Bats!

Paper ephemera! This must be the hardest category of clutter to clear. Even when it's in book-form it won't keep forever and there's a time to let go. A foggy day is the perfect time for make a start.

It's now twenty years since my first children's poems were published. I have work in hundreds of children's anthologies. Almost every poem in print has brought with it a contributor's copy. Now even though there may be several poems in one book, that's still an awful lot of books to house. And paperbacks go brittle, spines crack, pages brown ... so, before they're all unreadable, I decided it was time to bite the bullet and find most of these books new homes - preferably with children in them, to enjoy the poems.

So if you like children's poetry, head to the Cancer Research shops of South Devon and you might hit lucky! Meanwhile, I've scanned my contributions for the sake of the lovely illustrations. Here's one of my favourites, illustrated by Jane Eccles and published 13 years ago. Have fun twisting your tongues, folks!