#Morag Oxford

[tiallussims]

🧋

I have made you a dirty chai latte bubble tea, will you spill the darkest secrets of your favorite OC ?

I never had that drink before. A chai latte with a shot of espresso sounds unusual. *sips and pops bubbles*

So you want a dark secret. Ooooh. You don't play around, don't you? Okay, I have one for you. Although it's not of one of my favorite OCs, Cameron Oxford, alone, but his entire mother's family.

Morag Oxford, née Grimond, comes from a long line of powerful spellcasters. What she doesn't know about her family is that her ancestors played a leading role in the assassination of the former Sage of Vampire Magic. The Sage's assassination led to the devastating war between spellcasters and vampires that left the Realm in Ruins. As punishment, her family was stripped of their magical powers and banished from the Mage's community. A weak connection to the Realm of Magic prevailed, as Morag was born with a weak magic ability: the ability to sense vampires. Although she doesn't know that uneasy feeling around some people is that hidden ability.

[lucaaaamakesart]

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[synchronousemma]

19th–22nd December: Mrs. John Knightley visits her old acquaintance

Read and comment on WordPress

Read: Vol. 1, ch. 13; pp. 70–71 (“There could hardly be an happier creature” through to “consulted in every thing”).

Context

Mrs. Isabella Knightley pays calls to members of her old social circle in Highbury every morning. Plans are made for a Christmas Eve dinner with Mr. and Mrs. Weston at Randalls.

“Morning” calls at this time would have taken place in the afternoon, after luncheon. It was typical for a round of calls to succeed an arrival.

Readings and Interpretations

A Happier Creature

Isabella here again furnishes a contrast with her sister in her example of domestic complacency; it is difficult to imagine Emma, with her restless, searching intelligence, being as happy talking over nothing each day but her round of visits.

The acerbic wit in the sentiment “It was a delightful visit;—perfect, in being much too short” has earned this quotation a place in locations as disparate as Oxford Essential Quotations and, apparently, containers of eye-shadow.1 I have, however, seen it suggested that the omission of “except” (“perfect, except in being much too short”) may have been in error—the satire being broader and courser than what Austen would typically employ, as well as out of keeping with Isabella’s sentiments and the tone of the rest of the passage (Gilson, p. 522).

Habits of Gentle Selfishness

Based in part on evidence in this section, Richard Jenkyns opines that Mr. Woodhouse is

an octopus whose tentacles draw others towards himself. His rank and wealth enable him to ‘command the visits of his own little circle’ [vol. 1, ch. 3; p. 11]. He has succeeded in making the world revolve around his person: everyone must spend time and trouble thinking about him. When the Westons, for example, want to give a dinner party, it is he who determines that the hours must be early and the numbers few, his ‘habits and inclination being consulted in every thing’ [vol. 1, ch. 13; p. 70]. It is not enough for him to have his own comforts satisfied: his employment is to destroy the pleasures of others. (p. 163)

Footnotes

Emma Thompson writes in 1995: “Morag showed me an eye-shadow container she’d bought for me. […] I opened the lid and lo and behold, there was an Austen quotation: ‘It was a delightful visit, perfect in being much too short’” (p. 216). I was unable to find evidence of this eye-shadow online, though I did turn up a BH cosmetics collaboration with 2016 film Pride + Prejudice + Zombies. On “Austen artifacts available in the market” see A. Thompson (n.p.).

Discussion Questions

Do you think that “It was a delightful visit;—perfect, in being much too short” was intended to read as-is, or is there an omitted negation?

What can we tell of the characters of, and relationships between, Isabella Knightley, Mr. Woodhouse, and the Westons from this section?

Bibliography

Austen, Jane. Emma (Norton Critical Edition). 3rd ed. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, [1815] 2000.

Gilson, David. “Jane Austen’s Emma in America: Notes on the Text of the First and Second American Editions.” The Review of English Studies 53.212 (November 2002), pp. 517–525.

Jenkyns, Richard. “The Prisoner of Hartfield.” In A Fine Brush on Ivory: An Appreciation of Jane Austen. Oxford: Oxford University Press (2004), pp. 151–74.

Ratcliffe, Susan, ed. “Jane Austen.” In Oxford Essential Quotations. 4th ed. Oxford University Press (2016). DOI: 10.1093/acref/9780191826719.001.0001. Accessed 18 December 2021.

Thompson, Allison. “Trinkets and Treasures: Consuming Jane Austen.” Persuasions On-Line 28.2 (Spring 2008).

Thompson, Emma. The Sense and Sensibility Screenplay and Diaries. New York: Newmarket Press (1995).

[gold-from-straw]

The Willing - snippet

Here’s a chapter of my original WIP, The Willing! Talia’s just been brought back to life and found out she’s got a ghost attached to her... I hope you enjoy! ( @focusdumbass​ we were talking about this ages ago, I hope you don’t mind me tagging you!)

