Privacy

Reading the site

Just reading sets no cookies and needs no account. To see which pages are read, the site keeps a page view for each visit: the page, the page you came from if your browser says, the kind of browser, and a scrambled version of your internet address that cannot be turned back into it. That is used to count readers, and for nothing else. There are no advertising networks, no Google Analytics and no Facebook pixel here.

If you use the search box, the words you search for are kept, with how many results they found and the same scrambled address, so I can see what people look for and do not find. Page views and searches are deleted after about thirteen months.

To stop anybody guessing at things by machine, the site also notes the scrambled address for a short while when somebody tries an order code, a discount code, a checkout, a search or a newsletter signup. Those notes are cleared after about a day, apart from wrong order codes, which are kept for a month.

Buying a book or booking a workshop or session

To send you a book, a seat or a session I need your name, email address and mobile number, and for a parcel a postal address. These are kept with the order, as the record of the sale, and used to post the book, send the confirmation and answer any question about it. For a workshop or a one to one session, anything you tell me about your child and any questions you type are kept with the booking so I can prepare.

Payment is taken by Razorpay (opens in a new tab). Your card number, PIN or password never reach me. Razorpay tells the site whether the payment succeeded or why it failed, how you paid (card, UPI, net banking or wallet) and an identifier for it: for UPI the UPI ID you paid from, for a card its network and last four digits, otherwise the bank or wallet. Those are kept with the order. The site raises an invoice for each sale, with your name and address on it, and keeps it with the order. A checkout sets one cookie so the site can tell your payment apart from anybody else’s; it is gone when you close the browser.

A recording is shared with you through Google Drive, with the Google account whose email address you give at checkout (you can name another from your order page). It then opens for that account only. Google Drive shows everybody who can open a file the names and email addresses of the others who can, so other buyers of the same recording can see that you bought it. If you would rather they did not, do not buy a recording; the live workshops and the books carry no such list.

Email from the site

The site’s emails (order confirmations, the newsletter) are sent through ZeptoMail, a mail service run by Zoho. For each one the site keeps the address it went to, the subject, and whether ZeptoMail reported it delivered or bounced, so I can tell when a confirmation has not reached you.

The newsletter

Signing up stores your email address, which form you used and the scrambled internet address it came from. You get a welcome email straight away, and it and every email after it carry an unsubscribe link that works at once, so if somebody typed your address without asking you, that link is how you leave. Your address is never sold, shared or given to anybody else. If you leave the list a note is kept that you did, so that a mistake cannot quietly put you back on it.

Comments on the journal

A comment is shown to everyone under the post, with the name you give (or "Anonymous" if you give none) and the time you posted it. No email address is asked for. The site also keeps the scrambled internet address it came from, never shown, only to stop one machine posting dozens. If you would like a comment of yours taken down, write to me with the post and roughly when, and I will remove it.

Amazon links

The resources page, and now and then a journal entry, link to books on Amazon. Those are affiliate links: as an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. It costs you nothing extra. Once you follow one you are on Amazon’s site, under Amazon’s privacy notice (opens in a new tab), and Amazon may set its own cookies to record that you came from here. I am shown only totals, never who bought what.

Instagram

On some of my Instagram posts I ask you to comment a word to be sent a link. When you do, a small program of my own, connected to my account through Meta’s Instagram API, reads the public comments on that post and sends you one direct message from my account with the link in it. That is all it does: it never messages anybody who did not comment, and it sends one message per comment. To know it has answered you, and never answer twice, it keeps the comment, the time the message went, and, when Instagram passes it back, the number Instagram gives your account for messages from mine; if you tap the button in that message, it notes the tap so the link is sent once. Instagram does not normally tell it your username. It does not see your profile, your other posts or your messages to anybody else.

To have that record deleted, write to me with your Instagram username and the post you commented on, and I will remove it. Meta’s own rules for what a connected app may do are in Instagram’s privacy policy (opens in a new tab).

Writing to me

If you email me, I keep the email, the way anybody does. I do not add you to any list because you wrote.

Your choices

You can ask me what I hold about you, ask me to correct it, or ask me to delete it, and I will, apart from the record of a sale I am required to keep. The unsubscribe link handles the newsletter by itself. For anything else, write to me.

Last changed 31 October 2026.