Who, What, Where, When, How - and WhY?!
Who am I?
Good question! I am, and have been, many things: I'm a mum, a grandmother, a child of the 60s, an ex- teacher who fancied herself as a hippy, a singer, a listener, a talker, and I also write! The most important facet of ‘Who I am’ I’ll come to later.
Where was I?
I was born in West London and have lived in Yorkshire, Lancashire, the Isle of Wight, Surrey, Essex and South East London, picking up accents and dialect words all the way. I’m now in the wonderful West Country, and having moved house about 18 times in all, am settled in my ‘forever’ home. (I hope!)
What was I?
I studied English (Language) and Theology and then did a Post-Grad Cert in Education at Leeds University. I taught Religious Education and sometimes English to 11-18s for several years in secondary modern, comprehensive and grammar schools in London and Essex. Although I loved teaching, the best part of school was writing and producing the presentations for ends-of-term.
Why?
My grandfather had been a theatre manager, with three of his daughters being very dramatic, two of them writing or producing or acting in plays most of their lives. The gene has lived on in some of their children, and in my case through to their grand- and great-grandchildren! I used to say that if I had my time over again, I would choose the theatre rather than theology, but back then there were no obvious opportunities. Oh the thrill of the pre-performance orchestra tune-up!
A Writer – When?
I started writing poetry and stories at six, and plays at 17. I learn best through writing things down, taking notes about everything, playing with titles or themes and starting stories (and sometimes finishing them!) I was very pleased recently to find out that students who use handwriting, and not screens and keyboards, learn faster and retain and recall better, through that very physicality. I also try to maintain and promote the practice of handwritten letters!
Very little of my writing has been published, apart from in school or uni magazines or local newsletters, but I did win First Prize in the Short Story category of my town’s first Literary Festival. There have been many rejection letters since!
Whatever jobs I had there was always some sort of writing going on in the background, as I am rarely happier than with a pen in my hand.
And many jobs have I had! I had to leave full-time teaching for health reasons but was able to do some part-time contracts or maternity cover as well as some supply teaching. I also taught English to Vietnamese Boat People, which was a salutary experience and opened my eyes to the injustices of the refugee system. After I had my children I trained as a Pre-School Playgroup supervisor and also continued with the Sunday School teaching and newsletter editing that I had begun as a teenager and had continued with wherever I lived, professional life allowing. Becoming a single parent, I was part of setting up and running an old people's residential complex next to the church, co-founded a parliamentary constituency core pressure group, coached, led and encouraged others in singing, reading, acting and dancing as part of worship, and co-founded and led a midweek 'church' for ladies.
After a very unpleasant divorce, a later and ill-advised second marriage led to my children and I having to move right across the country, leaving parents and friends many miles away. The next few years were very difficult, and very lonely, but I learned much about how ‘society’ and its organizations supposedly 'work'. There were a few good times, but all in all that period was quite damaging. The only good thing to come out of it was our new life in a beautiful county, in a coastal town full of creativity and culture. Although after nearly 30 years it still doesn't feel like 'home', I have no wish, nor need, to leave.
I had to become carer to my second husband and later to my widowed mother who’d joined us. I went back to college to study various topics with a view to a new career – Aromatherapy Massage, Business Studies, Interior Design, Counselling Skills, and I also started my own business, WordWright, letter-writing for small businesses who had neither time nor expertise to do it themselves. (This was in the days before the proliferation of such templates on the internet.) None of these came to anything for various reasons, but mainly lack of finance. My counselling tutor really wanted me to go on and do the degree, but single once more I couldn’t afford to. My interior design tutor wanted me to make that my career too. He thought my module on Colour was the best he’d read and said I should get it published! This course clarified for me why I always enjoyed poring over paint sample cards and dawdling through the decorating aisles in supermarkets. I need colour! Both parents had been talented artists, but their abilities skipped a generation with me. My mother’s dressmaking skills also evaded me, although I love and accumulate fabrics, try to sew, do patchwork, crochet granny squares for blankets for Armenian orphanages, and knit, sometimes. I’m just very slow at everything, except when it comes to writing!
