A, B, Cs

I’ve gone back to school!

That is to say, I’m studying and it’s a marvellous course: The History of Children’s Literature.

My husband and friends may rib me about it (‘I have a couple of Janet and Johns you can borrow’; ‘my daughter’s just finished teething with her board books’… hilarious), but so far the course has exceeded all my expectations.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s bloody hard work – my brain feels fractured most of the time – and my reading list is through the roof, but I’m learning and discovering some truly astonishing things, including my complete inability to focus for more than 10 minutes at a time.  Give me a job I know how to do and I’m straight in there, boom! Done!  Even if it takes me several hours.  But this is something else.  Research, note-taking, citations, unravelling meanings and deciphering huge swathes of text and cross-referencing and, and… I’m just glad I chose a subject I know a little bit about, so I don’t come across as completely ignorant.

If you’re a bookworm and are interested in children’s books, whether it be reading or writing them, I highly recommend it.  Oxford Brookes actually do an online version of the course (in fact there are two international students following the course from the UAE and Korea, how cool is that?).

Another reason for signing on for the course was to keep my grey cells sparking in an effort to fight off dementia because I can see signs of it creeping in.  Or maybe I’m just paranoid (I don’t deny Still Alice did a number on me).  Whenever I stand still in a room and wonder why the hell I went in there, I scare myself silly.

My son who recently moved out of his room has just been told to haul all his crap out of there so can turn it into a study, I’ve nabbed a wobbly desk from the bins at work and I’ve just ordered an old-style desktop pencil sharpener (and some pencils).  Now I just have to find a way to stop procrastinating.  There’s probably a course for that, too.