ay already?

Changing of the guard, Athens

It's a good job it says 'regular' column and not 'frequent' on the main menu! OK, what have I been doing that might interest you? Well, I had a fantastic week in Athens a couple of weeks ago. I was invited to visit British and American schools there by Beth Jones who, together with her husband Paris, runs an English bookshop over there. I've never been to Athens before and found it a fascinating city to visit. There seems to be something of interest, at least a thousand years old, on every corner. I especially enjoyed watching the elaborate ritual for the changing of the guard outside the parliament building. I was told only the most handsome of the soldiers are chosen to take part and got as close as I could to check out if that was true. It is!

The amazing Acroplis

The British schools in Athens were similar to schools in the UK in that the pupils followed the same curriculum, more or less, and had mainly English teachers. In fact, I came across more teachers from Lancashire there than I did when I did the Lancashire Book Festival last year! Where the pupils differed is that many of the students were bi-lingual. It was great for me to go into schools as a visiting author and talk about being born in one country and brought up in another and have the whole audience understand what I meant because they were the same.

Henry Moore's 'Mother and Child' at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park

Hello then to everyone at St Catherine's, ACS, St Lawrence's, Byron and Campion as well as Beth and Paris's three daughters Lydia, Phoebe and Iris.

What else have I been doing? Writing, of course. I'm working on the final book in the After School Club series, 'Jolene's Back'. This is set during the summer and the theme at the After School club is 'Scrapheap Sculptures' where everyone is making amazing 3D sculptures from recycled materials. To inspire them, Mrs Fryston organises a trip to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, which is a real place near Wakefield in Yorkshire. I spent a day there taking photographs of the fantastic sculptures dotted about the open countryside, imagining Jolene, Reggie and everyone running around.

It was weird for me to go to the Sculpture Park because it adjoins the teacher training college, Bretton Hall, I attended in the 1970s. All my memories of my time there came rushing back. In fact, the small river where I decided one of the characters, Ruby, has a near-accident was where I once took part in a tug-of-war. I must have been on the losing side because all

Bretton country park river

I remember is getting pulled into a bank of stinging nettles and hurting for hours afterwards!

The Yorkshire Sculpture Park (www.ysp.co.uk) is well worth a visit, especially the café which does a whopping berry fruit scone with cream!

Tomorrow I am going to a Girls Aloud concert! Not to hear them sing (I'm more of a U2 fan myself) but to help my publicist Andy give out loads of free stuff to fans on their way in to help promote my new Clubbing Together books. Oh, the things you have to do to become a successful author...

More soon!