On my own once more, my mother now in a Home and my children grown, I no longer qualified for any kind of benefit, so began working with Dorling Kindersley publishers, selling educational books and software to families and schools. When DK was taken over by a 'drill and kill' American company I joined another, smaller British business doing the same. When that in turn collapsed I did a ‘Return to Teaching’ course, foolishly believing it would open the door back to an enjoyable school life. Not able to go full-time at first, no part-time jobs available, and no longer any supply teaching either (it had all become in-house) I was just very relieved when this door was firmly shut (and also any windows!) The ‘educational’ system had changed so much, I did not want to be a part of it anymore and I still don’t. Not long after this I was head-hunted to become the Manager of a social club for older people, and when that came to an end I became Project Co-ordinator of a local, town-centre chaplaincy.
A writer – How?
Now, with a job, a house, my parents both gone, and my children nearby, I settled into my contented future: an interesting position, earning just enough to live on, time to write properly at last, happy at a growing church, at peace with being single once more and forever, and wondering about moving miles away to live nearer my best friend. God, however, had different plans for me! I met someone online and for five years had a social life again, sharing such interests as Harry Potter, CS Lewis, fantasy, humour, word-play, and long phone conversations. Then it was cinema-going, musical theatre, the RSC and the NT, the other NT (mainly the gardens) and finally – marriage! I no longer needed to work, and the plan was for him to continue his electronic design business, with a little help from me, and for me to write.
Marriage between two complex and heretofore self-sufficient individuals took time to work out! But we managed! As for the writing ... I almost died in 2016 and that and other things precluded, or rather, postponed it, until 2018 when I spent two years preparing and writing a modern Mystery Play to be performed along the sea-front of my town. Then Covid struck. After three years of social isolation we joined a new church where I began to be involved in drama again, sharing some old work, writing new, doing some narrating and even a little acting!
And what of Constance and Me? How it started and faltered and then burst forth you can find under the heading Books.
What else?
Similarly you can read in the next articles below about the singing that has meant so much to me all my life, and the drama!
Who am I - really?
Although I was born into a Christian family I did not realise the enormity and privilege of this until very many years later. At the time it just seemed normal and commonplace. I was very wrong! I was not a Christian because of this godly heritage any more than I was a car because I entered a garage! I was a young teen when I was ‘born again’ as a Christian, with no pressure from family or others, and I embarked on a wonderful life, becoming amongst other things very involved with church matters including Sunday School teaching and singing in the choir, as well as the secretarial work I seem to have been doing ever since!
‘Who I am’ as someone who has made Jesus Christ the centre of her life and her reason for living is the most vital thing about me – it’s my essence. It surpasses all other relationships, important though they be, and if I should ever be successful in the world’s eyes, it will surpass that too!
The hymn Take My Life has been significant since my early teens, especially these lines:
‘Take my voice, and let me sing / Always, only, for my King’ (I’ve never felt comfortable singing secular music.)
The words ‘Take my lips, and let them be / Filled with messages from Thee’ I understand slightly differently – I say ‘take my pen’. I think my aunt’s life was a good example of these in both her voice and her writing. I want to follow suit.
MORE ABOUT ME
My Life Dramatic
When we lived on the Isle of Wight, my mother's friends wanted me to be Cinderella in the seaside carnival. One side of my dress would be a pink ballgown, the other side, rags. My hair would be half ringlets and half scruffy. I just had to sit on a float. I was scared stiff by the idea and protested, and probably cried at the thought of being on public view. To their credit, nobody pressurised me. I was, after all, only three years old!
