Last year I submitted 35 stories. That netted me four acceptances and nineteen rejections, and the other twelve haven’t replied yet. Two of those will probably reply later, and six might still reply. Call it four acceptances and twenty-three rejections. That’s the best ratio I’ve had in a long time. Incidentally, the last submission of the year broke the land speed record for getting into print. I sent my dark…

My son, Julio, was telling me he was nervous. “It feels like a helicopter in my tummy.” I told him that most people describe it as butterflies. Then I explained that the tingly feeling was caused by your body sending the blood away from digestion and towards to the big muscles, making you strong for an emergency. “So the heli in your belly gives you more welly.” When you’re nine…

A couple of weeks ago I went to a Christmas dinner. We stuffed our faces, of course, and drank quite a lot (we’d left the car at home), and then, while everybody was feeling mellow, they brought round the raffle tickets. Now I’m not a fan of national lotteries. Tickets for the big Christmas lottery in Spain cost €20, and your chances of winning are tiny. I think I’ve probably…

I’ve just spent the last two days suffering from gastroenteritis, so it was a nice surprise to wake up feeling well and HUNGRY! It was a good day to go back to work (as a classroom assistant – I must write about this some time) because it was the Christmas treat for the infants. It was raining as I drove to work, so I was a bit worried the excursion…

For some years I’ve been sponsoring a little girl in Zimbabwe. If you haven’t come across the idea of sponsoring before, it works like this. You contribute a small amount of money each month, and some of it goes to help a specific child. In most cases it means that they can go to school and have a proper lunch. Things my own son takes for granted. (In fact he’d…

I live in the Canary Islands. They are part of Spain, but situated off the coast of Morocco. Our house is a new building. Before we moved in, we had a long period where we were dragging our son, Julio, round with us to choose bath taps and floor tiles and so on. The poor kid got very frustrated because we wouldn’t let him chose anything – like we were…