After writing the heading for this post I stopped to think how many of my granny's sayings I could actually remember, and although when I was young it seemed my mother was always quoting from her, I can now easily count them on the fingers of one hand. But I suppose it's the sayings that …
If I only had a theme
I was reminded this morning, when reading someone else's blog post about themes (http://yamuses.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/identifying-your-storys-theme.html), that I've been struggling a bit with a theme for 'The Lion and Unicorn Quest'. Well, struggling a lot. It's worrying me because in my experience my novels are better if I start out with a theme which I can then …
Beware of the interloper
Although I've managed to avoid redding up the house (see previous post) and I found myself sending off a couple of Christmas cards yesterday because they were for people overseas and I put off going to the Post Office with them at an earlier stage, I haven't completely wasted my Christmas and New Year holidays. …
Redding up the house
Hogmanay seems like the right day to introduce a new occasional series of posts about Scottish words which may or may not be little-known. I'm not entirely sure about the provenance of 'redding' but I'm fairly certain the word and the concept are Scottish as my mother and granny both used it. My mother, who …
I think there’s something in it.
Today I carried out the self-imposed task which I had been dreading and looking forward to almost equally: I re-read the draft of 'The Lion and Unicorn Quest' I wrote in November. This is probably the scariest moment during the writing process, especially if the whole thing has been written in a rush, to a …
Building up a head of steam
As arbitrarily as it started, Fifties month is now at an end, despite the heading to this post. I've now become submerged beneath a rising tide of pantomime preparations and Christmas-related stuff - if only they didn't always coincide! A head of steam is what I'm hoping to build up before I look at my …
Spirit of Christmas (and birthdays) Past
Having spent yesterday afternoon out shopping for Christmas presents, my thoughts turned to what sort of presents I remembered receiving in the Fifties. (No, Fifties month won't go away even now that it's turned into two months.) One of my best ever presents was a birthday gift from my parents: a large doll called Sally, …
Fifties month continues – the Festival of Britain
I'm afraid Fifties month has spilled over into December. My excuse is that I've been too busy writing fiction about the Fifties to worry about the facts. I find it very difficult to concentrate on both at the same time. I haven't quite managed to squeeze all my research into the novel (yet!) but that …
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In Praise of the Wireless
Although many people across Britain bought television sets specifically to watch the Coronation in 1953, some families held out against it for much longer, including my own. Listening to the wireless had certain advantages: you could picture the characters in dramas much more vividly in your mind than the primitive black and white screens of …
Steam and Rails
As I mentioned in my previous post, in the 1950s we had our own branch railway line. When I say it was our own, I mean there was a station in our village which we could actually see from our front window. My mother hated so much to waste time that she often refused to …
Cecilia Peartree - woman of mystery 