Spanners in the Works… (plus a great writing competition)

I loved the World Book Day stories on GHB  and wanted to share my one. I love doing talks in schools because as part of them I get to talk about my dogs Traffy and Bella and use a powerpoint presentation with lots of cute puppy photos and stories about the tricks they used to get up to.

emilyatthecomputer

Last week I gave three talks at Shrewsbury’s Authors in Schools week. The first one was at Albrighton Primary School – hello Albrighton 🙂 This visit went without a hiccup. The next day I did one for Market Drayton Primary – hello Market Drayton 🙂 This time the presentation didn’t want to work but a lovely lady called Sally got it to do so. But then in the afternoon I went to Castlefields Primary – hello Castlefields 🙂 But oh dear this time my lovely trusty powerpoint didn’t just get wobbly it decided not to work at all and for the first time in absolutely ages I gave half of my talk without any slides and the thing I hadn’t expected was that it still worked. I’d always thought if I didn’t have my slides no one would want to hear the talk but that didn’t turn out to be true at all and we got another copy emailed to us so I got to whizz through the slides at the very end of the talk and got to tell everyone about Bella swinging on a mini-christmas tree before she came to live with us.

Yesterday I visited Willingham Primary in Camrbridgeshire – hello Willingham 🙂 and I was determined that there should be no spanners in the works and the powerpoint would play. Not only did I take 3 memory sticks with it on but I took my laptop and my iPad that I found I could play it through with lead adapters and my phone – I wouldn’t have known I could play a powerpoint presentation through my iphone and iPad if it hadn’t gone wrong. 🙂 But when I got to the school they had it all set up and ready to go – yahoos! The spanners were banished.hands up

Have you had any spanners in the works that you’ve managed to solve?

I also go to tell the schools about the brilliant writing competition that the PDSA is running that ends at the end of March. I wrote the opening to a story and you just have to think of what might happen next. The link is http://www.pdsa.org.uk/pet-protectors/win/writing-competition

Sorry to end on a sad note but I’ve just heard that Sam Simon (co-creator of the Simpsons) passed away. He was a great, great friend to animals and donated millions and millions of pounds to help them. RIP Simon