The Easter holidays have started and things are on the up. We have finally (just about) sold The Brother-in-law's house, which means the continual journeys back and forth to check that everything's still in working order are over. It also means The Husband can stop worrying about his pension (or lack of it). Being both self-employed and an habitual procrastinator meant that a pension was one of the things he 'never got round to'. Like sorting out that huge heap of topsoil in our back garden, but let's not go there...
I'm feeling better after my weird not-sure-what-it-was-but-it-definitely-wasn't-a-stroke thing. My thought-processes are not quite what they were, and hopefully they'll improve, but I still can't deal with a string of questions or instructions. An example was a week ago at work, when I was asked how a group of children were doing with their work on percentages. I was asked several questions and then given instructions on what to do in their next session. 'Okay,' I said. Two minutes later, I could only recall the words 'fractions' and 'percentages' and I was reminded of a boy I used to work with in reception class, who would just put his head on his desk and complain that 'my brain just can't listen to all this noise everywhere'.
Despite the brain-blips, I managed to do okay in my last creative writing assignment. I wrote a short story about people training with Special Operations Executive during the war, and scored 90%. I chose the subject because I knew a lot about it (my SOE phase coming after my holocaust phase, but before my siege of Leningrad one, which I'm still partially in), but my internet history is looking decidedly iffy - a subject that several people on the course have mentioned. 'Hope I never get arrested,' one wrote on Facebook. 'I've looked up how you'd kill someone with a hammer and different sorts of fuses you'd use to make a bomb.' Luckily, my research was just on silent killing techniques and the best way to break a rabbit's neck. Not things I'm likely to put into practice, but you never know... (Which reminds me, we had a school assembly on facing your fears at school last week. Children were talking about what they were afraid of; spiders, snakes, roller-coasters were all mentioned. 'I'm scared of zombies,' said one child, 'because they eat your brains.' Sorry - not at all relevant to anything here, except the vague connection my own brain made to surviving the zombie apocalypse.)
So, I'm feeling pretty chuffed at that result, especially when I'd convinced myself I'd be happy with anything over 65%. The thing that made a big difference to my story-writing was this book:
...and I'm pretty good at writing that.
I'm feeling better after my weird not-sure-what-it-was-but-it-definitely-wasn't-a-stroke thing. My thought-processes are not quite what they were, and hopefully they'll improve, but I still can't deal with a string of questions or instructions. An example was a week ago at work, when I was asked how a group of children were doing with their work on percentages. I was asked several questions and then given instructions on what to do in their next session. 'Okay,' I said. Two minutes later, I could only recall the words 'fractions' and 'percentages' and I was reminded of a boy I used to work with in reception class, who would just put his head on his desk and complain that 'my brain just can't listen to all this noise everywhere'.
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Despite the brain-blips, I managed to do okay in my last creative writing assignment. I wrote a short story about people training with Special Operations Executive during the war, and scored 90%. I chose the subject because I knew a lot about it (my SOE phase coming after my holocaust phase, but before my siege of Leningrad one, which I'm still partially in), but my internet history is looking decidedly iffy - a subject that several people on the course have mentioned. 'Hope I never get arrested,' one wrote on Facebook. 'I've looked up how you'd kill someone with a hammer and different sorts of fuses you'd use to make a bomb.' Luckily, my research was just on silent killing techniques and the best way to break a rabbit's neck. Not things I'm likely to put into practice, but you never know... (Which reminds me, we had a school assembly on facing your fears at school last week. Children were talking about what they were afraid of; spiders, snakes, roller-coasters were all mentioned. 'I'm scared of zombies,' said one child, 'because they eat your brains.' Sorry - not at all relevant to anything here, except the vague connection my own brain made to surviving the zombie apocalypse.)
So, I'm feeling pretty chuffed at that result, especially when I'd convinced myself I'd be happy with anything over 65%. The thing that made a big difference to my story-writing was this book:
Seven hundred and odd pounds for an OU course, and I've learnt more from a £9.99 book from Amazon. Sigh. Anyway, I wrote my whole story using the story plan:
Once upon a time...
And every day...
Until one day...
And because of this...
And because of this...
Until finally...
And ever since that day...
which is apparently used by Pixar. Anyway, it worked for me and I think we should teach it at school instead of the stupid story 'staircases' and 'mountains' that we use.
And now, I need to start on the first draft of the final piece for my course (and my whole degree). And I will, but there's a huge Easter egg calling from the kitchen and I need some coffee. And I've just got into the Jack Reacher books by Lee Child, because my dad lent me one and it was the only thing I had to read in hospital, and I realised that, actually, they weren't bad. And reading is good preparation for writing, so it's practically coursework.
And, anyway:
