lovely, and we had spent lots of time either at work or working on the garden so we thought Thursday should be spent together...

As you might expect, it rained on Thursday... we weren't about to let this ruin our day though so after getting up early (6am - can you believe that!?!?!) we had a nice cup of coffee, a crumpet with cheese on top and a nice bath, got ready and set out on our lovely day together... we totally ignored the fact that it was raining. I won't mention the weather again...

People often complain that there is nothing to do but they often miss the things that are right on their doorsteps... often things that other people travel miles to see - so we decided to set out on a little tourist trip around Flintshire... there's lots of places to visit and lots of things to see in Flintshire and we only called in at a couple of them.

First of all we visited Flint Castle... There are hundreds of castles in Wales, more (I think) than any other place in the world (though I might be wrong). We see so many castles here that I'm going to start a blog feature all about the castles that we stop off at on our travels around the country ... Flint Castle will be the first in the series - so come back soon to see more up to date pictures and to find out all about the castle and about the important role it has played over the years.

The next place on our tour was St Winefride's Well in Holywell. Pilgrims have been visiting this site for hundreds of years - click on the link above to visit their website and find out all about St Winefride and the well.

The Well was housed in the shrine you see can above at the beginning of the sixteenth century. Outside is a pool where visitors can bathe - to the right of the pool you can see the crusader style tent/changing rooms where you can get changed if you fancy a dip. We arrived a little to late too take the plunge ourselves brrrrrrrrr!!! though it was a bit chilly so we didn't complain.



After leaving the well we had a little walk along by the old Mill Ponds and past the remains of the old mills... as we walked we spotted some hungry little Coot chicks... As it was so wet we decided not to walk very far though but we will certainly be going back to walk or cycle further. 

 

Before heading off to find somewhere for lunch we thought we would call at Mostyn and take a look at the TSS Duke Of Lancaster... The Duke of Lancaster was a railway owned steamer (passenger only) ship that operated by the London Midland and Scottish Railway between England and Ireland - before car ferries were introduced. The ship has been grounded at Mostyn for years now and has been used as a "Fun Ship"... the ship has been left for quite a few years but now there are plans to turn it into the country's largest open air art gallery... Artists have been busy painting the outside of the ship recently though it was too wet for us to get a really good look - we will go back soon to take more pictures....

  

We had a lovely day together - had a little lunch and went home for a nice hot bath to warm us up... then had a yummy tea... That's all for now... I need to get some writing done so please come back soon to find out what I'm up to....

A Break For Lunch

I know it's still quite early but I've stopped work to have a little lunch. It's not my fault I've stopped early, honestly - I'm going to lay the blame for that on my gorgeous wife, Vicky (sorry lovely).

Vicky has been busy working in the library this morning but she's having an early lunch as she will be leading a Rhymetime session at another library this afternoon. As soon as Vicky said she was having her lunch my tummy started to rumble and I had to stop for lunch too...

Today's lunch is a chicken and coleslaw buttie... YUM!

This morning I've been busy writing - hoping to get Chapter Two and Three of my latest book finished. That might sound odd to you but it isn't really (not in my mind anyway)... I have been messing with Chapter Two and Three for a little while, as well as writing other bits from later in the story (quite chaotic I know). I was a bit restless and at a loss for how the book/story was going to start though and this was stopping me from really getting on with it properly. Last week, however, the beginning of the book came to me. I wrote the first chapter - asked Vicky what she thought (she loved it - YAY!) and now I'm on with the rest of the book.

I can't tell you much about it right now - in fact, I'm not going to tell you anything about it right now other than that he story contains lots of mystery, humour, strange characters and even stranger goings on.

I will tell you about it soon though....

That's it... lunch is over... time to get back to work.

P.S. I was going to tell you about our day out yesterday but all of the pictures are on Vicky's phone so that will have to wait until later...

Half Term and Beyond...

Let me start off by saying a BIG HELLO to everyone at Unicorn Primary School in Beckenham... I'm looking forward to seeing you all tomorrow.

I hope everyone has had a great half term holiday - we certainly did. We were busy almost every day and the time just flew by. Last week it was Connor's 13th birthday and this week it's Deanna's 18th birthday... to help celebrate these milestone birthdays we had a couple of days away last weekend. On Sunday morning we drove down to a hotel not far from Windsor.  We arrived at the hotel in plenty of time and as it was a hot sunny day we decided to go for a little walk in a nearby village called Great Missenden - wandering around the lovely little village we passed a house where a certain writer that you may have heard of used to live...

On Monday we got up early and drove towards Windsor so we could spend a fun day at Legoland. As well as lots of great rides there are lots of lego models and figures around the park to look at - here's Deanna, Vicky and Connor by the Easter Island Heads.

It was a hot day and it was very busy in Legoland so we decided to go on one of the biggest rides first.

We knew we would get wet so it would give us chance to dry out as the day went on. If you haven't been on the Vikings' River Splash ride then you need to have a go... it's great. We got soaking wet on the ride so we went for a wander through Loki's Labyrinth to try and dry off.