That shyness and self-consciousness stayed with me to greater or lesser degrees as I grew up. I didn't mind being on stage singing with others but I was never a soloist, or acted in a play. As a child I read well out loud, so was often asked to read or narrate in public. I can still remember the whole of the Nativity story (in the King James Version) that I had to recite from the side of the stage when I was about six. My mother, an experienced actress, had me stand at the top of our stairs while she encouraged me from the bottom to ‘project more!’
I wrote and produced my first play for my junior Sunday School class at 17. I and others wrote and performed audio sketches at university. It was when I joined Reflection Music in my 20s that I started to act with them a little, on stage and then on Radio London. Throughout my teaching career I wrote and produced presentations for ends-of-term.
Being at home with my young family in the 80s I occasionally performed at church in solo sketches, often humorous, and helped others to find the courage to read out loud, sing in public, even act and dance in worship. I choreographed a few ‘liturgical dances’ for us, and wrote and produced a few more dance-dramas and playlets. A friend and I started to write a radio serial which a group of us recorded. Some people found it promising, but the BBC did not! I hope to turn it into a novel at some point.
People used to say I had a good telephone voice (I assured them it wasn't put on) and suggested I try and get voiceover work. My audition tape was rejected as they said I had a sibilant 's' (which didn't seem to worry anyone about Toyah Wilcox!) I was often likened to a certain late-night radio presenter, and one or two gentleman acquaintances suggested I do midnight radio, or worse! The 1990s were dramatic enough, thank you.
In the 2000s I again sang and acted in church productions; our drama group was well used and we even went to prison. Although I had watched my mother act in plays throughout my life, it was sad that she was never able to see me continue the family tradition in my small way.
By the 2010s I preferred to return to directing, although I did take part from time to time in a few small plays I wrote. By now I had the self-confidence to get up on stage and be in a 'proper' play, but unfortunately, arthritis has precluded the actual 'getting up' on it.
In 2018 God gave me a vision for a modern Mystery Play to be performed along the seafront of my town. After two years of writing and preparing for Vision2020 to happen in the summer of that year, we started rehearsing in the January. Then of course came Covid.
Joining a new church after nearly three years of self-isolation, I found that the vicar was a kindred spirit, an ex-dance and drama teacher who shares my passion for getting The Arts back into the Church, where they have been sorely and shamefully neglected for far too long. A drama group was started in the autumn which has provided dramatized readings, a really wacky Nativity play (with dance of course), and an unusual Easter play. A pantomime is planned for February 2025. I am enjoying this new outlet for my previous work and look forward to making more. Whether that will involve some version of Vision2020 we will have to wait and see.
I feel my days of actual acting are now over, but I can still use my voice. I hope before long to produce an audio version of Constance and Me. Watch this space, or rather, listen out!
My Musical Life
I started singing in church choirs at the age of 13. I learnt to read music by leaning close to a fellow alto and singing a fraction of a second after her. Too shy as ever to take part in school productions such as Dido and Aeneas or Fiddler on the Roof, I was just in choirs and a madrigal group. I sang in a quartet with friends at uni, learnt guitar, and taught six other people to play, to accompany the host of new Christian songs that were coming out. I couldn't sing and play, so concentrated on the singing. When teaching in London I helped with musical productions and taught folk guitar, which of course involved singing. Someone said "If you were my daughter I'd get you singing lessons." She was most embarrassed to discover I was a colleague and not a pupil!
I joined Reflection Music's new choir, Charisma, and sang on stage, records and in Trafalgar Square at Spree 73 which was televised. This all gave the confidence to become a soprano, and a soloist!
When distance precluded my continuing with this group, my singing was only in church for several years. But with my children grown in the 2000s, I was able to do more, joining another choir, then organising local theatre performances and backing choirs for visiting soloists from a national Christian music organization. For a few years I sang in old peoples' homes with my oldest friend, which only ended when he moved abroad. Despite the plethora of singing groups locally I was still not happy about using my voice for anything except the Gospel.
I hardly sing at all now, except in church, and as they say, if you don't use it you lose it. I would dearly love to find it again!
