Thursday November 6th 2025

Dear Diary,

I had the pleasure of spending today at Our Lady Queen of Peace Primary. Now, I may not be allowed to have a favourite school… but I’m not going to keep quiet about the fact that the pupils at OLQP were definitely my favourite assembly audience to date!!! (And after 136 school visits, that’s saying something!) They came up with some brilliant book title ideas from the visual prompts my volunteers held up… including Drag-O-nuts (I love that), and they had some fantastic questions for me, plus some wonderful things to say about the opening chapters of WARNING: May Contain Dragons. They sat in hushed silence whilst I read, and appeared enthralled throughout. Then when the questions moved on to what makes them decide to pick up a book in the first place, they still wanted to talk more about the chapters I’d just read out, or future books they’d like me to write in the Words of WARNING collection! After a super assembly, I was really looking forward to the workshops, and they didn’t disappoint. From Reception all the way up to Year 6, the pupils were a delight to spend time with. They were hardworking, extremely engaged, and eager to share their work by reading aloud in front of their peers. And during the Year 6 session, it was lovely to get stuck into some more questions and answers about my journey into being an author, and to hand out some hints and tips to those keen on becoming authors themselves one day. Positivity radiates around every corridor inside this school, and I found myself getting totally swept up in it and never wanting to leave. I just wish the workshops had all been a little longer because before I knew it, I had to say a very heartfelt goodbye. And in the playground at the very end of the day in the playground, Jason kindly presented me with something he’s been working on entitled My Story of the School. He’d even stuck the pages together to create a book format with a title page – complete with illustrations. I’ll really treasure it, but now I’m desperate to find out what happens next…