…and so on. As you can imagine, this becomes pretty hard to live with. There are an awful lot of cats wandering around the place, and if every time you see one it is going to cause you to feel the ICY GRIP OF DEATH UPON YOUR HEART for the rest of the day, things get to be  a bit of a drag.

And so, I grew up and embraced a healthy rational emipiricist snootiness about such ideas, acknowledging the truth that all these happenings are essentially meaningless, in and of themselves.

The thing is though… that that’s not really the point. It’s not about the meaning these events carry in and of themselves, it’s about the meaning you ascribe to them. And while you can know something rationally, somehow it is still possible to feel very differently. In short, to still freak out whenever you spill some salt, even though you rationally know perfectly well that the only bad thing is that you’ve wasted a small amount of salt. Which is fairly cheap anyway.

And so I pressed on through early adulthood, desperately attempting and never entirely succeeding to suppress my own irrational panic-mongering. And then one day my son was born, and – well, to cut a long story short: my head melted.

Suddenly things were very serious, and very important, and all the bad old cognitive habits came flooding back and I could barely enter a room without seeing five or six urgent and troubling Portents of Oncoming Doom.

Fortunately, I came to a helpful and indeed life-changing realisation, which to selflessly improve the mental wel-being of the nation I shall share with you here. It can be summed up as: “ah, nuts to all that.”

I may not be able to do anything about the fact that I am, deep down, an emotionally superstitious person. But I can at least turn that tendency to good. Given that superstitions are entirely arbitrary, simply decide to create your own equally arbitrary new ones, but do so in such a way that they cheer you up rather than stressing you out. And so, in this spirit, I give you my own Brand New and decidedly Super set of Superstitions…

…and I don’t even play the lottery. That is the power of superstition.

You’re welcome.

 Significantly financially better-off. Also, pretty miserable.

Neill Cameron lives in Oxford, writing and drawing comics and being generally delighted whenever he sees a squirrel. His first graphic novel, ‘Mo-Bot High’ is out now as part of the fantastic DFC Library series. Neill is currently working on new projects combining dinosaurs, pirates, monkeys and numerous other Things That Are Awesome for new weekly children’s comic The Phoenix, available now!

Neill’s website: www.neillcameron.com

Neill’s blog: neillcameron.blogspot.com

It’s not always a bad thing. Just as football matches sometimes come alive when a team is reduced to ten men, the arrival of an understudy on stage can engender a wonderful spirit of goodwill in an audience, and I’ve rarely been disappointed once the performance has got going.

I suppose I should admit that I’ve never actually heard of diarrhoea being used as an excuse. I just wanted to show off that I have at last learned how to spell it, and I will pass the mnemonic on to you now: Dash In A Real Rush Hurry Or Else Accident. Just the sort of thing they should have taught us at school (like doing the 9-times table with your fingers – but that will have to wait for another day).

Anyway, back to Jinxes. My next is a pain for me, but a boon for everyone else. If there is a flying, biting insect within ten miles, it will find me and tuck in for its bloody lunch. When I say that my nearest and dearest benefit from this, I don’t mean that they like to see me pink and scratching, but they all get off Scot free while I provide the feast for the midges.

I must give off some sort of aroma which (I hope) can’t be detected by humans, but which flags me up as a particularly juicy target. Maybe it’s all the chocolate in my blood.

This has reminded me of something I heard which I hope is an urban myth, but which has a horrible ring of truth about it. Apparently, in apartheid South Africa, when rich white men went to play golf they could hire a small black child covered in jam. This ‘jam boy’ was there to divert insects from the golfers. Disgusting.

Anyway, being repeatedly bitten hasn’t made me hate tiny creepy-crawlies. I’m fascinated by them. When I was studying seventeenth-century science, I spent hours looking at the wonderful drawings done by Robert Hooke, who examined lice and fleas down early microscopes

Aren’t they beautiful?

