CTArts | Writings

Writings

Since I was very little, I have always loved writing, reading, stories and poetry. Then when I was 13, the family took off to Auckland New Zealand for Dad's great new job in the wool trade and I wrote a diary of the journey out. Then, someone had given me a five year diary with lock and key and I was hooked! 4 lines every day made me reflect and sort out my teenage life. And after 6 months there, Dad was posted back to Bradford and I wrote a diary of the journey back. The idea of putting down my thoughts was established. I was a solitary child then and my diary was my friend. Not until I was 18 and off to university did it develop into a daily record in spare desk diaries Dad gave me. I have had very little breaks in recording my life of a mum of three adopted children, teaching job and a commitment to live life to the full that my dear Mum and Dad were not able to. But writing is in the genes, I get it from my Mum and her Dad, my mill worker Grandad with so much more potential than he was allowed to develop.

Writing has continued through stories for children, plays and pantomimes for school, novels for children, my childhood of the 1950s, some with my own illustrations and culminating in my opus magnus of an adult crime novel. All are not famous despite me trying and self publishing the adult novel. Life became too busy, my confidence in my 50s couldn't push against the tide of rejection and I haven't honed my craft.

But I have loved the experience and still do, as this website and my continued diaries prove. I will leave them to posterity and become famous after I am long gone.

To New Zealand Dairy 1964 This is my first diary, the journey of a life time of emigration at 13 years old to Auckland, New Zealand. When we returned, unplanned, 6 months later and lived at Esholt, this very family moved in to live next door, also unplanned a return. They were the inspiration for the best part of my life - to adopt. How weird is that?		1965 Dairy A 13 year old convent school girl, italic writing in NZ, recording events personal and global.

Rishworth Walks Possessing a digital camera changed everything. Armed with it on walks from Heathfield Rise, I delighted in recording them in all seasons, somethimes with the family. 13 are in this booklet.		Rishworth Walks 2 The last page of the booklet, hailing a new start in Settle by 2010.

My Grandma Says I have a deep need to carry on my heritage. So, before any grandchild arrived I wrote this booklet, got some photo books done and sent the script off to publishers in its first stage. Rejected. Decided to re-write it in a generic form to go with my family paintings. That works better. I should try again. One day, maybe....		My Grandma Says, title page My unborn grandchild is telling you what she has learned from her Grandma of her life in the 1950s. I predicted a girl with tight, black curls......Ella takes after her Dad! But it is for her anyway, when she is older.

My Grandma Says, my sisters We four Jewels of his Crown ( as Dad called us), played singly and together with such joy, and still do 70 years later. The book celebrates that wonderful legacy.		Sojourn in Singapore My second trip to Singapore in 2009 gave me the impulse to write a novel based around the sights of that incredible city. It took on many changes, got rejected many times, so I decided its last to pay for self-publishing through Xlibris. It's on Amazon, sold nothing much but it is out of date now and past history for me. But I am proud of it.

Sojourn in Singapore, first page It tells of a set of school examiners in Singapore with all the little snipes I could get in through a wife of one of them let loose on her own while her failing marriage disintegrates. And she has a fling with one of the husbands, similarly aflicted. It's a crime story set in Singapore with lots of references to the history of the characters in vingettes. I had to tell everyone it was NOT about me! It was just a vehicle for me to push my writing and I am proud of it.		Mysteries at Dun Floe Again, I set myself a task of a story set at a familiar place, Tormore, with all the history and scenery as its background to celebrate those wonderful times of my life on holiday there.

Mysteries at Dun Floe, first page It's a story for 8-12 year olds, my age group at the time in school, about an English Campbell boy relocated to live at Dun Floe cottage (Tormore site) and fit into the local McDonald clan mentality. Again, history of the actual events round 1690 Jacobite uprisings and Glencoe Massacre feature in it with ghostly references to the past for the boy. I also did the illustrations for it and used it at school. It was such a love to write it. I paid for 100 copies to be printed, sent the script off, got some favourable replies but no uptakes.		Mysteries at Heathfield Coming up to retirement, at last, from teaching at Heathfield, I was asked to write some of the history I used in teaching of the school. It morphed into an idea of putting the whole history down for children to read and understand the remarkable development of Rishworth and Heathfield School since 1725. The school and I shared the cost of 100 copies and it sold like hot cakes at Heathfield's 60th Anniversary celebrations. A little legacy from me to them, the school that was a part of my family from 1974 to 2010.

