tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-88423084998145740512024-03-13T10:00:48.742-07:00They Came to Liverpool Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17190244059173638691noreply@blogger.comBlogger73125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8842308499814574051.post-63386476729755259532017-05-27T02:19:00.002-07:002017-05-27T02:19:20.403-07:00THOSE WHO GO DOWN TO THE SEA IN SHIPSI've recently returned from a holiday on Anglesey, off the coast of North Wales. We stayed in a holiday cottage at Treaddur Bay which was owned by a woman who was a native if the island and her husband who was from the Wirral. They actually live about halfway between Liverpool and Anglesey as he works out of Liverpool as a pilot guiding large ships up the Mersey to the port. <br />
That knowledge went a good way to explaining the presence of maps on the walls of the cottage. In the living room there was a large map of the world which fascinated, not only me but my husband and two eldest sons. Other maps were of places such as the approaches to Bristol, Glasgow and Gibraltar.<br />
Since I was a young girl growing up in Liverpool I have found much enjoyment visiting the Pierhead and other places situated on the Mersey, the Dee and Welsh coast.<br />
My grandfather Milburn was a stoker on one of the dredgers that helped keep open the ways between the sandbanks in the Mersey, paths the pilots had to be conversant with. In Medieval times it was Chester on the Dee that was the premier port not Liverpool but when the Dee silted up, Liverpool went from being a fishing village to<br />
a town given a royal charter by King John and it is from Liverpool that most business was done with Dublin. Cattle would come by boat and be driven through the streets of Liverpool to the abattoir even within living memory.<br />
When I was doing research for one of my sagas I read about a paddle steamer that used to be a mecca for gamblers that sailed to Wales. There were also ferry boats that travelled to Llandudno taking people on day trips and I don't think I'm mistaken but once up on a time there was a ferry between Liverpool and Holyhead, Anglesey, too.<br />
I remember after the war there were buoys in the Mersey showing the sites where ships had been sunk, another danger that pilots had to be aware of.<br />
Finally I must mention that although Liverpool no longer has the number of ships in the Mersey that it once did, it has resurrected itself and visitors, whether by air, train, bus or boat still find the city and its environs worth a visit. <br />
At time of writing we've just had two of the hottest days of the year so far, so son No 2 took himself off first to the beach at Waterloo/Crosby and then the next day across the Mersey to New Brighton. Needless to say, he wasn't the only one making the most of sun, sand and glistening sea.<br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17190244059173638691noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8842308499814574051.post-27371907706498600212017-05-08T05:34:00.002-07:002017-05-08T05:34:17.813-07:00The sun is shining on Merseyside again.Despite the elections for the Metro mayor for Liverpool and its surrounding area I haven't been down in the dumps because the sun seems to be shining most days here lately and it certainly lifts one's spirits. I'm reminded of days in the past when on such days in summer it would melt the tar between the cobbles in Whitefield Road and we'd burst the tar bubbles with lolly ice sticks and I'd end up going tar on my ankle socks. Mam would almost have a fit and I'd get a clout while she attempted to get rid of the tar by rubbing it with butter.<br />
The only thing I remember about elections in my childhood was the name Bessie Braddock. She was a large woman in the days when obesity was not the bugbear it is today. In my mind's eye I see her wearing a navy blue frock with white spots on it. I've a feeling too the word Battling was connected to her name in those days too. She was said to fight for the rights of the people. My dad was a labour man but I took little interest in politics.<br />
I was one of the people but I never thought about my rights but just got on with my life and didn't expect anyone else to fight my battles for me. We were poor but there were no food banks or social workers visiting. Some might say I was lucky. I would say I was blessed in having a father who had a trade, being a journeyman plasterer, who was only out of work occasionally in winter when the weather meant he was laid off. We had scarcely any toys but being a reader I spent a lot of time in the library or at home reading. Of course, there were few cars around then so the street was our playground as was Newsham Park were we made up games. My mam didn't go out to work until my youngest sister was at secondary school. We'd come home and just finish cooking the meal which was all prepared for us. Our house was rented and if it needed fixing my dad did it. <br />
So is it surprising that I, along with many others of my generation, have little sympathy with those who want to mollycoddle the poor. I'm not saying there aren't people who need help because of course there are and I'm grateful for the National Health Service and all the technical advantages of today and that I and my brothers and sister and our spouses were able to work so we could afford to buy our own houses.<br />
