Brian #3: Pupil Friction.

Teachers, yesterday, enjoying Brian on the internet.

The best thing about teaching, and there were so many best things, was simply filling young minds with knowledge.

Peter in America

A half hour World Service interview with novelist Peter Carey on the back of Parrot and Olivier in America.

"[Information should come from] a diverse, a great number of sources... There should be an education system that teaches it's still important to be able to read, that it's not enough to get a ten-second grab on television that's amusing. You would imagine an education system that led to an educated population that could actually read books - any books."

"I never washed my cars, which upset my father terribly. In fact, he once found a potato growing in the back seat."

Freezo, Freezas, Freezat. But Especially Freezas.

It got cold. You might have noticed. A couple of nights ago it was down to four degrees below freezing. Quite notable, at the time. It was cold. Going to bed early was the only option.

Then it dropped to minus seven.

That was cold. I mean, for Scotland - parts of Scotland, anyway, I know there's people in the Highlands who would say 'minus seven? Luxury!' if only their faces unfroze enough to speak.

Last night it started to get really cold. Icy sky, sharp, flinty stars. Really bitter. We watched the thermometer drop - well, I did. Laura sat on the sofa with a look that said 'stop opening the front door, you freakish thermo-voyeur.'

That's minus nine. And still it fell. When I finally went to bed, we'd run out of thermometer. There were no more degrees left:

At approximately twelve degrees below freezing, it fell off the bottom of the thermometer. They say it'll be warmer by the weekend. We've about a bucket and a half of coal left. I don't think I've looked forward to four degrees centigrade quite so eagerly.

And to put my photographic pretensions to shame, here's Jason Baxter, a local photographer. If all went to plan he was up this morning before dawn to hike to the top of Broad Law to take a photograph of the sunrise. I'd do the same, obviously, but, you know, I've comic stuff to draw. Important, gosh, yes. Inside. Goggles! That's what it is, I've no goggles.

Edit: well, he did it, the nutcase. Chapeau!

Brian #2: What Kind Of Party Do You Never Want To Go To?

A long agenda, the end of the day, other things to do and someone firing up a projector and PowerPoint. The perfect storm of pencil-chewing abomination.

The high point of my enthusiastic involvement (time span: one year) was being on the committee that drafted the Home-School agreement, a document which took about three months to write, went out with fanfare to parents, was solemnly signed and returned and was never referred to again.

I expressed my rage in badger form.

Tales From the Shovel

So, this morning I helped shovel the snow out from in front of our row of houses. It's hard work.

Then I shovelled a path to the coal house. Then David from the flat next door cleared a path to the gate. Job done.

Then all the snow fell off the roof.

So I went out and dug it out again. By now there's a sort of snowy, Western Front look to the place. A game of football may break out by the bins any day now.

And then it all fell off the roof again.

I've just come back in from clearing a path through that. In the midst of this most Arctic November for fifteen years I'm sweating like a pig on a bicycle.

I'm not going out again until Spring.

Rejection: an Ode.

Last week I received a rejection slip by email from a publishing company I don't even remember submitting to. What are they doing, passing my sample chapters around among themselves now?

When I worked in teaching, I had a colleague who pinned to his office noticeboard all the complaint letters he'd got from parents. (He had a lot.) Some people do the same with rejection letters. It's always a balance between the poles of Lord of the Flies (seventy-odd rejections before publication) and 'There's a Reason for Rejection - Your Book is Rubbish, All Your Friends Lied To You So They Wouldn't Have to See Your Crushed, Defeated Face.'

I did get some excellent help from an agent who read my draft at its monster-in-a-shoebox stage. She told me to cut it in half, so I thought, kill your darlings, be merciless, and excised 100,000 words out of it to make it leaner, tighter and frankly much better. Then she rejected it.

I take criticism like an egg takes a housebrick, so I try to cultivate briskness. So the preferred method is a quick "bastards!", ping the letter into the fire, cross another one off The List of Bastards, and carry on.

The True History of Sparky McNaughton

The tragicomic tale of a life in music.