We managed to lose Connor and Deanna for a few minutes as we headed to the centre of the maze...

But it didn't take them long to find us...

We had a great time wandering around Legoland, going on the Pirate Jolly Rocker (don't tell her that I told you but Vicky screamed all the way through the ride), the Pirate Falls log ride (we got soaked again), the Dragon Train, The Indiana Jones Laser Raiders and lots more... There were lots of cool Lego figures too - like this Han Solo.

We had loads of fun and luckily we didn't have to drive all the way home afterwards as we were staying another night. On Tuesday morning the weather had changed and it was cloudy and rainy all day. We had a little walk round Windsor but it wasn't as much fun as it should have been as the streets were awash with rain. We piled back into the car and started to head for home...

 

We don't really watch much television but there are some things that we like to watch... Last year we watched all of the Vicar of Dibley series (very funny) so it was nice to drive through the village of Dibley on the way home. The village isn't really called Dibley of course but it's instantly recognisable when you see it. It was too wet for us to enjoy a little walk around so we just took a quick photograph as we went past the church...   

 That's all for now...

School Visits and Patron of Reading

This has been a busy week with lots of writing and a couple of school visits. On Sunday Vicky was at the Northop College Fun Day doing some Rhymetime sessions with parents and toddlers - I went along to have a look round and to see how Vicky was getting on... she was brilliant. It's always good watching and listening to other people tell stories.

On Monday it was my turn to share stories and rhymes so I drove a little further along the coast to Prestatyn where I spent a wonderful morning with all the Juniors at  Bodnant Community School - they were great... all very enthusiastic - joining in with stories and asking lots of great questions. In the afternoon I drove a little bit further along the road and spent the afternoon with the equally wonderful Infant classes.

Leaving the Junior School, after talking about my Mudcrust Books (among other things), I couldn't help notice this really cool frieze on the wall. It would look right at home on the Mudcrust's cave wall.

Yesterday I visited Wood Memorial Primary School in Saltney... It was nice visiting the school again, especially as it was whilst visiting that school three years ago that I met my lovely wife, Vicky. 

The day started with a whole school assembly - luckily I managed to avoid the fire breathing dragon that was swooping around above my head...

Then I spent half an hour or so with Reception and Nursery before moving off to visit all the other classes in school... Great fun!!!

 

A big thank you to all of the teachers and pupils of Bodnant Community School and Wood Memorial in Saltney for making me feel so welcome - see you all again soon...

 

I've got a few more school visits coming up in the next few weeks but I'll tell you all about those nearer the time. I'm now taking bookings for visits for the next school year. I'm already booked up for World Book Day 2014 but have other dates available around that time... I'm also very excited to have joined the list of authors who are eager to become a Patron of Reading in school - you can click HERE to find out more about the Patrons of Reading and you can also find out more by looking at my diary tomorrow as I will write more about it then.

Rhymetime

I've just written a blog post for the wonderful An Awfully Big Blog Adventure - a great blog full of excellent posts by brilliant writers - go over there and take a look now. I've also posted the same post here for you to look at. Big, big thanks to my wife, Vicky, for her help with this blog post...

In schools I talk and share stories with children from Nursery up to year 6 - older if asked to but the primary school age children are my main audience. If I had to pick a favourite age group I would probably opt for years 3 and 4 - they are old enough to join in and ask good questions but they are still young enough not to be too self conscious as some older children can occasionally be. I enjoy storytelling with the younger children too of course and am always keen to spend a little time with the Nursery children - they too are usually fun and keen to join in in their own way. Sometimes the Nursery classes are left out of sessions because they are "too young" or "won't sit for long enough" and that's a great shame as in my experience they almost always sit still and they love to join in. I am, however, a little more uncomfortable doing sessions with children younger than Nursery and I shouldn't be as it is so important to do so. 

My wife, Vicky, spends quite a lot of time in libraries leading Rhymetime sessions with groups of toddlers and I have the utmost respect for her and for her ability to do this successfully because it's never too early to start reading and sharing books and rhymes with babies. As part of her work Vicky has researched the effects of reading to babies and going through it with her has been very interesting.

When a child is born only 25% of the brain is developed so what happens from this point onwards is crucial to a child’s development. By the age of 5, 95% of a child’s spoken language has been acquired though talking, playing and singing songs and rhymes.  Children who are regularly told rhymes and songs learn to speak more easily, are more confident and will find it easier to learn at school.

Repetition, repetition, repetition….  This is the key to teaching children words and rhymes, and by doing this their learning and development are enhanced in many ways. When a child hears nursery rhymes they are learning how sounds are put together without even realising it. The rhythm of the rhymes and the tone of your voice mean that even before a baby can understand what is being said they recognise the patterns and inflections of language. By speaking rhymes as well as singing them, a child’s pronunciation and mouth muscles along with their knowledge of vocabulary are developed.

Reading rhymes from a book is another way a child can enjoy learning.  It can spark a child’s interest in reading as they will enjoy the close bond of sitting together looking at the pictures and hearing their loved one read to them.

