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The secret life of Albert Entwistle #AlbertsPals

26th May 2021 by Jax Blunt Leave a Comment

Hi folks! So pleased today to be sharing an extract from the Secret Life of Albert Entwistle as one of #AlbertsPals

Enjoy!!

***

He weaved his way through a jumble of steel carts stuffed with sacks of mail. Some of the younger staff were sifting through the letters and parcels, dropping them into grey sacks held open on stands. Albert’s first hurdle was making it past the office of the Delivery Centre Manager. Marjorie Bennett was a loud and chatty fifty-something who seemed to have no filter when it came to asking people about their personal lives – or talking at length about her own. If she wasn’t being indiscreet about her husband’s piles, she was keeping her colleagues abreast of every symptom of her menopause. Today, her office door was wide open as she regaled the cleaner with a detailed description of her hot flushes.
‘Honestly,’ she said, ‘they’re so bad I swear you could fry an egg on my stomach.’

Albert kept his head down and scurried past. He didn’t understand why so many people appeared so comfortable talking about their most intimate experiences. It was clearly something that had been encouraged by celebrity interviews, not to mention the social media that seemed to obsess everyone. Depression, addiction, abuse – nothing seemed off limits any more. But Albert didn’t go in for any of that. He’d survived by keeping the experiences that had most affected him to himself.
Come on, he told himself, time to get on.

Albert headed towards the centre of the vast, strip-lit hall, where each of the postmen and women had their own sorting frame. Semi-circular desks were surrounded by rows and rows of shelves divided into thin slots, one for each address on their round. It would take them the next three and a half hours to sort their mail into the correct sequence of their daily walk, which in Albert’s case was made up of
667 addresses.

He hung up his coat and high-vis cycling vest, trying not to catch the eye of his colleagues.
At the desk to his left, Jack Brew was sipping from a mug of tea and dissecting the latest performance of the town’s football team. Jack was bald-headed, in his fifties, and had so much body hair sprouting from every opening of his clothes that Albert sometimes wondered if he might be part wolf. Jack regularly moaned about his wife, calling her a ‘nag’ when, as far as Albert could make out, all she was trying to do was nice things, such as buying a present for his mother’s birthday or booking their next family holiday. Although, Jack’s treatment of his wife was nothing compared to the roasting he reserved for the manager of Toddington FC.

‘At the end of the day,’ he pronounced, ‘that joker couldn’t run a bath, never mind a football team.’
The men nearby grumbled in agreement, which prompted Jack to run with his theme. At times like this he reminded Albert of his dad. I wonder if that’s why I’ve never really liked him.

Jack was so engrossed in his discussion that he simply raised a hand in greeting. Albert felt his shoulders slacken with relief.

It looked like he was safe from the threat of conversation from the frame behind him too. This was occupied by one of the office’s few postwomen, a young mother called Sue Frinton. Sue was addicted to competitions and, over the years, had won all kinds of prizes, from holidays and a car to a trolley dash around the local branch of Asda and something called a ‘vampire facial’, her explanation of which had made Albert feel queasy. She’d earned her nickname, Tsunami, because she was so disorganised – her sorting frame was always a mess, and she arrived late every morning. She still wasn’t in today, and by the time she did arrive, Albert knew she’d be too flustered to chat. At least I know I can always rely on Tsunami.

The book is by Matt Cain, and is out tomorrow at all bookshops, here’s a handy affiliate link to bookshop if you want to order it.

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Etsy gift guide (because every day should be a handmade gift day)

15th March 2021 by Jax Blunt Leave a Comment

The following post contains affiliate links and is my entry into the Etsy affiliate competition.



We’re past the buying window for UK based Mothering Sunday, but it’s always a good time to buy someone a handmade present, no?

Check out the Etsy mother’s day gift guide here

I’ve recently got into TikTok (I know, I know) and have found a wonderful supportive community of small businesses and artists. So I’m compiling this gift guide with people I’ve met through the app, and my favourites of their products. They’re mainly UK based, I’ll try to highlight where they aren’t, have some fun browsing through.

First of all, how about a fantastic Dolly Parton print from StephHoweStudio? Let’s face it, Dolly is an icon, and who better to offer life advice in your kitchen along with an uplifting song or two?

Terrachuu Art are based in Eastbourne, UK, and have a range of Kawaii Horror Illustrations and crafts. Most of them look more on the cute side than the horror side to me though, like this A5 Luna print.

Dream of Luna is making ethereal art for ethereal people, and I’m particularly in love with this custom acrylic painting – the example illustration is of a galaxy and it’s just gorgeous.

Isobel’s Creatives have a range of knitted and sewn gifts, with the latest range including tie dye wheat bags. (Why does it always take me several attempts to type tie dye?)

See Paul doodles has a range of doodle based stickers, my favourite being this cup of something reading room.

Brushed Earth Home has a range of hand painted boho home decor, which look wonderfully calm and friendly to me. Definitely worth checking out for plant pots that are a bit different to those from your local DIY superstore.

If you’re looking for individual cards or gifts, Vanessa at Stitched by V will do you cross stitch cards/ bookmarks etc. Really unique and very good value.

Geek Mind Creations has some somewhat less cutesy stickers in their range, but I also really love the watercolour style, like this rather fabulous bee.