But back to jinxes:

I’m married to a man whose jinx is losing things. It’s as if the simple act of him touching an object endows it with the capacity to stray. Coats, bags, money, passports, tickets, books and cameras all melt away no matter how carefully guarded. I’m frantically looking for an up-side to that, and I suppose it does stop me getting too attached to material things. But I have to say it can be pretty annoying…

…except that this jinx is accompanied by a sort of anti-jinx. Somehow my husband’s lost things acquire an extraordinary capacity to inspire kindness in strangers. We have had some amazing reunions. He once dropped a reel of film on a beach in Oregon, USA. He didn’t even know he’d lost it, but about a year later a letter arrived containing a set of photogaphs. Someone had found the film, couldn’t resist getting it developed, and recognised a figure in the background of one of the shots. That person was a relative of ours, who lived out there, and he sent the pictures on to us.

On the final day of our honeymoon, my husband went out buy a bottle of wine to take to some friends. We were in a hurry, so he got a taxi back from the shop, spending the last foreign currency we had (this was in the days before international credit cards and cash machines). Well, you can guess what happened. He left the bottle in the cab, and we had to turn up for dinner on foot, late, and empty-handed. When we got back to our hotel later that night, the wine was waiting for us. The taxi-driver had found it, and driven right across town to drop it off – leaving no details of how to thank him.

Another taxi-driver did the same with a lost wallet when my man was in Argentina for the 1978 World Cup (football – and long before my time). Buenos Aires was a pretty rough place in those days, and that is the last thing you would have expected. If I’d got into a taxi there, I would probably have ended up dead in a ditch.

And there was another jinx at work in Argentina. I now know that ‘jinx’ is the technical term for what the Scottish Footballer Archie Gemmill did to score The Greatest Goal In Football History, in the match against Holland on 11th June 1978. You can see it on YouTube here. 34 years on, it can still bring tears to the eyes (at least in our house) and not just because Scottish football has had few wonderful moments since.

So Jinxes are not always bad. Diarrhoea, on the other hand… (horrible image. Sorry).

Eleanor Updale has has written lots of stories for children, including the Montmorency series and the adventures of Johnny Swanson! You can read a review of that story here.

I don’t doubt for one minute that Diana Wynne Jones did have no end of mishaps whilst traveling. But no matter how hard I try I can’t stop my treacherous little brain whispering, ‘well she probably traveled a lot didn’t she? More than the average person anyway which would mean her chances of encountering misfortune were therefore significantly higher than the norm.’

It’s a very unimaginative way of looking at things. But in my defence a lack of respect for superstition was one of the things I really loved about the smugglers who partly inspired the backstory in both Mistress of the Storm and Heart of Stone.

I grew up on the Isle of Wight, which has a long and proud history of smuggling (we’ve even got a theme park dedicated to the subject …yes, again I know but actually it’s pretty cool). Anyway, there is a road on the Island, near the center, known locally as Betty Haunt Lane. And the popular story about that track, even today, is that Betty was a smuggler’s daughter who fell in love with a customs man.

Later, apparently, she betrayed both her father and her smuggler friends by reporting them to the authorities. Some were captured, some were killed but those who survived returned to murder her. And from that day her ghostly spirit was cursed to wander the lane as a warning to all who thought of turning against the smugglers.

Betty Haunt Lane today (photo taken from Geograph).

If you Google it you’ll see her fate is featured in several local ghost story books. There are even people who claim to have seen Betty’s ghost recently. An assertion that I, you won’t be surprised to hear, doubt.

Not just because I don’t believe in ghosts (although I don’t: see the label on the tin above) but also because it was the smugglers themselves who actually invented her story in the first place. Betty never existed. The smugglers just wanted a way to discourage people from walking down their most direct route between the coast – where their contraband arrived – and the place where they stored it.

Isn’t that brilliant? I used to think it was a work of genius when I was a child. So although I don’t believe in jinxes, curses or superstition I have always really wanted to be a smuggler, especially in a gang who made up stories that lasted for hundreds of years. And for that, I hope you will forgive me my lack of faith in the supernatural.