Talia stood at her mirror for a long time, staring at her own face after the girl – Kitty – after Kitty’s face had disappeared.

She was breathing. She was standing on her own feet, and she was alive. She could tell, because her feet hurt.

She turned suddenly, frantic, and rushed to her desk. Everything was exactly as she always kept it. Her files were all in the same order they had been, her phone was charging by her bedside as always, her laptop was still battered and had that sticker on the back that was scratched almost to oblivion. Her calendar—

Her calendar read November 15th.

She remembered the day she died. October 19th, just weeks after arriving. She’d worn her Han Solo jacket and listened in on a conversation between a couple of history students in the bus queue, about how a couple of characters on Eastenders were meant to be together. She’d been getting ready to go to her first Oxford Shabbat service.

It’ll be like you never died, she’d said. What had she missed? What had happened in those five weeks? She stared at the calendar and stumbled back onto her bed, and then screamed.

The ghost sitting on her bed screamed too.

“What the actual hell?” she yelled, standing up again, her blood singing and her hands balled into fists.

“You sat on me!”

“You were on my bed!”

“Well, I didn’t bloody want to be, did I?” he snapped, standing up and facing her in a mirror of her own pose.

She clutched at her hair and turned away. “This isn’t happening. You’re a figment of my imagination, this is all just… some freaky dream.”

The ghost was silent. No, he was not a ghost! She wasn’t going to have some breakdown, not now. There was no ghost in her room. She was alone. There was no hallucination. She was going to go to bed.

She started stripping off her clothes and pulling on her pyjamas. The not-really-there boy squeaked. “What are you doing?”

“You’re not really here.”

“I am here, and I don’t want to see your skinny butt, thank you.”

“Then leave,” she said, whirling around wildly. “Get out of my room, go back to… whatever dimension or repressed memory or… wherever you came from.”

“Don’t you think I would if I could?” he hissed. “Do you think I’m here by choice? I can’t leave! I can’t!”

“Well then,” she snapped. “I’ll leave.”

She walked out of her room in her pyjamas and marched to the kitchen. She thumped her cupboard door open, slapped at the kettle to turn it on, turned around to get the milk and nearly leaped out of her skin.

The ghost stood in front of the fridge, glaring flatly at her. “I meant,” he said through gritted teeth. “I think I can’t leave you.”

Talia threw up her hands. “Why? Why are you attached to me? I don’t even know you!”

“I don’t know!” he said. “I just… I can’t go anywhere!”

“Have you tried?”

He snorted and crossed his arms. “Have I tried, she asks! Of course I’ve bloody tried! What do you think I was doing when you were staring gormlessly at your desk? There I was, yelling at you, having my own little breakdown – which, by the way, I think I’m owed seeing as how I’ve just bloody died, and you don’t even hear me until you sit on my lap? Which, by the way, not welcome – I’m gay.”

“What?”

He frowned at her. “What what? Which part of that speech was problematic for you? Swear to God if I’ve got myself attached to a homophobe—”

She waved him away. “I couldn’t hear you until I sat on you?”

“Oh. No.” He glanced away. “You’re not homophobic, are you?”

She rolled her eyes. “No, idiot, I’m a lesbian.”

“Oh. Well, good. Wow, that would have been horrible.”

“More or less horrible than being dead?”

He slumped his shoulders and Talia couldn’t help a twinge of guilt that she squashed ruthlessly. He started it, after all. He leaned against the counter, his shoulders slumped and an actual pout on his lips. Talia hesitated, then got the milk out of the fridge.

They were silent for a long moment save for the sound of the spoon against the ceramic. Talia turned around and sipped her tea. “So… what’s your name?”

“Matt,” he said. “Matt Wiśniewski.”

“I’m Talia McGregor.”

He huffed a laugh. “You really couldn’t be more Scottish if you tried, could you?”

She narrowed her eyes and tried to will the blush away. “No need to be an arse.” She was glad she hadn’t told him her birth name was Morag.

He cackled. “Oh, say arse again! It sounds brilliant. No, say och aye!”

She thumped the rest of her tea on the counter and went to bed.

[ericfruits]

Educational Divide: Private School Students In U.K. Enjoy Numerous Academic Advantages

LONDON — If you’ve been weighing the pros and cons of sending your child to a private school, consider a new set of research out of the United Kingdom. Private high school students in England are performing considerably better in advanced courses than their public school counterparts, and consequently enjoy greater acceptance to the most prominent and respected universities, the study concludes.

When researchers from the University College of London investigated why this discrepancy in academic achievement is so prevalent, they discovered that private schools have access to roughly three times the amount of resources as state-sponsored schools.

This was the first-ever study to look into England’s performance gap among public and secondary schools, and researchers tracked 5,800 students as they progressed through their secondary education. Other factors, such as earlier academic achievement and family history, as well as which university each student went on to attend, were also considered.