Children who attend Rhymetime sessions regularly as babies become used to the rhymes and, even before they can actually speak, they often move their mouths and hands to imitate the rhymes that are being shared.  At first, the babies adopt the actions and then add the words as they develop. Rhymes are a fun way for a child to learn and because they are short the child is able to pay full attention and will be able to memorise them, thus improving long and short term memory. During Rhymetime sessions the use of props is an important tool as it can aid understanding and keep a child’s attention, which in turn will make them enjoy the rhyme all the more. Finger rhymes are also important as they help with a child’s physical co-ordination. A rhyme such as ‘5 little ducks’ not only has actions but it teaches maths skills too. Rhymetimes are useful for social development as they are a safe, fun environment and the babies will enjoy ‘babbling’ together and the toddlers learn to share puppets, musical instruments and books whilst singing songs and rhymes.   

 

The Pop Up version of Giles Andreae and Guy Parker-Rees's Giraffe's Can't Dance, Nick Sharrat's Shark In The Park and Debbie Harter's Animal Boogie are current favourites... I'm going to add a web page to my website shortly with details of some of our favourite books...

Our Wedding Day

It's taken me ages to put some pictures from our wedding day on my website - but I've finally done it... Click here to visit a page all about our wedding.

I will be tweaking this page and adding more new web pages over the next few weeks so keep on coming back.

Wembley and Happy Birthday to me

I've had a few busy weeks visiting schools and libraries in England and Wales while everyone has been celebrating World Book Day and having book days and weeks of their own - It's been exhausting but lots of fun. On the 25th March I visited Bassingbourn Primary School
in Cambridgeshire and Vicky and Connor came along with me early on Sunday morning so that we could stop off at Wembley Stadium to see Wrexham play Grimsby Town in the FA Carlsberg Trophy Final...

It was freezing cold sitting in the stadium and the game went to extra time and then on to penalties with Wrexham finally winning. We got to our hotel in Stevenage just in time for tea...
 
We had a nice time yesterday with Laura, Deanna and Chris and we're going to have a lazy day today as it's my birthday... I've got some lovely cards and presents and I'm looking forward to spending a romantic day with my beautiful wife tomorrow when we visit the hotel that we stayed in for our honeymoon... I can't wait.
 

Happy New Year and Snow, Snow, Snow...

We've had quite a lot of snow over the weekend but that didn't stop us getting out of the house. On Saturday, Vicky and I went for a walk through Wepre Woods and up to Ewloe Castle... It was lovely walking through the crisp, crunchy snow. The rest of this diary entry is going to be brightened up by a few pictures that I took as we walked along... There are hundreds of castles here in Wales and I'm planning to write a few diary entries about the different one's I come across as I travel around so I will tell you more about Ewloe Caste very soon....

Can't believe that it's been so long since I posted anything in my diary. I had planned to make a New Years Resolution to write a diary post each week.... at least one and hopefully more. So far not so good. This is the first post of the New Year. The time just seems to be flying by.

We had a lovely Christmas and hope that you did too... Right now I'm busy working on some new stories - books of my own and some books for educational reading series that you might see in your schools very soon.

I've had quite a bit of good news over the last few weeks - my Rob-runners books are going to be reprinted with nice new covers - and they are going to be available to download onto Kobo and Kindle e-readers very soon too... I will let you have a look at the new covers soon.

Tomorrow I will be visiting St Anne's Catholic Primary School in Ormskirk (hopefully the snow will stay away until then) and on Thursday I 'm off to the Venerable Edward Morgan Primary School in Shotton (just down the road).

See you all soon....

It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas

Christmas is approaching very quickly and we've not even written our Christmas cards yet. We will be doing that tonight and getting them in the post straight away. We have put our tree up though - we spent Monday doing our Christmas shopping and the evening putting up our tree and other decorations. 

As you can see, we've decorated it all in Red, White and Silver. It looks perfect - the pictures here really don't do it justice though. 

Over the last couple of years we've picked up a few interesting decorations from different places and each one reminds us of where we bought them and what we were doing which makes the tree feel all that more special. We bought a couple of little decorations when we visited Bourton On The Water last weekend and we also bought one from Harrod's when we visited London.

A Lovely Weekend

On Friday we drove down to Bourton On The Water in Gloucestershire - the weekend was a wedding gift from a couple of our good friends. We set off at at half ten on Friday morning and made our way through torrential rain down the motorway to the lovely little village... thankfully the rain stopped just as we arrived so we were able to have a little walk around before finding somewhere nice and cozy for tea.

A river runs through the middle of the village, with little bridges crossing from one side to the other so you can walk or drive across. It was nice and peaceful and we had a couple of perfect days wandering round the shops and sampling some of the food and drink that was on offer in the little pubs :-) ...

At night, Christmas decorations shone from the shop windows and from some of the lamp posts... but best of all was the Christmas tree that stands proudly in the river. Nice and Christmassy...

Bourton-On-The-Water

Tonight we are spending a romantic evening together at Bourton-On-The-Water... a wedding gift from some good friends who a looking after Con. Spending tomorrow all together for some festive fun...

Boofle came along for the ride - here he is enjoying a glass of pop...