Melanie Welsh is the creator of Verity Gallant’s adventures in The Mistress of the Storm and Heart of Stone.  Click here to read an extract from Melanie’s new story!

‘Diana would talk about her “travel jinx”, and I thought she was exaggerating until we had to fly to America on the same plane. The plane we were meant to fly on was taken out of commission after the door fell off, and it took many hours to get another plane. Diana accepted this as a normal part of the usual business of travel. Doors fell off planes. Sunken islands rose up beneath you if you were in boats. Cars simply and inexplicably ceased to function. Trains with Diana on them went to places they had never been before and technically could not have gone.’ (From Neil Gaiman’s foreword to Reflections)

Diana always maintained that she was cursed with a travel jinx.  For the next round of Storyblogs, we’re asking our DFB authors about their own curses, jinxes and superstitions..  Do they have any, or have they had encounters with other people’s?  And if not, we’d like to hear our DFB storytellers INVENT some truly brilliant jinxes.. So keep your eyes on the Storyblog.

 @dfb_storyhouse  

Happy Bank Holiday weekend!

In the Annexe. The Annexe is a studio full of very lovely Brighton illustrators and designers. I love the quiet energy that the place has as everyone settles into their work. There is a hot water urn for tea which takes a long time to boil, a temperamental coffee maker which I don’t understand, two studio dogs and a big sky light which makes me feel as if we are in Noah’s Ark when it rains.

My space has a desk, chair, some shelving and I share part of the lovely illustrator Penny Dann’s space. Her light box is brilliant – big enough to stand up and work at, which is great so that you aren’t always leaning over your desk or staring at a screen. I have brought in a portion of my children’s book collection to inspire me when my mind goes fuzzy – books by Elizabeth Goudge, Emma Chichester Clarke, Satoshi Kitamura, Mervyn Peake, Edward Gorey, David Lucas, Neil Gaiman, Dave Mckean are some of the ones I keep referring back to. My very favourite ‘writer’s book’ though is ‘The Writer’s Journey’ by Christopher Vogler – my tutor Graham Rawle recommended that one and it’s truly a bit of a writer’s bible. Oh yes, there are also studio mice which keep nibbling things.

• What is your most treasured possession?

I don’t really treasure possessions, but if I had a collection of auriculas, a bit like this illustration, then I would treasure them.

• What times of the day do you work?

In the day and often into the evening

• What distracts you?

Nice people.

• What is your favourite smell?

Jasmine, wood and timber in general, old books.

• Cat or dog? I

 think the way S.F.Said put it in his storyblog is perfect, so here’s a quote from his post  ‘I like the idea that cats and dogs can exist together; we don’t have to choose one or the other.’ But if I did have to choose – cat.

• What is your guiltiest pleasure?

Singing badly whilst driving and eating fish and chips (not all three activities at once, generally)

• What is the worst job you’ve done?

Drawing an illustration of a fairy that had to look ecstatically happy, so happy that her smile showed her teeth.

Kitchen hand at a school. I actually quite enjoyed it and the chef gave me lots of free ‘cash and carry’ twix bars, bananas and weetabix to supplement my pay.

• What was the last song you sang along to?

Desiree by Caribou

•    If you could go back in time, where would you go?

Regency Brighton – I would like to visit Martha Gunn (1726-1815), who found employment as a ‘dipper’ on Brighton seafront.

• What are you reading at the moment?

Varjak Paw by S.F.Said

• If you weren’t an author, what would you be?

      A painter

 Lesley White is a writer and illustrator living in Brighton.  Her first book, The House Rabbit, is coming out early next year.  You can follow find out more about Lesley’s work here and follow her blog here.

It seems rather odd, but I get most of my writing done on the train on the way to work (I have a ‘real’ job as well as making comics, but it is considerably less fun). At home there are lots of fun things for me to fiddle with, so I find the train a much less distracting place (as long as the person on the seat next to me isn’t poking me with their elbow).