After analyzing all of their findings, the study’s authors agreed that the large disparity in resources among public and private schools is the main driving force behind this academic gap.

It was also noted that private school students study 27% more “facilitating” advanced courses, such as math and biology, in comparison to public school students. Advanced courses on these practical topics are generally considered to be looked at favorably by most major universities. Furthermore, aside from just enrollment statistics, private school students also perform much better in these types of courses than public school students who are able to enroll.

Additionally, private schools are able to provide students with a much more intimate learning experience; public schools typically have class sizes about double the size of private school classes.

Overall, the study concludes that attending literally any of England’s private schools is associated with moderate and steadily increasing advantages at every single education level. So, the longer a student is enrolled in private school, the greater advantages he or she will enjoy when it comes time to choose a university and even when entering the labor force.

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“This is the first known study into the current performance gap in upper secondary education in England and our study provides further evidence on the links between private schooling, subject choice and university progression. Overall, we have a picture of cumulative advantage from Britain’s private education,” says lead author Dr. Morag Henderson in a release. “This is consistent with the vastly superior resource gap at each stage. Those who are privately educated are then set to profit beyond school with better university access and improved labour market rewards.”

“These findings ought to put to bed the question of private schools’ educational advantage, in the context of debates about the need for reform, and the possible routes to reform,” adds principal investigator Professor Francis Green. “Both reformers and defenders of the status quo should start from the position that private schools do, on average, confer academic advantage, and policy makers should address the social exclusiveness of access to private schools in that light.”

Roughly one in six 12th grade students in England attend a private institution.

The study is published in the Oxford Review of Education.

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[hollyoaksloversx]

Baby Daniel, A Stabbing and A Last Day of Freedom...

Rounding Up A Week In Hollyoaks (11th-15th September 2017)

There was drama aplenty for the Loveday’s and Lomax’s this week as the truth about baby Daniel’s paternity was finally revealed to Simone. The drama unfolded as Daniel was rushed to hospital and tests soon revealed that the baby had a bleed on his brain consistent with being shaken. Meanwhile, Louis, Simone and Lisa were at the hospital for an IVF appointment and Louis was soon sent away on cake duty. As he headed for The Bean, he bumped into a distraught Tegan, who quickly filled him in on the situation. Simone, Lisa and the cakes were quickly abandoned as Louis headed to see his son and when the full extent of Daniel’s injuries were revealed, Louis was quick to question Zack, having seen him behave angrily around Daniel before. As Zack began to protest his innocence, Simone worried about her husband’s disappearance and went searching for him. In typical Hollyoaks fashion, Simone tracked Louis down at precisely the wrong moment, just in time to hear that he was Daniel’s Father...

Despite Louis’ protests, Simone refused to forgive him and insisted their marriage was over. With her parent’s marriage in tatters, Lisa assumed that the surrogacy was off, however, Simone insisted that she wouldn’t be punished for Louis’ mistake and she was still going ahead with it. Back at the Lomax’s, Leela also began to suspect Zack when she discovered the baby monitor lying smashed under the couch. This, combined with Louis’ earlier comments were enough to plant the seeds of doubt in Leela’s mind and she called the police...

Elsewhere, Lily entered self destruct mode when she was told that her GCSE grades probably wouldn’t be good enough for Oxford or Cambridge. Deciding that school wasn’t worth bothering with, she bunked off with Prince and the pair got drunk, resulting in Lily throwing herself at him. Not comfortable with taking things further due to Lily’s intoxicated state, Prince knocked her back, leaving Lily feeling rejected. Later that night, Lily got dressed up and headed to the Duke Street Social and soon got chatting to Brody, who had just been set a challenge by Damon to bed the next girl who walked through the door. Brody soon worked out that Lily was underage and took her home to a furious Diane. The following day, Lily and Prince made up and the pair slept together for the first time. Lily later received the news that she’d been made head girl at school but, as a proud Prince reeled off the things Lily would be expected to do, the pressure became too much, and she rushed to the bathroom to self-harm. 

Also this week, Darren faced his last day of freedom as he prepared to be sent to prison. Wanting to spend one last day with his family, he kept Charlie and Oscar off school and tried his best to explain the situation to them over a burger. When Charlie pointed out that Nancy should be with them, Darren packed up a picnic and headed to the school with the boys to pick Nancy up. Bit of an idiotic thing to do, really. Of course Nancy can’t just swan off for the afternoon and then she’s left to look like the villain in the eyes of the kids when she ‘ruins’ their day out. Unsurprisingly, Nancy turned down Darren’s offer and Darren, feeling rejected, headed to Damon’s bar, where he was tempted to join in a game of poker. The following morning, Jack was worried to find Darren missing, but his concern wasn’t shared by Nancy. Darren later strolled in and told Nancy what he’d been up to. Furious, Nancy stormed off and refused to attend court. However, she soon had a change of heart when she discovered that Darren hadn’t really been gambling and rushed to court, only to be told she was too late and Darren had already been taken away to start his 6 month sentence. 