Mysteries at Heathfield, first page It tells of a girl, age 8, arriving at Heathfield, unhappy with the change of circumstances at doing so. She has to deal with new beginnings and in doing so experiences, personally as both a girl and boy, flash backs into life at both sites through the school's stages of developement I researched each major development of the Wheelwright family's rise to prominence as wealthy mill owners in 1725 and used the actual mills, buildings, members of the family and some staff and pupils to illustrate key times. I illustrated these times as a split scene showing what today's parts of the school looked like in the past. It was a revelation for me and a joy to do. A copy is in the archives in Halifax Library, too.		Y.T. Alien Super Dog This little silly story arose from a stay with Babs in Plumpton Green, East Sussex when all the children were little and the summer was hot, about 1995. It let me laugh out loud at my writing for young children. It never got further than just for us.

Y.T. Alien Super Dog, first page It tells of a Yorkshire terrier, Y.T., and all the local pets of Lyndhurst magna, down south who have been forcibly recruited by an alien species to prepare the ground for the village, and ultimately England, to be taken over as a permanent home for their aged population as England has been targetted as the best place in the Universe for such a mission. I loved the freedom to let me dig at the north/south division, space stories, family generations, care of the elderly and children and their pets. It makes me smile, still.		Pantos at Heathfield I always loved writing for the children at school - assemblies, services, xmas as well as for my own children. My biggest challenges came when I decided to write 2 full blown pantomimes for 7-9 year olds in the latter years of my teaching when I had two consecutive classes of particularly gifted children for their age. I wrote songs and directed other staff to do music and dance and in less than 4 weeks put on two massive productions that were the highlight of my teaching career.

Jack and The Baked Bean Stalk I wrote the scripts in rhyme and the songs were taken from an existing panto but I subsequently wrote my own after the success of the next panto. The children, so young, were amazingly open to everything I threw at them, learning the songs in no time, thrilling at putting on silly costumes and makeup and the wonderful friends on the staff did me and them proud too. It was a golden experience of all my teaching days.		Joe White and the 28 Dwarfs This one became an even bigger venture with a wonderful dig at dad's and boys, princesses and servants, the BBC interviews of the audience who lapped it up. The songs were all my own, sung onto a tape recorder and then put into music for a small band to play by the staff's husbands. The Headteacher of Rishworth was sutably impressed with my Shakespearean sonnets, twelve bar blues and patter songs. A long summer holiday well spent in the love of rhythm and rhyme.

My Family Ancestry Stories of real people are the stuff of my reading, not novels any more. And what better people to write about than my ancestors? Blessed with gossiping women relatives, I accumulated a bank of artefacts, certificates, photos, stories and detail from them on both sides. The digital age opened up a wealth of information on the web so I wrote their stories into a large Word Document, printed out and made 2 booklet copies for the family archives and sent the Word Document out to all the sisters, cousins, neices and nephews for them to have, to know where they came from and pass it on down the generations. It has been a labour of love.		The Wosilius Family side This is my Dad's side, the Lithuanian immigrants to Bradford, West Yorkshire at the end of the 19th century. What a tale of hardship and sadness, with Dad rising from it and giving us that lovely start.

My Grandparents, George and Agatha Wosilius/Walker When Jurgio and Agata had been married for a few years, the authorities 'asked' them to choose an English name so there would be no more difficulties with spelling their name - was it Wosilius/Vasilus/Wosilus - and the postman could read it properly! So that is why I was born Walker! They changed their names, too, to the Anglicised George and Agatha and their children gradually took on the English names. We never knew them. George died in 1929, Agatha in 1939, heralding a hard life ahead for Dad, the briliant brain with no money!		Mum's side, the Devitt/Cooper Mum's maiden name was Cooper, good old Yorkshire stock, her mother was a Devitt, the daughter of Irish Catholic immigrants who fled to Bradford after the famine. Both Grandma and Grandad came from families of 13 children each - rough Catholic stock with such stories reading as good as any Victorian saga. What a collection of highs and lows, grit and determination and incredible family ties.

My Grandparents, Willie and Annie Cooper Stories from the Devitt side were the stuff of life in the back streets of Bradford in the early 20th century. I feel I have met them, knowing something of their struggles but seeing the love exude through it. This I attempted to carry on after Mum died at only 50. It has formed the basis of us being as close a big family as one can be in the modern age, a wonderful legacy.		My Poetry When I am either down or up I get the feel to write verse. This little collection so far has ones of our beautiful children, one of times when others were going through hardships and how it impinged on my thoughts about me, how to deal with the valleys and mountains of life and how to carry on. So, I don't mind some of it being shared, but others will be left till I am in the ether. Here, I will leave 2 to be read.

This Easy Life I was so moved by Vera Britten's Testament of Youth about her experiences in World War 1 that this came to me.		Ageing Ruminating on life and growing old, I found myself examining myself. I think it says what is me and what makes me tick, up to a point.