Saying farewell to formal work?

2014-03-27 15.10.17This last week has been somewhat eventful for me.  With the closure of School Library Service in Bristol I have taken redundancy and am looking forward to the opportunities and time that this will give me.  I think it will take a while for me to get used to it, even though I have had periods out of work before, courtesy of a service life.

I was determined to go out with a bang not a whimper, so I organized a “Meet the Author” session for teachers and librarians and my wonderful writing colleagues did not let me down.  There were more than 20 authors and illustrators, ranging from old friends such as Chris Fisher, Anna Wilson, Hannah Shaw, Tracy Alexander  and John Dougherty,  to new friends Sam Gayton, Cecilia Busby,  and Paula Bowles.  The wonderful Jim Carrington traveled all the way from London whilst  other Bath Spa graduates came by the car load, including Julia Green, Sarah Benwell, Wendy Meddour, Alison Rattle,  Che Golden and Di Toft.  Poetry was represented by Liz Brownlee and new authors were represented by Kathryn Alton, Rachel Carter, Bernie Howley, Sandra Greaves and Huw Powell.

This was a fantastic opportunity for teachers and librarians to meet and talk to the authors and perhaps arrange for visits to schools.  John Dougherty also spoke about the “Patrons of Reading” scheme and hopefully this will help extend the work they do.  Perhaps the word most associated with the day was ‘cake’ and hopefully we sent all our guest home full of good food.  It made a fantastic end to the ‘official’ working schedule, but hopefully I will still be working with these wonderful people in the future.2014-03-26 13.49.31 2014-03-26 13.51.05 2014-03-26 13.51.09 2014-03-26 13.51.36 2014-03-26 14.01.10 2014-03-26 14.01.17 2014-03-26 22.10.58

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