My books are generally about working women or girls who have to overcome difficulties to win through to a happy ending within a family setting. Most are not utterly poverty stricken. But all readers like to see the heroine or hero overcome difficulties by them making an effort but they also have some help.<br />
Check out my website <a href="http://www.junefrancis.com/">www.junefrancis.com</a>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17190244059173638691noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8842308499814574051.post-42807149821502412762017-03-14T09:13:00.002-07:002017-03-14T09:18:44.985-07:00where did all the time go?Last time I blogged was four months ago: I can scarcely believe it. Pre-Christmas and I was having some time off from actual writing but doing a lot of thinking about what the next book was going to be about. For a while I had been considering writing about my ancestry, only to come to the decision that most likely it wouldn't be interesting or exciting enough for those who read my novels. Perhaps I should write a faction book - a mixture of fact and fiction - the truth is that I still want to write about my ancestors' story as it really happened but I don't have the whole story - just snippets - that I could set against historical Liverpool during the period they lived and the places they came from. I made a start only to set it aside because I've been convinced for a goodly while that there was a novel worth writing based on my mother-in-law's early life. She passed away a few years ago but I've never forgotten the tales she used to tell me when my husband brought her to visit on Sunday afternoons.<br />
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The difficulty was where to begin and what names to give the people involved because I've always said at talks when asked that I never write about real people because I don't want to be accused of libel or is it slander, and should I change the era when events took place and what should I keep of her story and what should I miss out and what should I add to it? I began the actual writing at the beginning of January and I am 37000 words in and enjoying the challenge. But I have done little writing the last week, not because spring is in the air and the sun is shining and the garden needs work on it but because I've done something to my shoulder which is making typing painful. <br />
So I've been doing a fair amount of reading Golden Age Detective Fiction. Now we are in Lent I am also attending weekly Lenten meeting as well as thinking about and preparing for the publication of my books that are due out at the end of this month, March 2017.<br />
MERSEY GIRL paperback reissue of the former Going Home to Liverpool, also out for the first time in Ebook format by Ebury.<br />
Also my latest hardback WALKING BACK TO HAPPINESS published by Severn House. <br />
MANY A TEAR HAS TO FALL is also out in trade paperback by Severn House.<br />
In April STEP BY STEP and A DREAM TO SHARE will be published in ebook format for the first time by Canelo. These books are the first two in my Chester/Liverpool series.<br />
EVENT: Liverpool will be having a Litfest in Autumn and I will be a guest speaker 2pm on October 3rd in Penny Lane Community centre - do keep alert for more information about this event . I will also feature as visiting author on the Chicklit Chat website during the week before the publication of MERSEY GIRL 23rd March.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17190244059173638691noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8842308499814574051.post-11106214078437143102016-11-21T05:40:00.004-08:002016-11-21T05:40:50.871-08:00One of the things about getting out and about is meeting peopleI've just returned from a week in Keswick, Lake District and no, it didn't rain all the time. Hopefully there won't be the floods there were last year. There is still a bridge not in place from last year. The trees were still ablaze with colour and Derwentwater was not as high and on my birthday was calm and shimmered in the sunlight. People strolled about enjoying the fresh air and scenery, pausing to converse with complete strangers now and again. There were a few moments when we enjoyed watching some children attempting to feed some geese, not the common or garden Canadian kind but those my son, Iain, thought were called Graylings. I was a bit concerned for the smallest child because I remembered staying with my aunt Agnes, uncle Jack and my cousin Patsy in the Old Roan which was country to me living in the back streets of Liverpool. My uncle took us for a drive to a farm where there were geese and one pecked me. It hurt! Which is what happened to the little lad when a goose took bread from his hand. <br />
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One of my most enjoyable conversations was when Iain and I went into a small art gallery. The young man behind the reception desk was painting and so we took a peek and asked him about his work and what was his name. He told us that it was Chris Nelson and that interested me because my maiden name is Nelson. I knew there were painting in the gallery by an artist by the name of Nelson and Chris said he was his father. Their styles were very different. I told Chris that my great-grandfather was a Norwegian mariner who had sailed into Liverpool and married a local girl. He told me that he had visited Norway three times and that one of his favourite places is Bergen. One of my ambitions is to visit Norway myself but I don't want to go on a fjords cruise but to stay in Norway and one of the places I'd like to visit is Arundel as I believe it possible that my great-grandfather's ship sailed from there in Victorian times. I also mentioned that my brothers and father and two of my sons were artistic and had done a fair amount of drawing and painting pictures as a hobby.<br />