Finally, it was the day of Sienna and Warren’s wedding but Grace was determined to put a spanner in the works by claiming Warren for herself. As ‘Warrena’ prepared to walk down the aisle, Grace was still convinced that Warren would jilt Sienna and choose her instead. So imagine Grace’s delight when Warren turned up at the club when he should have been at his wedding! Unfortunately for Grace, Warren had only come to retrieve the rings, but that didn’t stop her making one last play for him. Once again, Warren knocked Grace back and openly mocked her, telling her they would never be together. Enraged, Grace grabbed a knife and plunged it into Warren’s back...

5 Things We Learnt This Week:

1. Sally’s Granny Morag set very high standards in window cleaning. 

2. Taking a day off school for a ‘junk food and laughing until wee comes out’ day is not acceptable. 

3. Grace is a Joy Division fan. 

4. Brody dances like he’s bursting for the toilet. 

5. Don’t bring up the last time Warren and Mandy planned a wedding together...

Characters Featured:

Brody, Charlie, Cleo, Courtney, Damon, Daniel, Darren, Diane, Esther, Grace, Harry, Jack, James, Joel, Kim, Leela, Lily, Lisa, Louis, Mandy, Misbah, Myra, Nancy, Oscar, Prince, Sally, Sienna, Simone, Ste, Tegan, Tony, Tracey, Warren and Zack. 

Past Characters Mentioned:

Fraser Black, Nico Blake, Cameron Campbell, Joanne Cardsley, Danny Lomax, Sam Lomax, John Paul McQueen, Nathan Nightingale, Trevor Royle, Louise Summers.

[youmeanfiguratively]

Adorable asks: 9, 16, 18, 30

~ what's your aesthetic? Basically my tumblr lol. Idrk, I'm kinda still trying to find it but pretty stuff, sunsets, sapphic etc :)~ space, ocean, city, or forest? (Just had to add in the Oxford comma ;)) ocean. I've always been enthralled by the incredible power of the sea that humans can do nothing to stop~ comfort book? I love reading childhood books, so Katy Morag, Tatty Ratty, and Ingo are so comforting to read~ marriage or kids? I definitely want to marry, I'm not sold on the kids idea but I might do :)

[oneweekobsession]

books books books

So, this month’s books…

Well, so Vera Brittain’s War Diary is probably the best place to start: it covers 1913-1917 – so Vera’s desire to go to Oxford, the outbreak of war, her falling in love with her brother’s friend Ronald,  he, her brother, and all his friends signing up to war, and then pretty much all of them dying. It’s fascinatingly candid: Vera is often so frequently self-involved and low-to-high key irritating as all hell, but it’s a remarkable document for all that. She meets and falls in love with Ronald, but she’s often horrible to him (he comes back from the front for surprise leave and she’s a bitch to him for most of the time) and she’s as much infatuated with his mother as him, it sometimes seems. There are whole extended passages, before he dies, where she’s basically anticipating his death and imagining herself in the role of the heroically mourning fiancé. Things get more real and less self-obsessed when she signs up to work as a nurse, but then, when she’s no longer imagining herself as soon-to-be-bereaved, Roland does actually die. That’s as far as I’ve got at the moment, but it’s worth starting with this because it contrasts a lot with other things I’ve been reading,

particularly Sally Nicholls’ Things a Bright Girl Can Do (2018) which is a YA novel set in the 1910s, which focusing on three young women who are part of the suffrage movement. The two of them who are baby gays are very cute and this is one of those YA novels where parents of gay children do exemplary parenting;  the other girl is a bit of a Vera Brittain position – with a soldier boyfriend/fiancé who goes off to war. (The endnotes of the book explicitly cite Brittain as an inspiration) Things turn out differently to Vera’s story and there’s a mostly happy ending, but it’s an ending that brings the challenges that are faced in Holtby’s Land of Green Ginger to mind; Nicholls spares her character the grief that Brittain faced, but by doing so, she cuts that character off from independence and from the possibilities of her university education and confines her instead to fraught and difficult domesticity.  

Elsewhere (to be precise, mostly on a beach in the south of France) I was reading Jennifer Morag Henderson’s biography of Josephine Tey (2015); Tey was just a couple of years younger than Brittain, but their paths don’t seem to have crossed. Tey’s Miss Pym Disposes is my all time favourite book; and a while ago I got interested in and then very annoyed by a load of novels by Nicola Upson which were basically Tey-focused RPFs, so I wanted to know more of the actual background. This is a decently researched book that covers the whole sweep of Tey’s career, but in some regards I found it wanting: in contrast to all of the Brittain/Holtby biographical reading I’ve been doing, much of which gives a fairly strong sense of the texture of their writings – esp. their letters and diaries - this doesn’t really give much sense of that; perhaps, in some regards, it’s because there’s less evidence to hand, but there are also moments where letters are paraphrased and quotation would have been 300% more interesting. It’s also not the strongest as a piece of literary analysis; it makes some promising gestures towards situating Tey/Daviot in new contexts but it doesn’t always follow through enough in doing that. And the writing also needs a properly good edit: it’s competent, but it’s often repetitive or lacking in tight organization. It’s a good and valuable thing, then, but I wanted it to be better.

