Content Herein

More building on the Manor website yesterday. More running up and down stairs to check progress and give opinions. More 'ooohhhhing' and 'aaaahhhhing' at the sheer capacity of Andre's talent. I thought, I'd better make a list of stuff that I want included on the site, and then I won't lose track of my updating schedule.

Oh yes, I have an updating schedule! There are going to be seven areas on the site and I plan to update one area every day. Of course, I may need to give up other activities in order to make the time to do this. Ironing may remain crumpled, carpets unhoovered, surfaces undusted. Dinners may remain raw, homemade cakes may become a distant memory of the past. And just as I was starting to feel guilty about the potential neglect of my household duties I thought, Heather's coming home this week, having completed her university career. She can do all the cooking and housework until she finds more gainful employment, so that solved that problem!

The Kitchen is sorted - Recipe of the Week, Experimental Recipe of the Week, and a spot from the Much Malarkey Manor Guide To...

So I turned my attention to The Study. Now, I am a firm believer in life-long learning. I think that once you stop being interested in learning new stuff, you might as well climb in the coffin and nail down the lid. The only attitude worse than this is when you think you know it all and there is nothing else to learn. When I was teaching I saw enough of this from over-confident (and ironically dim) teenagers. And no matter how much I tried to tell them, they had a stubborn and worrying belief that learning stops the minute the clock ticks past the last minute of the last GCSE exam and you get to run out of the exam room and block up the sinks in the school loos with paper towels and leave the taps running for a highly hilarious end-of-school jape.

The Study, therefore, will be a space for life-long learning. I'm a fully qualified teacher, for heaven's sake. I ought to do something with my qualification. So I am going to a) post creative writing activities for those who want to do creative writing and b) do a guided reading of 'Book of the Month,' whereby visitors to the site can read-along-a-book-with-me, and we can have discussions about it in a Reading Group kind of way.

Of course, I need to give some thought to what the first 'Book of the Month' might be. Do I go for something I haven't read yet, and so come to the text with fresh eyes? Or do I plump for something that I know well and have enjoyed so I can impart enthusiasm and confident wisdom to those who join me?

Actually, I am half-way through Patrick Gale's 'The Whole Day Through' which is very manageable in that it hasn't got 600 pages, so I might use that.

Today I am continuing my list of Much Malarkey Manor content. Andre is upstairs as I write, working on The Belfry. A man has just arrived with a delivery of bats. The bats are demanding fruit. Pandora is having a life-long learning lesson in the difference between a bat (protected species) and a mouse (eat-all-you-can-for-a-fiver).

And Phoebe Flanbottom is asleep, having created and eaten all the Recipes of the Week for the next six months.