Naturally I bought one of Chris's paintings which he kindly reduced the price of as it was my birthday. I can't say that I'm much of a painter but I did treat myself to a colouring book for adults at one of the shops as well as buying a jigsaw from a Dr Barnardo's charity shop and chattered to the women in both places.<br />
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I've found most walkers are prepared to pass the time of day for a short time and on one of our walks along the old railway trail a couple stopped to talk to us. My husband had gone on ahead of me and Iain and Tim as the latter had set up his tripod and was taking some photos. The river Greta was roaring over some rocks and worth a shot or two. Anyway, the couple remembered meeting us all earlier and told us they had seen a man in a red jacket further on where a bridge was closed due to a landslide but they had not seen him on the way back and he had mentioned not waiting for us any longer. We said we hadn't seen him so we were all puzzled to where he was but I then reckoned he had managed to get the other side of the river and was walking through the woods on the other side and gone back to the house but he was not there when we got back but arrived shortly after and said he hadn't crossed the river but found a track that took him to the road and had come back that way. <br />
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When in Liverpool I'm always falling into conversation with people on the street or in the cathedral but it's good to know that it's not only us Scousers who enjoy a gab. <br />
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17190244059173638691noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8842308499814574051.post-62288516177286173822016-11-10T05:31:00.003-08:002016-11-10T05:36:12.239-08:00Memories that Time and Distance can Never DestroyA few days ago I had a visitor from New Jersey. It was great to see my cousin Irene who I hadn't seen for several years. It's true that these days we can keep in touch via email or on facebook but it isn't the same as actually seeing someone in the flesh and chatting and giving each other a hug. Interesting, her middle sister lives miles away on the west coast of America in California, New Jersey is on the east coast. Two scousers who have chosen to live near the sea when they emigrated. It's in the blood. My mother was fond of saying that Liverpudlians have salt water in their veins. Their eldest sister lives in Liverpool. My eldest brother, Ron, when he went south, ending up living in Westcliff -on- Sea, on the outskirts of Southend in Essex. my other brother, Don, went to sea, following in the footsteps of our maternal grandfather.<br />
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When we were kids we used to go camping to Towyn, nr Rhyl, N. Wales. Our mothers being sisters meant we were all very close and those camping holidays remain strong in our memories and we remind each other of those happy days whenever we meet up.<br />
This time my cousin said to me, 'You were always singing when we were on holiday.'<br />
I thought 'Always!' I know I love music and have been in various choirs in my time and never miss 'Songs of Praise' and singing along if I can but I'd soon be sat on if I never shut up by my menfolk. Then my cousin reminded me of the times when we had a choice of catching the bus from Rhyl to the campsite or walking and having a bag of chips. More often than not we chose to have the chips. On the walk I would start singing 'Take me back to the Black Hills, the beautiful hills of Wales,' to the tune of the Doris Day hit, 'Take me back to the Black Hills of Dakota,' from 'Calamity Jane'.<br />
She had been reminded of that the other year when my cousin who lived in California and her husband decided to go on a road trip and asked her along. When looking at a map they spotted Dakota and immediately my cousin recalled those days in Wales and us singing and eating chips as we walked home to the campsite from which we could clearly see the hills of Wales dark against the sky, so straightaway, Dakota was one of the places they had to visit.<br />
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It was my brother, Don, who reminded us of visits to the outdoor swimming pool of Rhos-on-Sea, nr Abergele, and how we dared each other into climbing higher and higher until we stood on the uttermost highest diving board. I do still remember jumping from it but no way would I have dared to dive. Another place we liked to go during the evening was to the penny slots arcade near the beach at Towyn. We never had much money to become addicted to gambling and some of our money went into the juke box. One of the hits of the time was 'A White Sports coat and a Pink carnation'. He and my elder cousin Maureen recalled outings to the Pivvie after Christmases to see a pantomime when part of the entertainment was a sing-a-long to words on a sheet dropped in front of the stage.<br />