Alongside that I’ve been working through other books by Tey: this time, The Man in the Queue (1929) which I now know was her first detective novel. This is a decent mystery and well plotted and all and yes one might expect some period-appropriate attitudes and but holy god there is a whole load of casual racism and xenophobia and offensive language so much so that I almost gave up on it. It’s mostly confined to an early bit of the book and there’s an argument to be made that the language is due to the narrative being focused through a prejudiced character and is illustrative of the misplaced assumptions he is making. But in some ways that’s a bit of a stretch, and to cap it all, the narrator engages in a dollop of victim blaming at the end. So yeah. Problematic, shall we call this?

So, I also read Emma Donoghue’s novel for kids, The Lotterys Plus One (2017). This is a beautifully designed book with some really nice pictures: it’s about a huge queer family living in a big house: two gay dads, two lesbian mums, half a dozen kids biological and adopted and from different backgrounds and including disabilities. I was a bit apprehensive, I’m not going to lie, because the family have a lot of heavy-handed injokes which Donoghue pushes hard: the dads are known as Popcorn and Papadum and the mothers Maximum and Cardamom. That’s pretty twee and irritating, but I sort of acclimatized to it. The idea of this is great, I think, but but but: the cast of characters is *so* enormous that there were some (basically the two lesbian mothers) that are completely background and indistinguishable/inconsequential. In future books, that might shift if the focus of the narrative shifts, so I’m not going to get too mad about that. What did bug me really, though, was the fact that this huge queer diverse family is made possible only because they’ve won the lottery (hence they all adopt the surname ‘Lottery’, hence I scowl at the tweeness) but b/c they’re all liberal middle class types they weren’t actually playing the lottery actively but found the lottery ticket by accident or some such bullshit. I think it’s a shame that the novel/series is saying that huge queer diverse families can only be supported by the fortuitous acquisition of a ton of money; I’d’ve liked to have seen this book with four working parents, actually, as something more accessible, plausible, and achievable. I will read more of this series, but this part of the setup makes me a bit sad.

And finally, Jane Rule, After the Fire (1989). This is another really interesting Rule novel about island life, women of different ages, community and found families. What this one does differently is that the idea of community, of family, is not held so tightly here: instead what becomes important is taking hold of your own independence and finding your own path.

And to tie this back to the beginning my copy of this smells a bit of pineapples, after a M&S package of pineapple ruptured all over it; this happened in Battersea Park, sort-of coincidentally one of the places Holtby and Brittain liked best and spent a lot of time in. (The other cool thing that I realized that day was that H and B lived basically on the very next street to where the Gateways club would open, though not until a few years after Holtby died).

[dowrabeesmith]

My creative colleague, Morag Donald, and I have been leading art and creative writing workshops with a Foróige youth group in Templeport, Co. Cavan since January. This was just one group taking part in the Cavan Youth Arts Lab, of which there are ten across County Cavan with approximately 150 youth getting a chance to try out and play in various artistic disciplines. The Cavan Arts Office initiative received EU funding through Peace IV, part of the ongoing funding in cross-border communities that has oiled the mechanics of peace and reconciliation after the Thirty Years conflict ended with the Belfast Agreement on Good Friday, 10th April, 1998. Rural border towns were especially impacted by that conflict in many ways too lengthy to enumerate in this blog post.  Here we are twenty years on, approaching Good Friday, still doing the healing work.

Templeport, Bawnboy is also a Geopark Community, with sites of importance for Marble Arch Caves Global Geopark (another monument to cross-border cooperation, founded in the wake of the Belfast Agreement.) Morag and I proposed a project allowing the group to try out a range of arts and crafts, story and poetry that they would be unlikely to encounter in school.  We took as our thematic touchstone ‘Landscape and Heritage.’  Cavan Arts officer Kim Doherty matched us with a Foróige group of 12-14 year old girls. We met them in evening sessions and one daytime in Templeport Community Centre and had a day long out in Cavan Burren Park, Shannon Pot and a workshop in Dowra Courthouse Creative Space. Because as far as I am concerned you cannot have a project on land without getting outdoors.

Over the course of the first quarter of 2018, ten young women gamely tried out lots of new stuff. In the first session I asked them if they related more to words or pictures. Most felt more comfortable with visual media, but they also courageously tried out words. And I do mean courageous. One young woman when asked how she felt about writing a poem said, “Terrified!” And she was being dead honest. But, to her credit, she felt the fear and did it anyway!  And it didn’t really hurt at all in the process – a bit to her surprise.

