The Problem with Words
Asher’s relationship with words has been unusual, to say the least. For the first six years of his life, he was a solitary and almost silent child. He avoided social contact and, he tells me, spent much of his time…
Category speech and language
Magnetic Attraction! How Asher Pulled Me In.
What follows is a true story. I thought you might like to see in detail what a remarkable (and devious!) little kid Asher was. Imagine a classroom in a primary school in the south of England, in the closing years…
Believe me? Maybe now he will.
There was a man, once, who followed my writing on Medium. He always clapped and was invariably charming and polite in the comments he left. The trouble was, I persisted in writing about my experiences with Asher, and how he…
Three sides of a coin
Coins, when you think about it, do have three sides. Certainly, we’re more accustomed to seeing the familiar, flat heads or tails surfaces, but there is also that narrow, curved rim that connects the two. In rare circumstances, that is where our…
Do I Really Sound Like That?
‘Voice Confrontation’ is a thing, apparently. It’s the psychological term for that cringing feeling some of us experience when we hear a recording of our own voices. I didn’t realise how badly I suffered from it until my book publisher…
The Man with Blue Eyes who had once read a book
It was his eyes I noticed first, the clear, stunning blueness and openness of them. He was youngish, twenties or thirties, and quite alone. His complexion told me he lived a life outdoors, in nature. A traveller, perhaps. Our town…
The Wide Web of Communication
By now, just about everyone is familiar with what has been termed the ‘wood-wide web’: Susanne Simard’s stunning discover of the tiny threads of mycelium or mycorrhizal network that lies beneath our feet in a forest, connecting tree roots and…
The Day we made Paper Aeroplanes
It was way back in the 1980s. The National Curriculum (government imposed) was in full swing and they’d started to send out OFSTED inspectors to check that we teachers were dumbing the kids down to a suitable degree — teaching…
Flowers in a Blue Vase
I’d been wondering recently. I’d acted in good faith. As a teacher of small children with speech and language difficulties, it never crossed my mind not to try to ‘improve’ their verbal communication skills. I thought it was my job.…