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At times as we remembered those days so long ago for a while we forgot our health problems, the hip replacement, the new knee, high blood pressure and stroke and were<br />
back together as children and the Atlantic ocean that separates us can never take that away. <br />
<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17190244059173638691noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8842308499814574051.post-29674778103853673802016-10-07T04:40:00.003-07:002016-10-07T04:46:50.648-07:00Queues have their upsides; Part 71A few days ago I was in Manchester airport having landed from a flight from Rhodes in the Greek isles where we had left a chaotic airport only to find a different kind of chaos here in the good ol' UK. The queues to get through passport control were unbelievable long and John and I had visions of being stuck there for hours, knowing son Tim was waiting for us in Arrivals. I imagined that the cost for the car parking would be outrageous, just as the cost for 3kilos of baggage over the limit had been in Rhodes (54 euros) I think the carpark charges were around £9. At least there were no terrorists. Thank God!<br />
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Anyway, as one does in queues, we got talking and the woman I was speaking to said that she was from Blackpool. I mentioned that I had been born in Blackpool because Mam had been evacuated doing the war to have me as the local maternity hospital had been bombed. The woman asked where in Blackpool had I been born and I told her in a hotel on the front. This surprised her. But in those days, of course, no doubt the hospitals in the resort had run out of beds and hence my being born in what in those days had been a guesthouse but is now a hotel. I found a photo of it when doing my ancestry. And no - there isn't a blue plaque on the wall saying June Francis born here. I have no idea what I looked like as a baby because Dad wasn't around to take photos even if he'd had the lolly to afford a camera. Mam did tell me that I was dainty and had curly blonde hair.<br />
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We discussed our holidays and I said that I'd had enough of going abroad. I'm not that keen on the heat and flying and airports, although John loves the heat. She said that I should take my holidays in Blackpool. I said we were going to the Lakes in November for my birthday. Besides I know that I'll never get John to Blackpool as he has to have mountains or hills to climb and we like to get out of towns. The other suggestion I've had for holidays is to go on a cruise which is another no, no. as no hills to run up for John. For me it would be a nightmare trapped at sea with hundreds of people.<br />
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I couldn't help thinking back to those days when cruising from Liverpool was popular, even if it was only a trip to Llandudno or an evening trip along the Mersey on the Royal Iris. Of course, if you had money you could go further afield. In researching my books I even discovered that there used to be gambling cruises, where ships would go out as far as necessary to where people were safe from the law to have a flutter. <br />
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Also I was remembering those years after the war when British housewives were still having to queue up at the shops. My outstanding memory is queuing up with Mam at the fish shop on a Friday in Breck Road. The shop was called Charles' and there was a padded bench alongside one wall for us to rest our weary legs and backs. The shop not only sold lots of different kinds of fish, included salted fish for Dad's Sunday breakfast but also rabbits with their fur on. Mam loved a bit of skate and hake. I remember skate was sticky and hake was delicious white fish. I loved kippers. Perhaps that's the Manx in me. I remember our Don working on the I.O.M boats bringing home kippers. My only trip to I.O.M was when John used to skindive and Liverpool subaqua club went there for a weekend of diving at Port Erin. I wish I'd known then I had Manx blood I'd have found it a whole lot more interesting. Anyway, I'll have to get to work on John to visit there again. As it is we've had several holidays in Anglesey before I knew I had ancestry from there as well as the Lakes where some of my maternal forebears come from. <br />
As for Blackpool when I worked as a cash clerk for Littlewoods, we had a works outing there every year, so I know the resort reasonable well and have never forgotten screaming my head off on the Big Dipper. The one and only time I have been on one and I won't be queuing up to go on ever again.<br />
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<a href="http://www.junefrancis.com/">www.junefrancis.com</a> <br />
<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17190244059173638691noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8842308499814574051.post-18450532499838107012016-09-03T02:15:00.002-07:002016-09-03T02:15:08.067-07:00Skinny-me-link - Those were the days; part 70I was watching Trust Me I'm a Doctor last evening and of course, Obesity, exercise and diet was on their menu for discussion. This morning as John and I were having or early morning walk I was thinking about the programme and remembered being called Skinny-me-link when I was a young girl. Despite being an avid reader and spending time curled up in a chair in our parlour, I still got plenty of exercise daily without thinking about.<br />
