Holiday traditions

Postcard from Algot
Postcard from Algot flickr photo by NomadWarMachine shared under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license

Sending postcards has been part of my holiday routine for most of my life. As a child we were ‘encouraged’ to send them to family and godparents, as an adult I enjoyed choosing cards to send to nephews and nieces when they were young. In recent years N and I have been sending them to our parents. Last year I sent what would turn out to be the last postcard to mum while we were on holiday in Findhorn. This year, for the first time that I can remember, I didn’t buy or send any postcards while we were on holiday, because there wasn’t anyone to send them to.

So imagine my joy when I returned home to find a postcard from my friend Algot.  Thank you, Algot. Now to think about drawing some to send around the world…

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Silent Sunday

Coal Tit
Coal Tit flickr photo by NomadWarMachine shared under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license

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Silent Sunday

226/365 Sunset at Findhorn
226/365 Sunset at Findhorn flickr photo by NomadWarMachine shared under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license

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Silent Sunday

Swans
Swans flickr photo by NomadWarMachine shared under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license

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Silent Sunday

Dew on the grass
Dew on the grass flickr photo by NomadWarMachine shared under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license

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August 1st

Mum and Dad's wedding
Mum and Dad’s wedding flickr photo by NomadWarMachine shared under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license
The first of August was always a red letter day in our family. On 1st August 1959 my mum and dad got married. The date is engraved upon my memory – and this year it was very hard because I had nobody to send a card to, nobody to phone and wish a happy anniversary. I messaged my siblings the day before to ask who had photos of the wedding as I couldn’t find mine, and Lucy scanned a few for me. My Aunty Belinda doesn’t like herself in this picture, and I always thought that Aunty Jenny – my godmother – looks like Alice when she grew too much in this shot, and I wonder where Aunty Marjorie was as she’s not in the picture at all. Mum and Dad probably told me before, too late to ask them now.

Mum and Dad's wedding
Mum and Dad’s wedding flickr photo by NomadWarMachine shared under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license

They look so young, and so happy here. They were happy – it was a good marriage. Dad loved to tell me the story of how he met my mum at University, and mum once told me that the happiest time of her life was when the four of her children were very young and she stayed home to look after us. I don’t think she was ever really happy after he died – dad made us all promise that we’d look after her and I hope we did enough. As each year passed and they celebrated, dad would joke that he’d have got less time for murder – my dad liked his jokes so much that he used them over and over again. One of the things that amused him greatly towards the end of his life was when I’d say his jokes before he did. It amused me, too.

Mum and Dad's wedding
Mum and Dad’s wedding flickr photo by NomadWarMachine shared under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license

Mum hated getting old, and she hated being alone. Now she’s gone I find myself remembering her where I think she was happiest – in the house we built in the Peak District, surrounded by her family, pottering around the garden or lying in the sun with a book. I miss them both.

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Seven months of daily photos

Seven months of daily photos, one for each day of the year.

Photo of the Day 2025

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Silent Sunday

205/365 Apples
205/365 Apples flickr photo by NomadWarMachine shared under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license

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Listening AND doing


Image from Wikimedia
Recently I’ve been over-exposed to the picture above. I’ve been to a slew of talks and presentations where well-meaning people have used this picture on  slide and told me that lectures are outdated and all the best teachers nowadays engage their students in active learning. But, of course, it’s not as clear cut as that. In a paper that, in my opinion, is one of the most important pieces of writing about teaching and learning, Anna Sfard highlights the importance of not rejecting acquisition as a useful form of learning: On Two Metaphors for Learning and the Dangers of Choosing Just One. Recently there has been a tendency for educators to opt for participatory models of learning – often called ‘active learning’ . However, as Sfard says, it’s not the only way that people can learn and we should be careful of black and white dichotomies. A couple of months ago I participated in an #LTHEChat on Bluesky on the topic of Team Based Learning, and wrote a blog post as a result of a conversation I had during that chat – basically arguing against the idea that being a ‘guide on the side’ was better than being a ‘sage on the stage’.  You can read the whole blog post for yourself and admire the artwork that goes along with it 🙂

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How to tell a story

How to tell a story
How to tell a story flickr photo by NomadWarMachine shared under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license

How to tell a story

Who am I to tell you how to tell your story?

You might start at the beginning
Or in the middle, or at the end

If the story wants to be told, it will leap from your mind onto the page

And then, from those pages, it will jump into mine.

 

A poem for today’s Daily Create.

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