I do my drawing in a cave at the centre of the earth.

●      What is your most treasured possession?

I tend not to really get attached to physical objects – there’s nothing in my house that’s really irreplaceable. That said, I do always feel very emotional when it comes to throwing away toothbrushes – they served me so loyally, and this is how I repay them? I feel like I’ve betrayed them every time. (also: shoes)

●      What times of the day do you work?

Because I have another job I have to do all my work either early in the morning or late at night, which probably explains why all my drawings look like I did them while I was half asleep.

●      What distracts you?

The distraction gnome that lives on my shoulder. He is always trying to get me to play computer games with him, but I try not to listen.

●      What is your favourite smell?

The smell of victory! (it smells a bit like hot tin)

●      Cat or dog?

A terrifying hybrid of the two.

●      What is your guiltiest pleasure?

Making terrifying cat/dog hybrids. I just can’t seem to stop.

●      What is the worst job you’ve done?

In my teens I worked half a day in a fruit machine factory, then quit first thing the next morning. I was an exceptionally spoiled brat.

●      What was the last song you sang along to?

Aux Champs Elysees by Joe Dassin. It’s impossible to feel sad while singing this song – just try it!

(Of course since it’s in French I can’t actually sing along to much of it, so mostly I just sing ‘la la-la la-lalala … AUX CHAMPS ELYSEES!’)

●      If you could go back in time, where would you go?

With the entire continuum of history to choose from many people would struggle to select the best possible moment in time to return to, but for me there is only one instant of true worth that could possibly be selected – I had a really lovely muffin last Tuesday and I would love to go back and eat it again. Of course I’d have to steal it from my past self, and possibly destroy the universe as a result of the paradox that this action would create, but, well, it was a really good muffin.

●    What are you reading at the moment?

Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens. Disappointingly it’s better than I expected, which completely ruins the joke I was going to make here.

●      If you weren’t an author, what would you be?

I still don’t really think of myself as an author – it’s just something I do for fun, and I think I would always make comics no matter what else I was doing. But if I had to do something completely different, I think I might like to make boardgames – I love playing boardgames because of the way that they generate stories as you play, so I think I’d really enjoy coming up with ideas and trying them out. Also it’s just about the only profession I could think of that would be even geekier than making comics.

James Turner is the brilliant creator of DFC strip & Library book Super Animal Adventure Squad(read an extract here!) and The Pheonix Comic’s Star Cat.  Take a look round his website here!

It’s the back bedroom of our  house in Cambridge. My study, which is lined with white bookshelves has pale mauve and pale pink walls but doesn’t look girly at all. I have a pale wooden desk with a three drawer chest under it to the left of my legs. The view from the window is over the garden with a lovely sycamore tree in it and I sit with my back to that and looking at my bookshelves which remind me that I used to be able to do this writing thing! On the  wall above the double bed are pictures of my covers etc. The double bed is there because this room doubles as a guest room.

What is your most treasured possession?

My photographs and a painting that hangs in my kitchen.

What times of the day do you work?

Usually 2-5 ish in the afternoon.

What distracts you?

Everything! Twitter, email, post arriving, making salad for lunch, reading papers on the computer. ANYTHING AT ALL.

What is your favourite smell?

Nice food cooking. Or for perfume, currently either Vivienne Westwood’s Boudoir  or Thierry Mugler’s Angel.

Cat or dog?

CAT! I love them.

What is your guiltiest pleasure?

Watching too much mediocre television.

What is the worst job you’ve done?

Being a tour guide in Dar-es-salaam. In French.

What was the last song you sang along to?

I don’t sing along, I just sing. Almost all the time I have a song going through my head. Last one I can remember was You’re the top by Cole Porter.

If you could go back in time, where would you go?

Just before the First World War. I like the clothes. Almost any historical period would be quite interesting as long as you didn’t have to stay in it. I would not like to live in a time before antibiotics.

