looking for guinea pigs

True, the small furry rodent in the picture is a squirrel, not a guinea pig, but surely that further justifies the post title, which says I’m looking for guinea pigs.

I need them because I’ve just published an online video course – The Essential Poet’s Toolbox for Readers and Writers – on Udemy and I need some students. (If you don’t know about Udemy, it’s got lots of interesting courses in all sorts of areas from lifestyle to business to technical, some free, some not. You need to create a user account, but once you’ve signed up for a course you have access to the content for ever without paying any more.)

The Essential Poet’s Toolbox for Readers and Writers takes a non-technical look at modern poetry, grouping the tools into five main areas: metre, form, rhyme, layout, and sound. It’s gone on sale at £35 (for 2.5 hours of video lessons) but I’m giving away discount coupons.
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out on a limb

I was wondering: do adults still ask small children what they want to be when they grow up? And if they do, what are the popular answers?

When I was a little girl, boys still wanted to be train drivers and girls wanted to be ballet dancers. True, one of my brother’s friends was reported to have said he wanted “to be a computer”, but then, we’d always thought he was a bit odd.
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august

Tomorrow is the first day of August and we’re well into the period corresponding to the astrological sign of Leo. So I’m posting a photo of this rather lovely – and, I think, benignly superior and suitably august – lion, which I found in one of the local churches.
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bobcat

Well, no, not a bobcat, a tricolour cat.

Perhaps a tortoiseshell, or perhaps a calico; it probably depends on which side of the Atlantic you live. And if you live in Spain, you might call it a gato mariposa – a butterfly.
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colours & sounds

English summers bring such a mixture of weather and colours. I admired this cousin to the dandelion not just for its cheerful yellow sunlike flowers, but also for its clear determination to hold tight and grow despite the odds.

This borage flower had rather more water and soil to aid its growth, and from the look of the sky, there was more water to come.
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