Brighton and Bexhill

Well, this week has gone by in a whirl.  Our visit from Sarah and Stuart last week left us in a happy sort of daze ("If I had three wishes, my first wish would be that they could have stayed a bit longer," said Sam, and so say all of us) and we had to do a bit of tidying up after the Treasure Hunt we held here for the Friends of Widecombe School on Sunday afternoon.  On Tuesday and Wednesday I tried to write things but didn't get very far - I'm in that odd gap between projects at the moment, with Clovenstone/Goblins more-or-less finished and my next move not decided - and then on Thursday I was off on my travels again.  I visited Brighton for just long enough to catch Brian Mitchell and Joseph Nixon's latest play, Big Daddy vs Giant Haystacks (read my full review here), stopped the night at David Mounfield's house in Lewes and then whizzed off to Bexhill-on-Sea, where I talked about my life & work to some of the pupils at Bexhill High School, and had a tour of their very fancy new school building, which is all learning pods and heart spaces, but still has a library - hooray!

Many thanks to Karen Randall for organising my visit (and giving me a lift from Lewes) and to all the other members of staff who showed me around, and had obviously worked hard to organise things.  The children have been working on Mortal Engines in class (sorry, 'pod') and had some good questions to ask; there were some nice model traction cities laid about, too.  If I can get some photos of the event I'll post them soon.  Meanwhile, here's  one from the illustration workshop I did with Sarah McIntyre at Sam's school last week.