Hey there.

I’m currently back in full Deep Dive Mode for some serious heavy work on Phase Three. But before I go all intermittent on you while I’m away in my brain (writing my new book, in other words!) today I surfaced briefly for what was my last school visit of this academic year.

It was to Elthorne Park high school in Ealing, and it was an absolute pleasure.

I arrived in a tearing hurry, having foolishly believed that taking the journey-time promised by the London Underground website and doubling it might somehow allow me to get to the school punctually, like a professional. Silly me. Thanks – apparently – to ‘trespassers on the track’ (is there a story in there??) by the time I got through the door of the Elthorne learning resource centre my first audience was already sitting waiting. For one’s first visit to a school that’s just never a good look — very embarrassing, AAAAGH! But I jumped straight in, and things took off at top speed.

Here’s a shot of me putting my heart into my work…

Here’s me pointing at something, apparently with such great emphasis that the molecules of my arm began to lose alignment…

And here (below) is what I think is one of the silliest photos for a while – and that’s even by these pages’ fairly stringent standards of silliness. Take a look:

Explanation: at lunchtime a photographer from a local paper showed up, to take some pics of my visit. This was great, of course: all extra publicity is very welcome to the Sinister Masterplan! But what he wanted was for me and the students to pose – as if I was reading and the students were supposedly hanging on my every word. A sort of Listen With Mother effect, if you will.

While we all did our best – and much respect to everyone in the above pic for being so game! – it was just impossible to take this seriously. If you look at the pic again you can see the oh-so-fascinated expressions already beginning to fail. And in the end…

…we just cracked up completely. ;p

My thanks to Mrs Donnithorne for kindly inviting me. And a GLEEFUL thank you to everyone I spoke to today.

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