The Adventures of Dysfunctional Dan

I recently read Neil Gaiman’s collection of non-fiction,  The View From the Cheap Seats,  and one of the many brilliant articles in it was sharing memories of four bookshops. This is my version of that. 1 The Ashley Bookshop was the place I demanded my parents take me at the weekend when I was very young. Located in Boscombe (Bournemouth) it was an unusual place. My memories of it are fairly limited. I couldn’t tell you for example if it sold new or second hand books. I do know though that in a former life it was a church but the pews had been removed and replaced with long rows of bookshelves. My main goal in visiting was to buy a  Blackberry Farm  book. They were stories of anthropomorphised animals on the titular farm. I would read the list of titles in the series on the back of the books over and over again and be hugely satisfied when I filled in a gap. Sadly at some point the bookshop closed down and I never had the opportunity to look for more grow...

I’ve popped up a day early because today is World Blood Donor Day. It’s a cause that’s very important to me and I’ve donated blood since I started university six years ago. Most people are horrified at the thought of giving blood. The very idea of a needle being stuck into your arm and blood flowing out of it is not pleasant. Even as a regular blood donor I can’t say it’s pleasant. I find the actual process of giving blood uncomfortable and still can’t actually bring myself to look at my arm when it’s happening. Physically though, it’s not really that bad. There’s a slight pain but it’s nothing compared to standing on a plug for example. There’s a lot of things which are worse. There is a reasonable chance that you’ve had a blood test or at least an injection before. It was probably unpleasant but the vast majority of people will cope with it OK. Giving blood is the same and the more you do it the more you get used to it. I don’t feel I have very much to offer to the world. I do...

The wilderness months are over. I’m back. I lost my blogging inspiration back in the latter stages of 2015 and this blog was neglected. It evens turns out some people miss it. But suddenly it’s late spring of 2016 and I want to write. If this blog was a TV show (an unsettling thought), this is the start of a new season after a hiatus. Like a new TV show season, there is a slight change of direction. It’ll still be ostensibly the same but I’m thinking that the blog will focus less on what I’ve been doing and more on my opinions on things. On which note, time to talk about what I’ve been doing. For a start, I’ve written a novel. An actual 50,000 and a bit word story that you can actually download as an eBook anywhere in the world. I still find it a little odd that I can actually say that. I wrote a short post about the book and how you can get it  here . I am still in the same job, a teaching assistant working with children who have autism. If anything it’s more fulfilling tha...