Helen's journal and online home

You go to the BBC web site to see if you can find yesterday's afternoon short story in order to post the URL for your creative writing students and your eye fall on this quote...

"He could shoot an arrow from him, And run forward with such fleetness, That the arrow fell behind him!" Join Timothy West as he tells "The Song Of Hiawatha", the famous work by this American poet and linguist.

...and you think, "Yes, that sounds very impressive. But what angle did he shoot it at?"

You get home from work and find packages awaiting. Lots of squeeing and cries of, "It's just like Christmas!" then ensue as you unwrap the new mower blade to replace the one you bent on a stone a couple of weeks ago (well, that didn't really result in any squeeing) and the new slide scanner.

A flurry of installing software and swearing at the tangle of cables under the desk as you work out which plug can be safely unplugged in order to plug in the scanner then follows.

At last I have access to all the photos I've taken over the years! Of course I've always had access, sort of, but in order to make any use of them, and also in order to be able to give copies to the kids, I needed them in digital format. Since the age of about 14 until we got the digital camera about 4 years ago, I've taken 35mm colour slides. There are hundreds of the things sitting in boxes. I suppose I could have had prints made, but that's expensive, but I can now happily work my way through them and burn them to CD.

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The geeky looking girl is, of course, me. The hall is Heaton Hall in Heaton Park in Manchester. Photos taken in 1967.