We started with giving them journals to collage and keep a record of their own work and thoughts.

Collaged journals, Cavan Youth Arts Lab at Templeport

Morag Donald, a certified tutor in Touch Drawing, gave them a taste of this way to express themselves using this unique technique.

Cavan Youth Arts Lab Touch Drawing

Morag also taught skills in felt making, needle felt pictures and weaving.

Morag holding up some finished product

Wash, roll, pat – like Washing Days in Olden Times

First, call your friend who has some alpaca wool going spare. Then, encourage girls to get over the animal aroma pre-washing.  Next, wash it, roll it, pass it around! Felt making is a truly communal and co-operative operation.

But weaving offered each individual the opportunity to weave in her own contribution as part of a greater whole.

Weaving one’s own contribution to the bigger picture

For the words part of the project I chose ‘The Lost Words’ as a theme. This harks back to a poem of my own (Lost Worlds) inspired when I read that many words describing natural phenomena were being dropped from the Junior Oxford English Dictionary. Now, for these young women living in a rural setting, conker and bluebell are still very real and known. But for urban children those words deemed ‘irrelevant to modern childhood’ won’t have either a memory or a reference. So it seemed important to impress that these girls had a unique place in being the storykeepers of some of the lost words. In our final session they each chose a word as theirs to keep. For Emma, who dipped into the tin and picked kingfisher, it seemed absolute kismet since they have some kingfishers close to her home place.

Story is a way of communicating our heritage. On our day out on the Cavan Burren and Shannon Pot, in my Geopark Local Guide guise, I shared the folklore of the turlough and rocks, the swallow holes and megalithic tombs with them. Then, at Shannon Pot Tony Cuckson, my husband, shared with them the story of how the Shannon Got Its Name From a Girl.

Tony Cuckson Tells the Story of how the Shannon Got Its Name from a Girl

In the workshop after lunch in Dowra Courthouse Creative Space I encouraged the girls to write short haiku to accompany some of the photos taken on their phones.

Haiku by Ornagh Cox

Haiku by Clódagh Geoghegan

The Japanese poetry form also lends itself to collaboration when you create a renga. A haiku is made up of three lines of seventeen syllables. A tanka is a haiku with two more lines of seven syllables each. A renga is a series of linked tanka. Mind mapping is a real help when you are working on these.

Creating a renga with a group of four. Cooperation and collaboration skill building

Part of collaboration is about listening to others. From the very beginning we borrowed the Native American tradition of using a talking stick. This teaches each person to respect the person talking who holds the stick. By holding the stick you actively draw attention and people really listen to your words. You learn not to interrupt and to show respect for what everyone has to say. We made a talking stick for the girls to take back to the larger Foróige group in Templeport. After discussion, Rachel was elected as Talking Stick Keeper for the one they  made during the project.

Rachel is the Templeport Foróige Talking Stick Keeper

In our final session we wove our lost words into the collective weaving. Then, using two of the lost words, ash and wilow, the girls made a frame for the weaving and mounted their needle felt pictures.  The bottom right needlefelt piece is a collaboration three girls initiated to create a single piece.

Three of the girls stitched their pieces together into a single piece

Emma and Tasha with the ash frame for the project’s tapestry

  We also created a traditional wishing tree using felled branches. The group was asked to write out a wish or blessing – three lines beginning as follows:

May you…

May I…

May we…

The cloutie tree, or wishing tree, derives from the Gaelic for the word cloth. Since cloth and textile had played such a large part of the project it seemed fitting to end it with the group adding ribbons and lace along with their wishes, which we had printed on to cloth so they could tie it on. There was great sweetness and heart in their blessing wishes.

And this was my own wish.

May you always see the beautiful light inside you

May I always honour the beautiful light in everyone

May we always live with courage and act from a loving heart

Some of the Templeport Foróige group that participated in Cavan Youth Arts Lab with Bee Smith and Morag Donald

And what did the girls learn? Well, some of the comments on the feedback sheets made these statements.  “I learned that I was unique.” “I learned that I have some imagination.” I learned about communication skills and listening.”  “I learned I could be creative.” And any of those are all really helpful skills for peace-building in the future.

Weaving Art in the Geopark My creative colleague, Morag Donald, and I have been leading art and creative writing workshops with a Foróige youth group in Templeport, Co.

[londontheatre]

Rehearsals began this week for the new West End cast of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child who will start their performances at the Palace Theatre in London’s West End on 24 May 2017 following the final performance from the current cast on 21 May 2017. Jamie Glover will play Harry Potter with Emma Lowndes as his wife Ginny Potter and Theo Ancient as their son Albus Potter. Thomas Aldridge will play Ron Weasley with Rakie Ayola as Hermione Granger and Helen Aluko as their daughter Rose Granger-Weasley. Playing Draco Malfoy will be James Howard with Samuel Blenkin as his son Scorpius Malfoy.