What are you reading at the moment?

Have just finished lots of prize winning books so a thriller is called for. Michael Connelly’s THE FIFTH WITNESS.

If you weren’t an author, what would you be?

A Country and Western singer.  That’s the dream/ fantasy. Probably the truth would be: a retired teacher of French.

Adèle Geras has written more than 90 books for children of all ages and for adults. She lives in Cambridge and contributes to blogs such as THE HISTORY GIRLS and AN AWFULLY BIG BLOG ADVENTURE.  Do explore her website, www.adelegeras.com. Have you read Adele’s Magic Bean? It is a retelling of the fairytale classic, The Six Swan Brothers.

I can’t work at a desk! I will work anywhere in my house, usually in my dining room or on the sofa. I have to be relaxed and comfortable to be able to be creative. I have various sketchbooks and my laptop scattered around the house.

What is your most treasured possession?

 I can’t be specific on this either as I have too many things I can’t live without! Some of my favourite possessions are books signed by fellow authors and illustrators, I have quite a nice collection now. I did an event recently with Marc Boutavant – the amazingly talented french illustrator and he signed a ‘Mouk’ book for me. He spent ages doing a beautiful drawing on the title page, in fact he spent so long doing the drawing he didn’t get to eat much of his dinner before we went on stage.

What times of the day do you work? All day, every day. I do stop sometimes but I don’t have a strict routine! Once I worked until dawn to try and meet a deadline, needless to say I wasn’t very productive the next day so now I do try to be sensible and have lots of bourbon biscuit breaks.

What distracts you?

Twitter, tea, my family, random ideas for stories, things in the fridge. I live on a busy residential street and there are always people to spy on out the window if I’m bored!

What is your favourite smell?

Damp leaves in the wood after it has rained…. ooh and grass cuttings.

Cat or dog?

Dog, I have one and we do dog agility together (the thing they do at Crufts with jumps, obstacles and tunnels, except we’re not quite to competition standard!). Here is a picture of him in the sea, he loves to swim too.

What is your guiltiest pleasure?

Occasionally, on sunny mornings I’ll take my breakfast to a bench in the woods where there is a beautiful view across the valley. I’ll sit and eat, enjoy the bird song and forget all about the day ahead and those pesky deadlines.

What is the worst job you’ve done?

I used to clean my old school whilst I was in the Sixth Form. I sometimes was allowed to eat the left-over biscuits from the staff meetings, they helped me get through an hour of hoovering crushed chalk out the carpets and scraping chewing gum from the walls.

What was the last song you sang along to?

Probably a Johnny Cash one.

If you could go back in time, where would you go?

Wow, this sounds like fun. Can you take me back to the 1950’s? I love the fashion and design from that era. I’d try and change history a bit and improve things for the future, who wouldn’t be tempted? Knowing me, I’d probably make it a whole lot worse.

What are you reading at the moment?

I’m actually reading 5 new children’s fiction books for some research. One is Muncle Trogg by Janet Foxley, it’s about a very small giant who lives in a volcano. It was very funny, I’m quite jealous as I wish I’d thought of that idea!

If you weren’t an author, what would you be?

I’d run a Safari Park or a home for abandoned elephants… or cuddle puppies or… is there such a job as a cake tester?

Find out more on Hannah’s website
For the latest news and updates on events here
Click here to see a trailer for my new picture book ‘School for Bandits’ – out now!
Follow me on Twitter at @HannahWeasel

These days I have two places that are my official working spaces. Though I often get best ideas for poems, and drafts of poems, on the train to London and back (more usually on the way there, when the mind is bright and fresh, as on the way back I’m usually exhausted by the stimulus of the capital). My main official workzone is a small starter home in a quiet close just round the corner from my ‘family home’. The family home is where I’ve lived with my wife since the late 1980’s and where both of my children were brought up. The starter home is a tiny property we bought about 8 years ago when we needed a larger house for the four of us but couldn’t afford it. These days it’s like a kind of extension to our small terraced town house. It’s used by guests or by our children (now in their 20’s) when they come to visit. So I’ve adopted it as my study/office for most of the year. The other place I write is a small back bedroom in the family home. It used to be my daughter’s bedroom and has a small balcony/flat-roof looking onto a garden space with lots of mature trees. Both places are fairly quiet in the working day. The garden space is full of birdsong much of the time. I don’t mind that.

