The Fish who had Funny Eyes, and Other Stories...

My dad is moving house soon, so I've been looking through numerous boxes of old things. Old books, letters, UCAS forms, photos, beady-eyed cuddly animals, and so many memories... I'll be walking around in a little cloud of nostalgia for weeks! In between all the rummaging and amongst the old toys, I found one of the first stories I ever wrote:

The Fish who had Funny Eyes

Once a fish gave someone a fright, and she ran away. The girl told her dad and he came down the path to the pond. "Help!" yelled her dad, and they both ran away back up the path.

Her dad told her mum, and they all walked down the path to the pond. "Help!" yelled mum, "let's go!" So they ran back up the path and into Granny's house.

Hufflepuff Love - Sorted This Way

Image by Jmh2o (Wikimedia Commons)

I just found something awesome I'd like to share - this Hufflepuff Pride Video on YouTube.

I’m a huge fan of Harry Potter (books and films), but there has always been something about the world of Hogwarts that I find slightly disturbing. And that’s the house rivalry. Splitting students into houses is pretty common in British schools (I’m not sure if this happens in other countries so much?), but this is clearly not a good idea where wizards are concerned. House rivalry is supposed to encourage healthy competition and working in teams, but when ‘competition’ involves the power to blow things up, perhaps the wisdom of this needs reconsidering. Particularly when the school decides to give each house its own common room in what seems like an attempt to actively discourage the different houses from socializing after school hours. Why this pointless factionalising wasn’t trashed after the whole Voldemort thing is beyond me. Why exactly do they want to be encouraging more rivalry and prejudice in the wizarding world? And why oh why at the end of the seventh book is Harry Potter encouraging his own child to engage in it? After everything he’s seen?