They are joined by new cast members David Annen, Ruthxjiah Bellenea, Danny Dalton, Leah Haile, Rupert Henderson, Elizabeth Hill, April Hughes, James McGregor, Sarah Miele, Jordan Paris, James Phoon, Henry Rundle, Ged Simmons, Mark Theodore, Gideon Turner and Ed White. Original cast members Nicola Alexis, Rosemary Annabella, Phoebe Austen, Annabel Baldwin, Jabez Cheeseman, Morag Cross, Esme Grace, Lowri James, Martin Johnston, Alfred Jones, Barry McCarthy, Sandy McDade, Tom Mackley, Harrison Noble, Ben Roberts, Nuno Silva, Hope Sizer and Joshua Wyatt complete the 42-strong company playing a variety of characters, including seven children who will alternate two roles.

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is the eighth story in the Harry Potter series and the first official Harry Potter story to be presented on stage. The critically acclaimed production received its world premiere in June 2016 at the Palace Theatre and is now the recipient of thirteen theatre awards including the Evening Standard Best Play Award. Earlier this month it was announced that Harry Potter and the Cursed Child was nominated for a record-breaking eleven Olivier awards, making it the most nominated new play in Olivier history.

Back Row (left to right) James Howard (Draco Malfoy), Emma Lowndes (Ginny Potter), Jamie Glover (Harry Potter) Front Row (left to right) Thomas Aldridge (Ron Weasley), Rakie Ayola (Hermione Granger), Helen Aluko (Rose Granger-Weasley), Theo Ancient (Albus Potter), Samuel Blenkin (Scorpius Malfoy) photo by Manuel Harlan

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is currently booking to 29 April 2018. The next advance ticket release will take place on 25 April 2017. Tickets are priced from £15 per part and for every performance there are over 300 tickets at £20 or less per part. Further ticket releases will be announced throughout the year, details of which will published via the official Harry Potter and the Cursed Child website, social media channels and the official newsletter.

It was always difficult being Harry Potter and it isn’t much easier now that he is an overworked employee of the Ministry of Magic, a husband and father of three school-age children. While Harry grapples with a past that refuses to stay where it belongs, his youngest son Albus must struggle with the weight of a family legacy he never wanted. As past and present fuse ominously, both father and son learn the uncomfortable truth: sometimes, darkness comes from unexpected places.

Jamie Glover (Harry Potter) was last on stage in What’s in a Name? for Birmingham Repertory Theatre. His other theatre credits include The Rehearsal, An Ideal Husband and If Only all for Chichester Festival Theatre, Donkeys’ Years at the Rose Theatre Kingston, Noises Off at the Old Vic and Novello Theatre in the West End, The Chalk Garden for the Donmar Warehouse, The Shawl and The Man Who Had All the Luck both for Sheffield Crucible, The Novice for the Almeida Theatre and The Invention of Love for the Theatre Royal Haymarket. For the Royal Shakespeare Company his credits include All’s Well That Ends Well, The Roman Actor and Edward III. On film his credits include These Foolish Things, Sacred Life and Age of Treason. He is best known on television for playing Andrew Treneman in Waterloo Road and James Lacey in Agatha Raisin, and has also been seen in Endeavour and Doctor Who: An Adventure in Space and Time.

Row 5 Back Row (left to right) Joshua Wyatt, Ruthxjiah Bellenea, Jordan Paris, Elizabeth Hill, Mark Theodore, James Phoon, Henry Rundle, Leah Haile, Tom Mackley Row 4 (left to right) Rupert Henderson, James McGregor, Nuno Silva, Gideon Turner, Ged Simmons, Danny Dalton, Ed White, Martin Johnston Row 3 (left to right) Lowri James, Morag Cross, Nicola Alexis, Rosemary Annabella, Sarah Miele Row 2 (left to right) David Annen, Annabel Baldwin, James Howard, Rakie Ayola, Jamie Glover, Thomas Aldridge, Emma Lowndes, Barry McCarthy, Sandy McDade Row 1 Front Row (left to right) April Hughes, Samuel Blenkin, Jabez Cheeseman, Phoebe Austen, Alfred Jones, Esme Grace, Harrison Noble, Hope Sizer, Ben Roberts, Theo Ancient, Helen Aluko. Photo by Manuel Harlan

Emma Lowndes’ (Ginny Potter) many television credits include Bella Gregson in Cranford, Mary Rivers in Jane Eyre and Margie Drewe in Downton Abbey. She can soon be seen as Carla Davis in Channel 4’s The Trial. Her theatre credits include The Herbal Bed at the Royal and Derngate Theatre Northampton, Children of the Sun and Thérèse Raquin for the National Theatre, The Accrington Pals, Port, The Rise and Fall of Little Voice and The Seagull for the Royal Exchange Theatre and Whose Life is it Anyway? at the Comedy Theatre. On film her credits include Mother’s Milk and All or Nothing.

