more on the August think.com festival

I now know why a hot seat is called a hot seat. John Marsden had to field 400 questions in just an hour from enthusiastic students from all over the world. I believe there will be a piece about it in The Age at some stage.

My masterclass on building a medieval town has just started. I have five students (masterclasses are limited to five), aged from about 10-13 and it looks as if they are all native English speakers. This is interesting, because I have a number of Thai students who drop by my site and tell me they love it. I wondered if maybe their teachers were friends of mine, so I checked and no, I don't know any of the teachers. My tiny Thai following is a mystery. Delightful, but a mystery.

We are all beginning to get questions from budding writers. Mine are in that strange dialect that one mostly finds on mobile phones. Brian Wainwright gets whole sentences with good spelling. Sally Odgers gets a lot of suggestions and queries about rhymes, mostly in fragmented sentences.

I have had so many stickies declaring love to my site that I have had to take a lot off. Volunteer work just brings the biggest ego awards.