I was just getting excited about Roald Dahl over at my litro blog, and came across this, which is really good fun.  Listen to it when you’re tucked up in bed and the wind is howling outside.

For some reason, my post about Hans-My-Hedgehog has this week attracted some three hundred spam comments, which I have been deleting by the bucketload.  It’s led me to write a big long list of no-go keywords that this blog will look for in a comment and cage in a kind of virtual quarantine.  That list is

I’m stunned and delighted to have been longlisted today for the Guardian First Book Award 2009.  I don’t really know what to say, except that it’s an honour to be included on a list so exciting and diverse. You can read the Guardian’s article about it here.

Just a quick note to say that the good folks at Litro magazine have asked me to write a weekly blog for them.  I’m going to try to keep its contents quite distinct from this one, and it’s going to publish every Friday.  You can read it here, if you like.

Felt like quite a momentous day today.  I sat there in the thunderstorm (seems to be a thunderstorm every day this summer) watching the BBC coverage of Harry Patch’s memorial service.  He was the last surviving soldier to have fought in the trenches of the First World War, in which he battled at Ypres.  With