At the moment I've going through my agents' comments on my latest book WALKING BACK TO HAPPINESS and one of the comments she made was to do with some children playing out in the evening towards the end of winter. Surely they wouldn't be playing out in the dark? she had typed. This is the very early sixties and in my opinion children still played out with their friends. Television hadn't a strong grip on their minds as there were few TVs around, neither were there that many cars. I know I was a child of the forties and fifties but it wasn't until later in the sixties that so many things began to change and the lives of many working class children didn't change that much. <br />
I look back to times when children and teenagers often remained outside playing or just hanging around beneath a lamp post and talking because it was preferable to going indoors where our parents would be listening to the wireless, so we'd have to be quiet. It was much more fun and exciting outside with friends and we could get the fidgets out of our legs after a day spent sitting at a desk. On the whole we were fearless. We avoided going up back entries because our mothers warned us against doing so, having told us girls that there were men who weren't very nice, so never to go with those who offered us sweets. During the long summer holidays we would go in a group together to the park or play street games whilst our mothers gossiped as they brushed or washed the front step.<br />
There is much that is good and enjoyable about today but years ago we didn't seem to need advice on doing what should come naturally, exercise and eat sensibly.<br />
I didn't lose my Skinny-me-link nickname until puberty when I started to get curves and had a sedentary job in an office, watched telly evenings or went to the pictures which also meant eating a bag of sweets during the films or having a romantic meal for two at a restaurant in town. I did walk there and back to the cinema like most of those who went. Unlike today when we go in the car to one of the multi cinemas on the outskirts of the city. Reason enough for me these days to have that early morning walk and to visit Total Fitness for a swim three times a week. <br />
As for children playing in the street at any time these days it is a rarity, except at Halloween and that's not playing, unless one calls dressing up play and knocking on doors and asking Trick or Treat?<br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17190244059173638691noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8842308499814574051.post-69508838404441950272016-08-13T01:53:00.002-07:002016-08-13T01:53:24.071-07:00Here's wishing you good health!Last week I visited Fazakerley hospital's Stroke outpatient's clinic where I was signed off. The specialist being very satisfied with my recovery from my stroke eleven months ago. These days we regard hospitals very much as places where we can be cured of disease and sent home to get on with our lives.<br />
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This week I have been working on my faction book which is a mixture of fact and fiction and is about my ancestors of whom I know certain facts but naturally not all so I have been filling in the gaps in my knowledge by researching with the help of my researcher son Iain the times in which they lived. I am planning on writing three books but this first one begins in 1832 when cholera broke out in Liverpool. At that time the medical profession did not have a definite idea of what caused cholera but from their experience of dealing with this terrifying disease they considered it could be caused by three things and could only guess at how it spread. Something called Miasma from the Greek for pollution was popular and some thought it was spread by touch. They were keen to get sufferers into the cholera hospital as soon as possible so they could be nursed properly under suitable surroundings and had met with some encouraging results.<br />
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The drawback to this was the families of the suffering poor had it fixed in their heads that the medical profession had ulterior motives for wanting to take the sick members of their families into hospital. This was only about four years after the scandal of body-snatchers and murderers, Burke and Hare, had been detected selling the bodies to doctors in Edinburgh and had shocked the nation. So poor people had little or no faith in hospitals as a place of healing and instead believed that their sick would never come out of hospital cured. In fact there were riots and protests outside the hospital against doctors who were nicknamed Burkers.<br />
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The newspapers of the day and those who genuinely wanted to help the underprivileged and poor set about doing what they could to improve the situation.<br />