What is your most treasured possession?

I don’t much treasure possessions, now I come to think of it. I’ve always lived with a strong sense of transience, certainly since I was a student. It may have started with studying medieval literature as an undergraduate. All that memento mori stuff and charnel houses and meditations on the brevity of life etc. And then it will have been enhanced by getting interested in Hinduism and Buddhism across my 20’s. If I have to give an answer, then I might say ‘my house’, since we all need a home of some kind or other to live in, at least in Britain where it’s cold and wet a lot of the time. And since I spend my time reading and writing and I need to be fairly warm and dry and comfortable to do that. 

These days accommodation has become increasingly a problem, what with the cost of property and the price of renting. So the fact that I now (at 61) own my own house and have no mortgage makes me feel a bit more secure in respect of being a freelance writer. It’s important to remember, though, that it only takes a war or an earthquake, or even a riot (nb) to destroy a home completely. I could say that my most treasured possession is my material body, as without that I could not be. Without the hardware (my actual physical body) there would be no software (the thoughts, the feelings, the sensory experience etc). So maybe (thinking of King Lear on the blasted heath) my body must be the most treasured possession, material being that it apparently is :)

What times of the day do you work?

It depends how you define ‘work’.  The older I get, the longer I’ve been a ‘freelance writer’ the harder it becomes to define when I am and am not working. I think of myself chiefly as a poet who happens to make most of my actual income through writing verse picture books for children (something I only spend a small amount of my time actual ‘doing’). But I write my verse picture books with as much thought and care as I write my (mostly unpublished) poems. As a poet and a writer I feel my job (and my appetite, my natural inclination) is to be reading, listening, talking, writing and thinking about whatever is coming up in my life. A kind of cultural processor and contributor, as much as possible, for what I’m worth. I’m very aware that, as human beings, we are both private and social creatures. So we have an inclination to explore our inner selves, inwardly, our private, personal natures. And we also have a need to relate to others, to the outside world, as social creatures, interacting with others and giving what we have to offer, taking what others have to offer us. That accounts for pretty much all of the time.

I might be actually at my notebook or laptop at any time of day or night, that having been said, but I go for walks in the day when I need a break, watch telly or dvds after supper, shop for the evening meal etc across the working day, like any normal person. I usually put in a ‘working day’ between 10am and 6pm in the ‘hutch’ (the tiny starter home) on a weekday. My own writing range generates quite a lot of admin and correspondence so I often do ‘office days’ in the hutch across the working day.

What distracts you?

When I really want to concentrate I can usually find a time and place to get on with work. But what things really draw my mind aside? Music is terrible for this. If there’s loud music nearby I find it really hard to read or write.  I couldn’t read or write within earshot or eyeline of a television or radio or similar. A loud conversation nearby is also impossible to block out. It’s as if I’m tuned into music and language of all kinds, fascinated by them, drawn to them. I don’t know how some (especially young) people manage to read or write while listening to ipods and such. I come from a one-thing-at-a-time period. Could that be my age (born in 1951)? Oh, hunger and thirst distract me. Being cold. And feeling sleepy. I can’t do mental work effectively against those forces and similar things.

What is your favourite smell?

Maybe fresh lemon. Or the smell of a homemade cake baking. Fresh coffee (though I can’t drink it these days).

Cat or dog?

