There will be dancing

I'm not very good at English and I get bored with reading if it's too difficult. I've never read any proper literature; it was never something that I was in to as a youngster and I guess it's a difficult thing to get into the habit of. I was more used to reading text books I suppose, and with my studies, I had little time for reading as a leisure activity.

As a child, I was lazy. I shared a bedroom with my sister and she used to read stories to me. She was very good at this and anything that meant that I didn't have to read was good in my book (no pun intended). I think the problems started with how I was taught to read. There was this weird phonetic alphabet called ITA that schools experimented with in the early-mid seventies. I picked this up really quickly, but like many children, found the transition to proper reading very difficult and quite confusing.

Laziness and studying had the consequence of me only really enjoying easy books to read once I started to pick up the odd work of fiction when I was in my twenties. I did the Stephen King thing and the usualy horror writers, moving on to thrillers and the like. But there are only so many axings a person can take, especially when they're going slightly mental as I'd found myself going a few years back. This was when I discovered the Harry Potters (three had been published at the time). I liked the way the books just told a story while capturing the imagination. But they were a doddle to read.

It was during this period that I discovered two other children's fiction writers: Robin Jarvis and Phillip Pullman. Robin Jarvis wrote, amongst others, a trilogy of Wyrd Museum books. I enjoyed these immensely. One of the characters is a barm pot old woman from the beginning of time. She and her two sisters work to weave the threads of fate of man, but are old and frail when we meet them. The youngest of the three was always obsessed with grand parties and flirting with suitors. She sent out invitations to imaginary guests for parties that would never happen. The invitations would promise "There will be dancing", but the poor nutter would end up walzing round the ballroom on her own.

Philip Pullman is perhaps most famous for his trilogy His Dark Materials - an absolute masterpiece. However, he also wrote another successful series of completely different stories based on the trials, tribulations and adventures of Sally Lockhart. Viewers of the BBC's Dr Who might be interested to know that Billie Piper, who plays the Doctor's assistant Rose, will be playing Sally Lockhart in a new drama series that has been commissioned by the Beeb.

So, those of you who read this blog and mutter "Tsk, Tina is right crap at English", I hope this rather lame post goes some way to explaining why: I couldn't read until I was about 14 and I never read any fiction till I was 20; to this day I only read kids' books. Still no excuse for poor spelling and grammar, but it's a fucking blog, not the Booker friggin' prize.