If nothing else the shocking conditions under which the poor lived was brought to the attention of more people of influence. The Church and other well-meaning people were already aware of the overcrowding and filthy conditions the poor lived in and so began the struggle to alter things. It was to take a long time because over the next few years more people flooded into Liverpool, mainly Irish escaping the potato famine in their own country. Most had little or no money and has there was not enough housing, they ended up crowding into unhealthy court and cellar dwelling which meant that when the cholera visited Liverpool again in the hot summer of 1846 the number of victims was high and so was the mortality rate in these areas. Some of the Irish victims had been suffering from typhoid when they fled Ireland which meant those that survived were already in a weakened condition so not able to fight cholera. We know now that cholera is a water-borne disease but it was only guessed at during the time of the outbreak and at a time when people were thirsty due to the heat, so some were not fussy about where their drinking water came from. <br />
Two names stand out during those terrible times Dr William Duncan, Liverpool's first Medical Officer of Health. Of Scottish descent, he was born in Seel Street, Liverpool, but gained his medical degree at Edinburgh University but returned to the city of his birth. It is known that he had two practices. one in Rodney Street, the Harley street of Liverpool, and another in the North Dispensary in Vauxhall Road, one of the worse slum areas in the city. <br />
He was 19 years younger than Kitty Wilson, who was famed for her actions being the instigator behind the Corporation's introduction of public washhouses a few years later. During the epidemic she had one of the few boilers in her area and washed the bedding and clothing of those families struck down. Dr Duncan was outspoken in his condemnation of the Corporation's apathy towards hygiene and housing. He campaigned with his colleague, Dr David Baird, for slum clearance, re-housing and a radical approach to hygiene. This did not make him popular with the hierarchy but eventually conditions for the poor began to improve with the help of Liverpool's first Borough Engineer James Newland. <br />
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It is to these people and their successors that Liverpool owes its improved health services, its hospitals, medical centres and university research departments. Thank God for them, I say.<br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17190244059173638691noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8842308499814574051.post-48743174779237093882016-07-23T05:29:00.003-07:002016-07-23T05:29:48.572-07:00Crabs, flowers and music;The other day my son, Tim, arrived home sunburnt and happy, having spend hours on New Brighton beach which was something he had never done before, unlike myself for whom that destination was a regular place to go as a child with my parents and siblings but it is a place that my husband and I did not take our boys as children. Most likely that is due to them growing up here in Litherland on the northern skirts of Liverpool which meant visiting Crosby beach or Formby generally. Whereas I grew up in the city itself so like thousands of other Scousers it was a trip on the ferry across the Mersey to New Brighton where not only did I paddle in the sea and dug in the sand, I also went crabbing because there were plenty of rocks and rock pools to explore, something which Formby lacks and there's not many worth mentioning in Crosby. When I said to Tim that I was sorry he'd missed out on crabbing. Immediately he waxed lyrically about caravan holidays in Anglesey where there were lots of rock pools with eels, sea anemones and kewins.<br />
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It was Tim who again reminded me of the old days when he mentioned the orange flowers that had just appeared in our back garden. We had planted nasturtiums seeds, something we hadn't done for years but having seen some seed packets in Lidl I was reminded of my mum planting them in the window boxes in the back yard of our terraced house in Liverpool and how colourful they had been. She used to plant Virginia stock and night scented stock in our very small front garden and I remember her having a single peony in the centre of that garden and when at the beginning of the Seventies when the corporation in its foolishness decided to demolish more of Liverpool than was sensible and erect flats which have since in their turn been demolished, she dug up the peony and transplanted it to my garden. <br />
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Today Tim is going with a friend to a music festival in Sefton Park. When I was courting, my future husband and I used to visit Newsham Park and listen to a band play there some weekends or even the odd evening in summer. A love of music is international. Liverpool has gained world fame as a city of music and not only because of the Beetles.<br />
Yesterday evening I was in the small ballroom of the Liverpool town hall with my husband and no 1 son, Iain, listening to a concert given by the Ten Strings Duo, Davide Sciacca on guitar and Marianatella Ruscica on violin. Sicillian, they played Italian classical musical as well as a touch of French and Brazilian before paying homage to the Beatles with their rendering of Yesterday and Let it Be. It was a magical evening and I almost had to pinch myself to see if it was real as I gazed up at one of the fabulous chandelier as I let the music wash over me. The light danced on the crystal droplets so that different colours twinkled from them. Thanks go to Tony Higginson, erstwhile proprietor of Formby Books and who afterwards was party to the move to the WriteBlend Bookshop and Coffee shop on South Road, Crosby for arranging the event.<br />