Either is fine, so long as they’re not my responsibility. And I don’t want to share living space with an animal these days. I’ve brought up two children and one cat and that’s quite enough for one life as far as I’m concerned. I’ll pet a cat or a dog, happily. But I don’t want to spend mind-time or emotional energy on them. Keeping my own body in shape and functioning adequately is becoming a full-time job as I get older….. :)

What is your guiltiest pleasure?

I don’t associate guilt with pleasure. I know that guilt is supposed to enhance pleasure, but I’m rather tired of the ‘naughty but nice’ mentality. It seems rather bourgeois, rather narrow-minded, to me. I’m extremely permissive, to myself and to others. And I have no religious restrictions to hold me back. So I suppose my ethics are ‘humanist’ in style. Anything goes so long as it does no obvious harm to others. If there were something I liked doing that DID harm others, then it might be a guilty pleasure if I were to do it anyway. But the thought that it might be harming others would spoil the pleasure. Say, if I were to like the taste of some food that involved the suffering of animals to produce it, then that knowledge would almost entirely spoil the pleasure of the taste, I think. So much so that I’d go off the taste completely.

At another level though, maybe I might enjoy staying in my bedroom on a cold, wet Monday morning, drinking tea and reading a novel or poems when I ‘should really’ be getting some work done in the hutch….? But at yet another level I’d justify that to myself. I’d say that doing this is ‘the real work of the moment, what really counts, of most significant use to my writer’s mind etc’ :) The best bit is being freelance, self-employed, one’s own boss etc.

What is the worst job you’ve done?

Sometimes the worst jobs can give you the best experiences, after the event, if you’ve survived them :) ! I’ve done many odd jobs across my life, all told, for short periods of time. Probably the one I’d least like to have to do for any length of time would be the one I did, aged 15, during a school holiday, to make money for a short trip to France afterwards. I worked on a butchery conveyor belt in a bacon factory in Wiltshire. My job was to lift different cuts of meat off the belt as they went past, and to put them into the appropriate container near where I was standing. I did 8 hour days with quite short breaks. It was incredibly boring. If you chatted too much while you were doing it the foreman would come and shut you up or separate you from your talk-mate. I also had to wait for the works bus to pick me up from near my house at 6 in the morning, which meant getting up around 5 to make breakfast. I’ve done much harder work, but probably not work more boring. Better to be challenged and exhausted than to be bored, especially when you’re young.

What was the last song you sang along to?

“Am I blue?” as posted on YouTube. The version by Anne Hanshaw from 1929. It was popularised by a film version by Ethel Waters in the same year. My favourite version is the Hanshaw. Google : Am I blue? Annette Hanshaw  for a jazz treat. ‘Am I blue? You’d be too. Aren’t these tears in my eyes telling you….. doo-de-doo…. etc

If you could go back in time, where would you go?

Perhaps to Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, to see the real, original stuff. Or maybe to the 20’s or 30’s to experience some real jazz from the horn’s mouth. Or maybe to go back and meet Siddhartha Gautama (the Buddha) though I wouldn’t have the language to understand what he was actually saying. But just to encounter the person himself would be of great interest.

What are you reading at the moment?

Always several books on the go. Poetry: Mary Oliver’s New and Selected Poems (a must!). Theory and Research : John E. Sarno, The Divided Mind (all about mind-body medicine, cutting edge stuff, great!). Fiction : reading my way through Michael Cunningham, The Hours, Specimen Days, By Nightfall, a home at the end of the world, Flesh and Blood….. (nb None on the list are for children. I seem to read very little children’s literature these days. I’m getting rather choosy as time runs out.)

If you weren’t an author, what would you be?

A teacher. Maybe a musician. Or these days, at 60+, probably a counsellor or psychotherapist dealing in emotional & physical wellbeing.

Tony Mitton is an award-winning poet, whose gently mesmerising, often humorous poetry is irresistible to both children and adults alike. He is an extremely versatile author, writing story poems and shorter verse with skill and wit. His books include The Storyteller’s Secrets and The Tale of Tales, though keep an eye on Tony’s website for more news of ‘Wayland’.