The Truth About Lies
Page 21
The MA Writing for Young People at Bath Spa got me writing after all these years of only dreaming about it. Big thanks to those who tutored me – Julia Green, Steve Voake, Janine Amos, John McLay, Elen Caldecott and David Almond. Thanks to Marcus Sedgwick who gave me a confidence boost when I needed it. The MA leads you into a mutually supportive alumni and I am forever bound with my super-talented MA workshop gang – Mel, Wendy, Sarah, Jennifer, Jas, Miranda, Charlotte and Sam M. You know who your writing buddies really are when you make them read your first draft so massive thanks to Ele, Laura, Emma, Wendy and Christine. And thanks for all the support from the South-West SCBWIs and the Teaspooners.
Big thank you to all those people who’ve let me cross-examine them on subjects ranging from pharmacology to shotguns. And to Dr Josh P. Davis for reading the draft to reassure me that I knew my amygdala from my hippocampus.
On a personal note, thanks to the caring folk at the Royal United Hospital in Bath who were busy patching me up when I’d hoped to be putting the finishing touches to the book. And to the army of brilliant friends who wheeled me around and kept me supplied with chocolate.
Lastly to my family. So sad that neither my parents nor my big brother are around to share the moment, but to Tricia and Pete, my lifetime support network; thank you.
Thanks to my boys, James and Ally, who inspire and encourage in equal measure. Ally with his amazing memory is my research guru. And lastly to my husband Dolf who has supported me unconditionally and always knows where to stick an apostrophe.
Never forget a face?
Like Callum and Jess, I have an aptitude for recognizing faces and I’ve been part of a super-recognizer research programme. Luckily Dr Josh P. Davis at the University of Greenwich is nothing like Professor Coleman and the research has been a pleasure for a memory geek like me.
So I’ve been looking at photos of faces, and then picking out that person from a group of facial images. Sounds easy, but it gets progressively harder when they’re wearing a hat or glasses or seen from a different angle or the photo is blurry and pixelated, like a terrible CCTV image. I’m instinctively checking out the jawline, dimples, hairline, the position of the eyes, the shape of the earlobes. I seem to find the tests with faces easier than the ones with objects. I’m also part of a family study with my children looking at whether good facial recognition runs in families and if there’s a correlation with shyness. Are introverts better at recognizing than extroverts?
The Met Police in London really does have a super-recognizer unit who have a natural talent, way beyond my capabilities, for recognizing faces. They’re particularly useful for crowd events like sports matches and concerts where the mass of people makes it more difficult for CCTV and software to pick up known troublemakers. Whether humans will outstrip technology for much longer remains to be seen.
So how good are you at remembering faces? Do you easily spot minor actors in their latest TV show? Do you recognize on the street people you’ve only briefly met before?
You can test yourself here to see if you too have what it takes:
https://tinyurl.com/yc575sdh
About the Author
Tracy Darnton graduated with Distinction from the Bath Spa MA Writing for Young People. She originally studied law at Cambridge and has worked as a solicitor and law lecturer. Tracy won the Stripes YA Short Story Prize in 2016, run in partnership with The Bookseller’s YA Book Prize, which led to inclusion in the I’ll Be Home for Christmas YA anthology.
Tracy lives in Bath with her husband and two sons. @TracyDarnton
Copyright
STRIPES PUBLISHING
An imprint of The Little Tiger Group
1 Coda Studios, 189 Munster Road,
London SW6 6AW
First published as an ebook by Stripes Publishing in 2018.
Text copyright © Tracy Darnton, 2018
Cover copyright © Stripes Publishing, 2018
eISBN: 978–1–84715–995–3
The right of Tracy Darnton to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
All rights reserved.
Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any forms, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publishers or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available
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