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Sports

Our ContiReporter Ailsa – Video Report from U17 Championship

Check out our ContiReporter’s fantastic video report from the Women’s U17 Championship, and tomorrow you can read her final report from the last day of her trip.

If you missed part one and two, you can catch up now!

Ailsa went to the Women’s U17 Championship thanks to the kind support of Continental UK.

Home, Health & Style, Popular

A Controlling Friendship – A Bully By Another Name

Have you ever had a friend who made you feel bad? Maybe your friend was mean to you sometimes, and confused you. Or she (or he) would ignore you because you had done something wrong.

We all fall out with our friends on occasion, even us adults. It is a normal part of life.

When the friendship is one-sided then it is a different story. Then we might say it is a ‘controlling friendship’.

Science, Nature and Tech, Written By You

What Is a Raspberry Pi… and How Does it Work?

You may have heard of a Raspberry Pi – a credit card sized computer that plugs into your keyboard and monitor – but exactly what IS a Raspberry Pi, how does it work and what can you do with it?

12 year old Elspeth takes a closer look at the mini-computer and explains how even young kids can use it to learn how computers work and how to code.

Science, Nature and Tech

CURIOUS CREATURES 2 – The Stag Beetle

The strangest creatures are, to me,

The ones I love the best.

The creepy, crawly and the odd

Are cooler than the rest…

These magnificent beasties are the armoured vehicles of the insect population and the largest terrestrial-dwelling beetles in the UK. Their common name is a reference – unsurprisingly – to their antler-shaped “mandibles” or jaws, which they use to fight over territory, but not, perhaps surprisingly, to win the respect of female Stag Beetles..!

These Curious Creatures have intrigued me ever since I found an expired female stag beetle (see below ) in a south-west France many years ago. I drew it next to a blackbird’s feather, captivated by the different tones of black, the textural contrasts and inky depths of colour. I found it – and still find them all as a species – fascinating and beautiful, particularly the males, with their extraordinary maroon-red mandibles.

Art & History

Falconry and the Tudors

When you write a book that is set in a particular period of history, it is important to get the details correct. This means that writers of historical fiction have to do a lot of research.

The first scene of Katharine Edgar’s novel, Five Wounds takes place on a hillside in sixteenth century England, where her heroine, Nan, is hoping to see her young merlin falcon make its first kill. Katharine had find out all about falconry and the Tudors – the keeping and training of falcons, and other birds of prey.

When I showed the first scene of Five Wounds to some writing friends, some of them asked a question I wasn’t expecting. ‘How rich is Nan’s family? They live in a big house so why does she need to hunt for food?’

Good question!