Where is February, I ask. It has been a whirlwind of activities in London and rest of England, armed with a bag of books and props, often looking like a bag lady on National Rail Service. And it was mostly fun even when rain poured through dark skies and sleep was a rare commodity.
This February has been extra special – having been invited to the prestigious Imagine Festival at Southbank to run workshops and to the Chester festival of half-term fun and to the South London’s favourite bookstore Tales on Moon Lane’s half-term festivities. Half-term ended with wonderful storytelling at Discover Stratford.
World Book Day ran almost back to back with Half-term across England and my story train barely stopped between the two. I was on the move, constantly checking my orange National Rail tickets and printed maps just in case my phone runs out of juice. Between the boroughs of London, I moved from East to West to North to South, testing TFL’s quality of service.
When I was bereft of sleep and missing home-cooked dinners, there is one thing that kept me going. My engine was fully powered by the stories I tell and the stories the children were inspired to write. We made up wonderful stories with the children and in some schools we told them and in some we wrote them down. Either way, there was no limit to their imagination. That’s the primary reason I go into schools and do events – to fire up the imagination of both children and parents alike and at the same time, be absolutely enthralled by the stories the children create.
From Greek gods to aliens, pigs to fishes, our stories were full of adventures, mishaps, journeys and cartloads of fun. Here are a few stories children jotted down during the workshops.
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It all started with Just Books, Anna Nagar. I made friends with the fabulous folks from Just Books when I was in India couple of years ago and they kindly invited me to their book festival this year. 
again. 
That’s a lot of early mornings, ready and bright to meet the world. Normally I get up really early but I couldn’t even let my invisible friend see me until noon – I walk around in my pjs, with no makeup, hair pinned up until hunger knocks on the inner stomach walls and remind me I have to feed the writing machine. 
Or if it is a day I have to go to a day job, my talking clock reminds me – IT IS LATE and I rush into work – hopefully remembering to take off my pjs and put on something more sensible and grown-up-ish looking. 
And I don’t even have to change out of my pj. Just change the top to something more respectable. I’m kidding. I do dress up before I meet impressionable young minds and show them authors are really grownup people. Most of the time I fail miserably.
I was almost done, we had question time and the first question was – How do you write a story? How do you answer that?
So, to prove that I do have a self-destruct button, I have two more Skype sessions with India. 
came to life when we had to mimic a scene without talking and we had a hilarious time doing it. And Jan called me Born to be a Clown! Really? Me?
There you go – now you can. We planned the workshop for KS2 where we could bring the book into the schools, teach children how to create and bring a character to life, read and speak dialogue and match it with their body language too.
On this 7th day of May in the year 2015, we launched the workshops.
Your story should be between 400 and 
This is my first year on the school visit circuit and I was fully booked up for the peak season in the book world – the World Book Day events in schools.
I met the little ones in Reception and told them stories about Gola the yak and Farmer Falgu. 
They joined in the songs and played musical instruments with me. We made up a story about Father Christmas having to visit the under-sea to deliver presents to a shark even though he was attacked by electric eels. We wrote riddles together and made up tall tales.
They had used all the resources I had provided for the books and we had a wonderful assembly where the signed copies were given away. 
We had three teachers in Monega Primary who wrote Tall Tales along with their class and bravely read them out. 
I hope the children and teachers were as inspired as I was meeting them. Meeting your readers is so much more fun when they are in big groups seated around you, vying for your attention so you could read their stories. A writer turned into a reader and readers turned into writers. The Big Book Swap.