Tag Archives: blogging

Catherine, Aged 17

6 Apr

One of the downsides of being both a YA writer and secondary teacher is a constant reminder of one’s own teen years. I have a recurring nightmare in which I am forced to return to my own school, where I am made to teach but also take A-Levels at the same time (“Your French exam is tomorrow! And your class has been waiting for you for fifteen minutes!”). Argh!

Image

(Me, somewhere around 17-18, sat on the sofa with my laptop…looking pretty much the same as I do now! Side note – crying because I have suddenly noticed the old green cushion next to me…*wipes away a tear*…don’t mind me…)

Anyway, next month it also happens to be my ten year anniversary of blogging – starting off on Livejournal, natch, the in thing to do in 2004, as documented in The Social Network. As such, I thought it might be fun to revisit 17-year-old me. What was I like ten years ago? Have I changed?

Continue reading →

Tags: ,

An Afternoon with Benny Lewis

22 Mar

I’ve just come back from a lovely afternoon at Waterstones Piccadilly. It has been ages (shamefully) since I was in a bricks and mortar bookshop – since leaving Clapham I’ve been without a local indy – but I really enjoyed browsing and picked up Guerra, a book on the Spanish Civil War, which I know practically nothing about.

Fluent-in-3-Months-3D

However, the point of my trip was really to meet one of my favourite bloggers, Benny Lewis of Fluent in Three Months. He has just released a paperback based on his popular website. I stumbled across the blog at the end of his very first ‘mission’ to learn Czech, and stuck around for Benny’s adventures in Brazilian Portugese, Dutch, Mandarin and ASL amongst other languages – even Klingon!

Continue reading →

Tags: , , , , ,