Happy New
Year everyone! Here’s to 2022 being good for me and you!
I hope today’s
blog will cheer you up – and perhaps challenge you! – as we deal with another
Covid Christmas and beginning wading through January and February.
When I do writing
workshops with children in schools, I sometimes use these ideas with Y4 to Y6 (9-
to 11-year-olds.) I briefly explain about problem page articles in some magazines
and papers and the role of agony aunts and uncles, mentioning of course that in
using them people share their real concerns. I then mention that I’ve imagined
an agony aunt called Aunt Agatha to whom very daft people write very daft
letters and read some of the examples below. The initial task the children then
have to perform is to write a few letters of their own. The goal is for every
child to write at least one letter, though as you can imagine some children
write several. The letters I give as examples are deliberately short as one
intention is to encourage reluctant writers.
After the
children have all written at least one letter I would then ask some, or ideally
all, of the children to share one or two of their letters with the class. Then
comes the second task – and this is where you could come in too! I ask the
children to swap their letters with a partner (or if they prefer working in a
group to pass them around in a circle) and after reading some examples get them
now to take on the role of Aunt Agatha and answer the letters. The idea is for
Aunt Agatha to suggest a solution to the problems she’s received. The solutions
have to be as creative as the problems and in most cases dafter. I therefore
challenge you to write a solution or two to some of the problems below! Though
of course if you want to challenge the rest of us with some letters to Aunt
Agatha as well that’s fine! Good luck!
The children
tend to love the daft names the letters come from by the way. If they have a
challenge thinking of a silly name themselves I encourage them to use the first
name of one of their friends, which usually results in a giggle or two, and
then think of anything they would find in their kitchen.
|
Dear
Aunt Agatha, I keep imagining I’m a forest. I’m
terrified of lumberjacks coming to chop bits of me down and float me down
Canadian rivers. I know it’s crazy, especially because I live in a flat in
the middle of Tim Applecrumble |
Dear Aunt Agatha, Every eighth word I xmflspil is complete nonsense! As you can see wmcdez from this letter. Can you suggest a jtabumif to my problem? It’s so embarrassing, I pwzhmel to only talk in sentences seven words taznejeb. Yours sincerely, Parminder Gardenhose |
|
Dear
Aunt Agatha, HELP! Yours, Amanda Brief |
Dear Aunt Agatha, Please help me. I keep emptying bowls of custard all over policemen. I don’t know why. Since it’s such a stupid thing to do there isn’t actually a law against it. So instead of putting me in prison, the police keep making me clean their dirty helmets and uniforms. So I also need to know how to get custard stains out of hats. Yours sincerely, Paul Cottagepie |
|
Dear
Aunt Agatha, I want to coat the whole world in
chocolate. I’ve tried starting with my garden and house. As you can imagine
I’ve had several problems. When it gets hot the chocolate melts away. When it
rains it washes away. Also I’ve spent every penny I earn on chocolate. Some
of my friends have told me I’m mad to do this. Am I crazy or are they? Yours sincerely, Adil Tomatopaste |
Dear Aunt Agatha, Please help me. I want to eat key-rings all day long! I’m now so full of metal rings I rattle when I roll over in bed. Also my stomach now picks up Radio 2. This keeps me up all night and on top of that it’s terrible! Yours sincerely, Hans Kitchendrawer |
|
Dear
Aunt Agatha, Please help me! I’m sure my garden is
full of alien cabbages. How do you tell the difference between an alien
cabbage and a real one? I’m sure that if I eat an alien cabbage I’ll turn
into a spoon. Yours sincerely, Tracey Vanillayogurt |
Dear Aunt Agatha, An incredible and frightening thing has just happened to me! Without any warning at all, my right ear crawled into my head, across my head and joined up to my left ear. Then my ears flew off as though they were a butterfly! Has this ever happened to one of your
many readers before? What can I do to get my ears back? Yours sincerely, Callum Longbow |
Dear Aunt Agatha,
I
think my fridge has fallen in love with me. Whenever other people go near it or
open it, it just behaves, well operates, normally. But when I go anywhere near
it all the lights inside and outside it start flashing madly.
If
I should open the door to look and see what’s inside, somehow – even though I’m
holding the door firmly - the door manages to close around my neck and the rubber seal
takes on the form of several lips and kisses me. Meanwhile all the shelves
rattle and the lid of the butter container opens and shuts frantically.
When
I finally manage to prise myself away from my frenzied refrigerator, it
switches off and doesn’t come on again for fifteen minutes.
This
experience is so exasperating, exhausting and embarrassing, I now have to ask
the rest of the family to get things out of the fridge for me.
Have
you got any suggestions about how we can deal with this warm-hearted fridge?
Yours
sincerely,
Andrew
Coathanger
Dear Aunt Agatha,
Please
help me. I am an alien from the planet Sponge Ball IIa. I wish to make contact
with the human race and my research has shown that you seem to be a
spokesperson for most of humanity. So would you mind publishing my letter to
you in your excellent periodical, which I believe is entitled “Hi Fab Tit-bits
of Inane Gossip”. Your readers will then be able to know about my imminent
arrival as the elected ambassador to Earth of my planet. Please let your
readers know that they therefore need not be alarmed when a spaceship the shape
of a gigantic handbag lands in the
My
race has evolved independently of the need of appliances. So one of my limbs
looks like a frying pan, another a mobile phone, another a lap-top computer and
another a toilet brush. I have a further thirty-eight limbs but I’ll let them
be a surprise! I look forward to meeting as many of you as possible before
long!
Get
ready for a big splash!
Yours
sincerely,
Tarquin
V.X.II/c/a Smith
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