Although I was (as I said below) nervous about making a school visit, the day I spent at Trevithick Primary School turned out to be extremely memorable. I had two small children with me, my daughter and my friend’s two-year-old son who I look after once a week as part of a barter-style swap we do. They went to the school nursery, while I dashed to the staff room, downed a quick coffee, and was practically pushed into a room full of year 6 children, sitting on the carpet, looking up at me with expectant faces.
I was strangely nervous at the sight: I was scared that I might send them away thinking that authors and books were boring. I did my best to explain to them what life as an author is like, and they threw questions at me which ranged from ‘how much do you get paid?’ to ‘what’s your favourite book you’ve ever read?’ (a tricky one), via just about everything else in between. They were delighted to hear that when I met my husband, one of their teachers, he had a ponytail.
Over the course of the day, I met children aged 7 – 11. They were insatiable, funny, excitable and wonderful. I read them a carefully-selected passage from my new book, a section from the first chapter that is literally a cliffhanger. The children went on to continue the story themselves, and the two winners will get a name check in the book I am currently writing. The entries were fantastic, and the winners were unbelievably impressive.
The whole day (which happened to be election day) put the boot into the whole stupid idea of ‘Broken Britain’. This is a school in Camborne, a Cornish ex mining town that has significant social problems and unemployment. If you were to believe what the Tories were saying during the election campaign, it should have been full of feral children failing to learn to read. In fact, the children were polite and motivated, the staff supremely dedicated, the whole atmosphere controlled, calm and happy. There are things that Labour did well, and education is one of them. That was obvious to me when we moved back here from France, and it is even more obvious now.
I am beginning to wish I wrote children’s books, so that I could do more visits like that. In fact, watch this space.