I’m in love (see what I did there) with this heart shaped tufted wall hanging from Sarah at Sarah Hack Art. Her portraiture prints and cards are fabulous too.

And finally, Vexican art launched today, and what could be better than a crochet mushroom gift box? Come on, you know you have that one friend that would love it!

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what do you need to know to appreciate beauty?

12th March 2021 by Jax Blunt Leave a Comment

When you’re scrolling through twitter, and you come across a discussion on education and creativity and you hear…

“we can’t think creatively in the abstract, it’s a seductive proposition, but it just doesn’t work that way..[some stuff about needing to have a deep understanding of science to grasp climate change]…similarly, take the national gallery we have an amazing set of pictures in the national gallery, but you can’t go and look at them, and understand the beauty of them, to understand the technique the artist has used without a deep understanding of the discipline, without a deep understanding of home they’ve done these things.”

“It is important to teach children the knowledge of a subject, and of a discipline, before they can think creatively. We can’t think creatively in the abstract…” @jonathansimons pic.twitter.com/bqyOQVRAAT

— Parents and Teachers for Excellence (@PTE_Campaign) March 12, 2021

Um.

What even?

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Home education in a pandemic – where we’re at.

19th January 2021 by Jax Blunt Leave a Comment

It’s not the same as home education outside of a pandemic. Which is only to be expected.

But things I’ve learnt over the years of home educating 4 children are still coming in handy. Things like if something doesn’t work, change it.

So we’re flexing a lot, dropping things that don’t work for us, and bringing in other family activities to replace the things we can’t do right now. Board games are popular again. We’ve played Game of Life, Monopoly, and (affiliate link) Dragonwood in the last couple of weeks.

Dragonwood turned out to be particularly educational. The main lesson is to pay attention – Simon and I were figuring out our chances of particular results from our dice rolls, without noticing that the dice aren’t regular 1-6 6 sided dice. They’re 6 sided, yes, but the sides are number 1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 4. Which means you have a completely different set of probabilities going.

The second game went much more smoothly 😉

dragonwood in play

Other things – I’m taking advantage of a lot of online workshops and resources. We did an Etchr lab mini workshop on painting fantasy creatures, which turned out to be very pokemon focussed, making for very happy children.

etchr mini workshop

I enjoyed it too, but was at a slight disadvantage in terms of the creatures, which is why my final creation looks more like an orange snail than the fish it’s supposed to be based on. Honest. Highly recommend them anyway, was £5 for a 90 minute session, and there were very few people in the zoom call, so we got to chat with the artist and choose the pokemon we wanted. Brilliant.

The children are having weekly sessions with their local computer club, and nearly daily social zooms too, which has been a lifesaver for keeping up some social contacts for them. We don’t tend to do a lot over winter anyway, but of course we lost all our usual camping and group holidays last year, so zoom is much needed.

Day to day basics are covered with skoolbo, mathletics and duolingo – I added a free French lesson for Tigerboy from Collins Parents but he tells me it was easier than the Duolingo he’s been doing. He’s shown remarkable commitment to that, been really impressed with his dedication.

We’re getting near the end of our current readaloud, so I need to hunt down something to replace it. I might work up a topic based post on it as well, in case Smallest in particular wants to fill out her subject knowledge around the Second World War, which is when the Midnight Guardians is set.

All in all, we’re pottering on much as we would always, but with that awareness that we can’t just do stuff, go out, or meet up with people. And no, it’s not ideal, but we’re doing OK. Hope you all are too.

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Filed Under: how we do it, Uncategorised Tagged With: Dragonwood, EtchrMiniWorkshop, home education, resources

Habits and patterns

17th January 2021 by Jax Blunt Leave a Comment

I don’t know how easy other people find it to get into habits. With me there’s a constant balancing act of trying to build a pattern of behaviour without getting trapped into that pattern. So if I get back into daily blogging, that will become a challenge that won’t make life easier, so it’s almost easier to fail now rather than let the anxiety build up.

I do feel like I have to sneak up on my brain. Which is kind of hard, given it’s listening.

I’m pondering gamifying it. So the zombie settlement game I play has these daily missions, and each one gives you points, and the points build up and you get rewards at different values. You don’t have to do them in the same order, and you don’t have to do them all, but the higher value rewards require quite high points.

And I wonder if I could design an app that let me add tasks, and then issued random rewards when I tick them off in that kind of daily crate style. (don’t tell me if it already exists, thinking about how I design this is helping draw me back to programming.)

So my brain sabotages me with sidelines into but you’ll need a development machine, and should it be Windows or apple and maybe it would be good to try apple because you haven’t done that before and the kids could explore art and music and then of course I’ve got to head down the rabbit hole of determining the best answer to the machine question and suddenly it’s the end of another day and I’ve killed zombies and fed everyone and done my drawing but no development.

But I had a spare sea video on my phone so at least Instagram got new material even if two people unfollowed me there are what if I set up a tiktok crochet channel?

I haven’t. Yet. There’s so many great accounts on tiktok and in my head I’m a lot younger than I appear to the world and I wouldn’t be cool and I don’t think in video and ooh, I’m very sidetracked again.

I wonder what all that says about me.

Have a pearl onion. What even is a pearl onion? Pearl onion sketch

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