Emily Gale

Maybe It’s Because I’m A Londoner…

Very shortly, I will be leaving for this place:

But if I were not, I’d be heading to this place:

Because on Monday 28th June at 5.45pm, the fabulous bookshop Tales On Moon Lane are hosting a teen fiction event at Dulwich Library. Check out the line-up:

Luisa Plaja, author of Split By A Kiss, Extreme Kissing, and Swapped By A Kiss (and some other top secret books – Luisa is prolific, in fact she’s my personal Queen of Teen).

Keris Stainton, author of the recently published Della Says: OMG (which has had all manner of superb reviews) and such a fabulous blogger that I’d call her my inspiration for starting Doing The Compossible a few years ago.

Simmone Howell, author of Everything Beautiful and Notes From The Teenage Underground, who is so effortlessly cool and talented and is a fellow resident of Melbourne (though didn’t require the rigorous medical or madness-inducing forms that I had to suffer to get here…).

Sarra Manning, author of Nobody’s Girl and Let’s Get Lost and more besides, and if Wikipedia is telling the whole truth and nothing but the truth she also went to the same uni and did the same degree as me…hmm, maybe I should have gone to a few more lectures after all…

I’ve been lucky enough to meet 75% of this line-up already (one of the perks of the job…we need perks, they don’t pay us much y’know) and give you my personal solid-gold 5-year warranty guarantee that this event is going to be enormous fun and an inspiration. Or your money back. (The event is free but places are limited so call Tales on Moon Lane on 0207 274 5759, email them on info@talesonmoonlane.co.uk or pop into the shop or Dulwich Library.)

The Sweetest Thing

At Sticky Fingers, Tara Cain is hosting a Gallery of photos and the theme this week is Motherhood. I’m not always one to join in, but this time I wanted to. First I chose a very meaningful shot of the first moment we introduced our freshly delivered (on the living room floor) son to our daughter (who had slept through the whole thing despite having been an atrocious sleeper for the two years beforehand). It says a lot about motherhood but it’s not what I want to say about motherhood on this particular day.

Today I want to say: you don’t have to try very hard to find joy. This is the shot that sums it up. There is joy in my son’s face as he blows out the third and final candle, and there is the thrill of seeing him happy in my face, but what I really want to say (to myself, mainly, as you may have figured this out yonks ago) is: look at the cake. It’s from a supermarket and has plastic dinosaurs stuck in it and took me thirty seconds to prepare with a stressed-out factor of nil. That’s not my usual style. I have a reputation for creating complicated novelty cakes from scratch – pirates, mermaids, castles, dinosaurs, guitars – and that reputation includes yelling at people (my children) during baking and construction: “Don’t come anywhere near me or speak to me or touch me or even think about me while I’m doing this, it’s VERY IMPORTANT”. Cakes are just the start of how stressed out I am able to get about parenting, so this photo is my big fat chocolate-covered reminder that love is all you need.