Theo Ancient (Albus Potter) trained at RADA and will make his professional stage debut in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.

Thomas Aldridge (Ron Weasley) is currently appearing in Les Misérables at the Queen’s Theatre. His previous theatre credits include The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe for Birmingham Rep, Made in Dagenham at the Adelphi Theatre, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Taming of the Shrew for the Open Air Theatre Regent’s Park, The Secret Garden and Peter Pan – A Musical Adventure for West Yorkshire Playhouse and Birmingham Rep, His Dark Materials on UK tour, Only the Brave for Soho Theatre, and High Society at the Shaftesbury Theatre. His television credits include Undercover, Titanic, Call the Midwife, Silent Witness, Hope and Glory and The Support Group. His film credits include Flea and Blasted.

Rakie Ayola (Hermione Granger) was last on stage in The Rest of Your Life at the Bush Theatre. Her previous theatre credits include King Lear at the Royal Exchange Theatre where she played Goneril, Crave/4.48 Psychosis for Sheffield Crucible, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time at the Apollo Theatre, Dido Queen of Carthage for the Globe Theatre, The Winter’s Tale for the Royal Shakespeare Company and Welcome to Thebes for the National Theatre. Her television credits include No Offence, Vera, Under Milk Wood, Black Mirror, Doctor Who, Silent Witness and Holby City. Her film credits include Been So Long, Dredd, Now is Good and Sahara.

Helen Aluko (Rose Granger-Weasley) is an original member of the Harry Potter and the Cursed Child company. Her previous theatre credits include Doctor Faustus for the Royal Exchange Theatre, Once Language, Many Voices for TNT, The Price for Walking Forward, The Wind in the Willows for Sixteen Feet Productions and Beauty and the Beast at Theatre Royal Stratford East. Her television credits include The Driver.

James Howard (Draco Malfoy) is an original member of the Harry Potter and the Cursed Child company. His previous theatre credits include Brave New World for Northampton Theatre Royal, Romeo and Juliet, As You Like It, Mojo, King Lear and Morte D’Arthur for the Royal Shakespeare Company, Twelfth Night and Ivanov for Donmar Warehouse and The Duchess of Malfi for the National Theatre. His television credits include Black Mirror, Dark Matters, Skins, Spooks, Inspector Lynley Mysteries and Dream Team. On film his credits include Survivor, The Theory of Everything, The Oxford Murders and Penelope.

Samuel Blenkin (Scorpius Malfoy) trained at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and also makes his professional stage debut in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.

Based on an original new story by J.K. Rowling, Jack Thorne and John Tiffany, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is a new play by Jack Thorne, directed by John Tiffany with movement by Steven Hoggett, set by Christine Jones, costumes by Katrina Lindsay, music & arrangements by Imogen Heap, lighting by Neil Austin, sound by Gareth Fry, illusions & magic by Jamie Harrison, music supervision & arrangements by Martin Lowe and casting by Julia Horan CDG.

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is one play presented in two parts. Both parts are intended to be seen in order on the same day (matinee and evening) or on two consecutive evenings. On Thursdays, there is an evening performance of Part One and on Fridays an evening performance of Part Two. On those days tickets to each part can be bought together or separately. Tickets for Wednesday matinee and Wednesday evening performances can also be bought together or separately.

The regular performance schedule is as follows – Monday – no performance, Tuesday – no performance, Wednesday – 2pm Part One & 7.30pm Part Two, Thursday – 7.30pm Part One, Friday – 7.30pm Part Two, Saturday – 2pm Part One & 7.30pm Part Two, Sunday – 1pm Part One & 6.30pm Part Two.

Every Friday, The Friday Forty takes place at 1pm when 40 tickets are released for every performance the following week for some of the very best seats in the theatre. Subsequent ticket releases take place each Friday for performances the following week. Priced at £40 (£20 per part) tickets will secure a seat for both Part One and Part Two on consecutive performances. Customers will be selected at random for the opportunity to buy tickets online and will be able to purchase a maximum of two tickets for both Part One and Part Two in one transaction. To ensure that as many people as possible have the chance to access these tickets, they will only be available to buy online http://ift.tt/2aaAyqp

Returned and other late-release tickets may also become available at short notice. These are not guaranteed, but any tickets that do become available will be sold on a first-come-first-served basis, online or in person at the Palace Theatre box office at full price.

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is produced by Sonia Friedman Productions, Colin Callender and Harry Potter Theatrical Productions.

Box Office – 0343 208 0500 http://ift.tt/1Pzesaj http://ift.tt/25xE0k9 @HPPlayLDN http://ift.tt/25vRNEE http://ift.tt/25xE5of www.pottermore.com

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