Author: Isobel

I like animals, colour, the Thames, reading, cooking, writing, eating, walking. I don't like bullies, butchers' shops, crowded public transport, Nigel Farage.

Orange Prize Long List 2010

Well here it is:

2010 Orange Prize for Fiction longlist:

Rosie Alison: The Very Thought of You
Eleanor Catton: The Rehearsal
Clare Clark: Savage Lands
Amanda Craig: Hearts and Minds
Roopa Farooki: The Way Things Look to Me
Rebecca Gowers: The Twisted Heart
M.J. Hyland: This is How
Sadie Jones: Small Wars
Barbara Kingsolver: The Lacuna
Laila Lalami: Secret Son
Andrea Levy: The Long Song
Attica Locke: Black Water Rising
Maria McCann: The Wilding
Hilary Mantel: Wolf Hall
Nadifa Mohamed: Black Mamba Boy
Lorrie Moore: A Gate at the Stairs
Monique Roffey: The White Woman on the Green Bicycle
Amy Sackville: The Still Point
Kathryn Stockett: The Help

I’ve read Wolf Hall and another one of  Andrea Levy’s, but I don’t know the others. Oh wait, maybe I’ve read a novel by Roopa Farooki too. Has anyone here read any of  the others? and if so, how did you get on with them?

thanks. 🙂

Just a sideshow

This morning I had a bit of a twirl about WordPress. And found some wonderful photos on a photoblog and wowed over them to the photographer. A real treat to start the day.

I read about a cat that had died at the vet’s and I sent the owner my commiserations. I  found some pages that I did not understand at all, some because they used languages I don’t speak, and some  which seemed to be in a type of code.

Some pages were obviously for families and friends and I was surprised they were in the public domain. I found details of a hen party tonight quite near to where I live. Some pages I looked at were brightly coloured and dull in content. One was very dark and had some very dark fiction. Well, I hope it was fiction.

I may never find any of those pages again. It was like having brief collisions in time and screen. Random, chance meetings.

I found all of these by clicking on the latest posts at the bottom of the dashboard page. The ones that scroll by so fast that even if you check back after a few seconds have gone by they have disappeared into the ether.

It was amazing. This site is SO BIG. and MyT is SO SMALL.

Which made me think about what Araminta had said, that someone over on MyT had called this a side show. That’s like the flea thinking it’s bigger than the dog. No, not even that, because if WordPress were the dog, it wouldn’t even know the flea existed, much less feel any irritation from it. So, help me someone, please find me an analogy that gives some idea of the scale.

Thanks.

And now I might just go for a little wander again. Take in some of the sights.

See you.

Procrastination

I should be working. I am going to get on with it in a minute. Honest. I’ve left a few comments here and posted a new post on my page, so if I just put a post here that will keep me from my work a few more minutes.

So what to post? I feel the hand of SabinaA upon me. You know how she likes to post those teasing questions.

So this is mine.

Apart from your toaster, washing machine, cooker and kettle, which is your favourite kitchen appliance and why?

After much thought (more procrastination) I’ve decided mine is my Remoska. It was nearly my mini food-processor which I use a lot, but I could manage without it, while my little Remoska is fantastic for baking beetroots and cooking all sorts of things where I wouldn’t want to turn my big (electric) oven on for.

Now to work.

Or maybe, I shall just wait a moment or two and see if anyone replies…

Slightly intrigued

Does anyone else look at the stuff at the bottom of the page on the dashboard? The fastest growing blogs, latest posts, that stuff?

I do sometimes and I have yet to see any post from this page or any of the others linked to here. I was wondering about the fastest growing ones, so took a look at a few. None that made me want to read on, but one had a hits counter, 8,175 it said. So I looked back here and this page has many more hits.

So how does that work?

Happy Talk

For those of you who, like me joined MyT late 2008 or after, you’ll have missed John Mackie’s holiday blogs the first time they were posted. 

So treat yourselves. Click on the link to his blog, and if you don’t soon find yourself chuckling, seek medical attention. Think Bill Bryson, but with a depracating Scottish (or should that be Scots?) tone and fine comic writing.

Anyone coming past Das Boot last night or tonight would have seen me laughing until I cried. I must have looked a bit like the mad woman in Jane Eyre . With shorter hair. And funkier pyjamas. Oh and I haven’t set fire to anything.

Then come back here and tell me I’m right.

For Claire

Claire, I found this on the TES community forum. Does it help?

“value added” is a term used to judge how good a school is doing compared to other schools with the same kind of intake. e.g. the local grammar school might get a higher percentage of A*-C grades but it is probably more selective in the kind of students it accepts than the local state funded comp. Value Added takes into consideration not only a child’s ability, but also their postcode, whether they are male or female (girls are expected to get higher grades than boys!), their ethnic origin, when their birthday is (students with September birthdays are expected to get higher grades than those with summer birthdays. Have a look at your bottom set students most of them will have June , July or August birthdays!). Each of these criteria is given a number (it’s a bit like handicapping in horse racing) and is added to the points already given for each GCSE, or equivalent, grade. The total number given to each student is based on their best eight GCSE grades, so if they don’t take eight GCSE exams you are pretty much on to a loser straight away. This of course is the reason why your SLT want all the children to study BTEC and GNVQ courses as they can achieve 4 equivalent GCSE A grades in the time it takes them to do some work and achieve one C in MFL. Any clearer?