Annette Holland

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@mariwriter @Paulodaburka @CriFiLover Great book. When is the next Frankie Oliver coming out though? I'm impatient

What a lovely surprise to find #HerSistersKiller included in @Paulodaburka’s top five books of 2025. Thank you so much Paul and @CriFiLover. What a great way to end the year! Happy holidays all.

@jan_murray You felt unsafe and called the police . That's what they are for. Noone should feel unsafe in a hotel and it should be part of reception's role to keep guests safe. You did not overreact!

A few years ago, I had a terrifying experience while staying alone in a hotel. At 6am, I was jolted awake by a man trying to get into my room - throwing his weight against the door again and again. I couldn’t reach reception, so I called the police. The call handler stayed on the line, coached me through what to say to get him to leave. Then called hotel reception staff to send help (they were useless) - and rang back later to check I was okay. But hotel staff seemed irritated by the police involvement. When I checked out, they told me it was “just a drunk man" who said he'd got the wrong room. At 6am in the morning. A drunk man who may well have intended to attack or r*pe a woman. Later, a male colleague said he felt I’d overreacted by calling the police. At times, I've wondered if he was right. Today, a friend has told me she’s been diagnosed with PTSD - after a similar incident in a hotel. Only her man stood outside her hotel room m*sturb*ting. He’d seen her earlier that night and knew she was alone. She tried to call reception - but the number on the keycard was wrong. The website too. Like me, she felt trapped in her room - so she called the police. They were brilliant - arrived quickly and arrested him. But the hotel staff barely apologised. The council housing the man in the hotel (despite his criminal record) didn’t seem to care either. Turns out there was no CCTV in the corridors either. And here’s the thing that stays with me: I was made to feel like I’d overreacted. But what I feared - the very thing women are so often told we’re imagining - happened to someone else. Because of course, it does.

@RogersHistory Life can go horribly wrong sometimes through no fault of our own(as many people know) so well done for being so open and honest. For what it's worth I always agree with your views and ideas as they make sense.

In 2019, I shared some things via DM with Paul Garvey. I didn’t know him well, I didn’t know who he was. I shared things about my life in those DMs, how things were going wrong for me at the time. Yes - I took an international leadership job in a school that was in a terrible place. 50% of the staff left in the time I was there and I was part of that. There were protests. I wasn’t able to teach in the last half term due to this and the changes that needed to be made and was confined to working in a back office before leaving with no job to go to. I don’t regret any of that apart from the impact on my own health as i stood up for my own values and ideas of professionalism - the stuff going on in this school was something else and needed a big turn around. At the same time, that same year, an ex split up with me and it truly wrecked me for a long while. So yeah, I’m an open person but this stuff doesn’t make me a failure and I’m ashamed of none of it - it was a super tough time. I’ve had a few. Just be aware everyone, anything you have said to this guy in DMs isn’t private and at any time he will share it.

@tombennett71 I'm really lucky as I work in a Trust where poor behaviour is not tolerated and staff are supported and able to just get on and teach. Pupils are well supported and provided with uniform and food and any other barriers to learning.

I see a lot of schools, and in many of them behaviour is below what it could and should be. Very often I see some of the most common strategic mistakes in these schools: 1. Vague expectations of behaviour 2. No staff training in implementing the school behaviour policy 3. A belief that teachers should ‘own’ the behaviour (which usually means in essence that they shouldn’t bother anyone else with it) 4. Gaseous boundaries that can be crossed without consequence Inconsistent consequences 5. An emphasis on restorative and purely therapeutic techniques over clear routines Some of these strategic errors are believed to be virtues, eg ‘we believe that children must only behave because they want to, because extrinsic motivators are immoral.’ A lot of these mistakes stem from a Progressive view of the child, and how they behave in classrooms. 1. Children are naturally inclined to be good 2. Children are naturally curious about school work 3. Children will learn by themselves how to behave if we let them 4. Children will do things correctly as long as we ask them nicely These are lovely but deeply flawed premises. Basing your institutional system of behaviour on these will lead to sub-optimal outcomes, very often disastrously so. And when they don’t work, the most common reason cited for why is an appeal to society: these kids are poor, these kids are disadvantaged, what can you expect from kids like this? Too rarely do people reflect that it may be the strategies of the school, powered by the assumptions of helplessness mentioned above this sentence, that are the major factors in their outcomes. Demographic disadvantage is a powerful thing, but it is not destiny, and I’ve seen hundreds of schools ignore the temptation to settle for less, and build cultures where everyone flourishes, not just the fortunate recipients of privilege.

@TrevorWoodWrite @QuercusBooks @northern_crime Enjoyed this book and can't wait for the sequel

The Silent Killer is available for 99p for just one more week. Grab it now, just in time for the sequel hitting the bookshops! amazon.co.uk/Silent-Killer-… @QuercusBooks @northern_crime

@mariwriter @thetimes @OrionDeals Loved this book. Couldn't wait to read it as I was so invested in the characters and I really wanted and hoped to see closure.

If you read on a #Kindle, the 99p ebook deal for Her Sister’s Killer is due to end on June 30th. Some say it’s my best yet.. ‘The denouement, when it eventually arrives, is satisfying and shocking’ say @thetimes. Grab it while you can. brnw.ch/21wTyvY @OrionDeals

@TrevorWoodWrite @QuercusBooks Can't wait

@TrevorWoodWrite @QuercusBooks Just finished this book and really enjoyed it. Some great characters I would like to see again and obviously I am desperate to know what happened to Laura. Jack is a good character and somewhat quirky. Plenty of twists and turns to keep your interest.

Always lovely to see such a great response to a new series! Jack Parker will be back in July in The Inside Man @QuercusBooks

@GylesB1 I'm jealous

The view from right here right now …

@greg_ashman Yes it was a thing. I hated walking through that.

When I was a child and we went to the swimming pool I used to have to walk through a shallow pool of disinfectant or something and I’ve mentioned this to my family and they don’t believe me. Was this a thing?

@Joannechocolat So sorry to hear of your father's passing. He taught me French and German at Barnsley sixth form college in 84 to 86. He was a great character. He had so much patience. I went on to study languages at uni and am now a French and German teacher myself.

Thank you so much, all of you, for your kind words and good wishes. There are too many for me to answer them all personally, but know that I do see them, and appreciate them all...

@stephaniemain2 Loved it. In cookery lessons we made a cheesecake base and used this as the filling.

Did you like or hate this stuff? I loved it 😍

@AnnalisaB I still remember the music, really menacing. So scary

@DeputyGrocott A seagull in a MFL lesson,MFL teacher has a bit of a bird phobia.

I see your ‘wasp in the classroom’ and I raise you ‘a spider in assembly’.

@harriet_tyce @mariwriter @rutherfordbooks @ForumBooks Really entertaining talk this evening and it's given me lots of ideas for new reading material.

@ColinSpenc4257 Yes. They were grim!

Who Remembers.

@harriet_tyce Looking forward to meeting you all in Whitley bay tomorrow evening.

@Matt_Pinner Oh yes

Carrot Cake… Yes or No? 🤔

@ColinSpenc4257 Yes it cured everything you could think of

Who Remembers.