I found this today in searching for other things from the past!

Written with Rupert Loydell, we reflect on the importance of writers working in schools: he visiting mine on a number of occasions to run always purposeful, productive writing workshops.

Seems to me that little has changed, apart from how now I suspect it is so much more difficult to ‘justify’ paying to have visiting writers. 2004 was hardly a time of creative purpose in those running education from afar, but there was more freedom for those with the will to personally direct some of their focus on what mattered – like creative writing within schools whose curriculums (general, and English in particular) were otherwise geared to testing as well as narrow applications; certainly little celebration of the metaphorical! It’s more complex than this, but anyone bothering to read here will understand.

The final piece from my satirical novel Writing with Hammers will, I trust, speak for its own metaphoric self.