September
Hi everyone, hope you are all well. I’ve
had some lovely emails from you this month telling me how much you are enjoying
the new series. Delighted to hear
it. Julie also enjoyed her prize of
Candy Kisses which is now out in hardback, the paperback to follow in November.
Holidays
David and I enjoyed a lovely break in Scotland at the end of July, which was
wonderful. I do love Scotland.
We spent a few days exploring the border country, including Peebles,
Hawick and the delightful abbey town of Melrose.
These brought back happy memories of my childhood when we used to head
north in our old Ford car, with our packets of sandwiches and flask of coffee,
and think it a great adventure. Dad
was stationed in Scotland during the war, and I rather think I was conceived
there. Does that make me Scottish?
Perhaps not. Apparently, on my first trip across the Forth Bridge with my
mum when I was two, I was given a banana by a sailor, and of course had no idea
how to eat it. I’ve eaten plenty
since.
We then went on to enjoy three nights in Edinburgh, where we met up with an old friend for a gossip over a Thai meal. The most exciting part of our trip was visiting The Royal Yacht Brittania which is docked at Leith. It really is a beautiful ship, such a pity they’ve decommissioned her. But at least it meant we got the chance to poke our nose in the Queen’s bedroom and even the honeymoon suite, Diana's boudoir.
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Click on the picture for a larger image
They can seat 66 in the state dining room on board.
How about that for a light lunch? And
apparently the royals always have a hot meal cooked for them every day, even in
the tropics! Ouch, and you should
see how small the galleys are. |
Research
While in the UK we took the opportunity to do some research for a
future book I’m hoping to write, and ended up going down some silver and lead
mines in the northern Lakes. It
must have been the wettest day of the summer, and yes, I know there have been
plenty of those. It was chilling to
be dozens of feet below ground, with our little miner’s lamp clamped to our
helmets and hear the water running down. There
are over a hundred miles of tracks under that mountain near Alston, and I
certainly wouldn’t care to attempt to find my way along them alone.
Scary! Apparently, the men
were often working so far from the surface that it would take them two hours to
walk to the face. Then they would
do an eight hour day before walking the two miles back to the surface.
A tough life.
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Books www.librarything.com www.bibliophil.org www.goodreads.com www.bookdepository.co.uk is also worth a visit as you can enjoy blogs, author
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October
2007
I’ve been working hard this month, head down, concentrating on the writing.
Sometimes I think I’m making good progress, other days I’m revising
and rewriting or inserting new scenes and don’t feel as if I am, but little by
little it gets done. At the start
of a book I always wonder if I have anything to say about these people, and then
I worry that I won’t get it all in. I’m
not the sort of writer who can go right through to the end as a first draft.
I have to revise as I go along. I’m
not sure if this is a good or a bad thing, but it’s how I work.
We’re all different.
With
September came the cooler weather, which was a huge relief.
You really can get tired of the sun, certainly the intense heat.
We never go outside in the middle of the day in August, unlike mad dogs
etc. We’ve learned some sense in
the years we’ve lived in Spain. Right
now the temperature is perfect, sunny and warm around 22 degrees.
We’ve had the odd thunder storm which has brightened up the garden, and
we have all our logs stacked ready for the cold winter nights ahead.
I love autumn, even here in Spain it has a special feel to it, although I
do miss the colours of the autumn leaves in the Lakes.
Who
do we think we are?
When I take a break from writing, I often become engrossed in researching my
family history. Are there any more
genealogy buffs out there? It’s
like being a detective. I’ve
discovered that my mother’s family were agricultural labourers in Norfolk.
(I always knew I was a peasant!) They
came up to the cotton mills in Lancashire during the industrial revolution.
My father’s side of the family seemed to flit from Yorkshire to
Lancashire, from the woollen mills to the cotton mills depending on where the
work was, I suppose. During the
cotton famine in the 1860s when there was very little work because of the
American Civil War, weavers and spinners were starving.
Yet they very often refused to work Egyptian cotton as they were
supporting the slaves. Consequently,
many of my own family’s youngest children died, no doubt of malnutrition.
You
can discover dark family secrets too, such as my great grandmother Hannah being
illegitimate and born in the workhouse in Halifax. I have a photograph of this stern Victorian lady with my
great grandfather James when they were celebrating their Golden Wedding.
They were stalwarts of the chapel, strict Wesleyan Methodists with not a
drop of alcohol ever passing their lips. No
dancing, no card games, and certainly no canoodling with young men.
So how her mother Mary was ever allowed to meet members of the opposite
sex, let alone fall pregnant, is fascinating.
Hannah was brought up by her grandmother, and listed in each census as
her daughter, but since that good lady was over-fifty when Hannah was born, my
suspicions were alerted. I sent for
her marriage certificate and saw that no father’s name was listed. Also in the census record there was a ‘sister’ Mary,
right age and engaged only in domestic duties.
Further searching found Hannah’s birth, in the workhouse.
I wondered how long poor Mary had been banished there, to hide her shame.
Fascinating! But my
grandmother’s family history is even more so.
I’ll tell you about them next time.
If
you want to research your own family tree try www.ancestry.co.uk
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