We were all invited to have a drink with the deputy Lord Mayor, Malcolm Kennedy, and one of the staff offered to run off a brief history of the town hall when I mentioned being a writer and how at Crosby Writers Club, one of our members mentioned his Irish grandfather had been a Fenian. I had remembered a Fenian plot to destroy the town hall but could not remember the date. Hence her kind gesture and I can give you the date now. It was 1881 and the attempt failed. The first town hall was build in 1515 and presented by the Rev John Crosse but by 1673 it was decided it needed replacing but that building did not last long due to inadequate foundations and so in 1748 John Wood, a famous architect from Bath, designed a new Town Hall which was opened I'm 1754.<br />
In 1795 fire broke out and destroyed much of the building but almost immediately plans were set in motion for restoration and a London architect, James Wyatt supervised the rebuilding and expansion on Wood's design. The result is basically the town hall as it is today.<br />
Edward V11 compared the Town Hall's magnificent suite of rooms with the Czar's Winter Palace in St Petersburg as being 'the best proportioned in all Europe'.<br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17190244059173638691noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8842308499814574051.post-41177362732735973092016-06-25T03:42:00.001-07:002016-06-25T03:42:06.779-07:00A Royal Visit to LiverpoolLiverpool had a visit from our queen and the Duke of Edinburgh this week and although I wasn't in the city to see them, there was a great special edition in the Liverpool <em>ECHO </em>and the visit was shown on NW television. I mightn't have been there but there were thousands of others present to get a glimpse of them as they visited the Town Hall and Alder Hey's children's hospital.<a href="http://liverpoolecho.co.uk/all%20about%20the%20queen" target="_blank">http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/all about the queen</a> <br />
Despite being situated in the North West of England, so a good few miles from London. Liverpool has done well when it comes to visits from royalty. I remember my sister and I being taken by Mam and Dad into the hub of Liverpool after WW2. My sister and I took turns of being hoisted onto Dad's shoulders and we were fortunate enough to see King George V1 and Queen Elizabeth and the king's mother, Queen Mary of Teck drive by in an open top shiny black car. <br />
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Our present queen has attended the Grand National several times as has the late Queen Mother. One never to be forgotten occasional was when the queen's horse Devon Loch, ridden by Dick Francis, collapsed a short distance from the finish. Who'd have thought he would have gone on to become a best selling crime author when he retired from racing? The queen's grandfather, George V was in Liverpool to open the first Mersey tunnel, the Queensway in the Thirties. Our queen was to open the second tunnel in the Seventies, known by most as the Wallasey tunnel, although it's proper name is the Kingsway. <br />
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I remember when I worked in town coming out of Lewis's just as Princess Margaret was passing. I was unaware that she was in Liverpool so it was quite a surprise. My husband has never forgotten the Duke of Edinburgh arriving by helicopter at the Borrowdale Fell Race, Lake District, in which John was participating and His Royal Highness saying they were all mad as he awarded the prizes. I am in utter agreement with HRH as are many people. John was made up that HRH had made the journey because fell racing doesn't get much press, although in the last few years some fell runners have brought the sport to the notice of more people. Fell runners such as Joss Naylor and the like. The Three Peaks and the Munroes are gaining fame as mountains to be run and conquered.<br />
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But getting back to royalty I was doing some research for one of my books a while back when I came across a mention of a visit from Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. The queen opened St George's Hall in 1854 and Prince Albert opened the Albert Dock, which is now one of the most popular tourists sites in the country. In 2007 Prince Charles reopened St George's Hall after a major renovation. My father has a connection with the hall, he was a plasterer and after WW2, he was employed in repairing some of the internal plaster work at the top of some of the pillars that had suffered damage during the Blitz.<br />
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<a href="http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/all-about/the-queen" target="_blank">http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/all-about/the-queen</a>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17190244059173638691noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8842308499814574051.post-5014923915861555252016-06-05T02:01:00.004-07:002016-06-05T02:02:54.836-07:00more about last post and other things:66This week the news came that writer Carla Lane had died. How could I have forgotten her?<br />
Creator of The Liver Birds and Bread which provided me with a lorra lorra laughs.<br />
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One of my nephews' wife who hails from Windsor, reminded me that I had also forgotten to pay tribute to Liverpool City of Culture 2008 and the Echo reminded me of Phil Redmond and all he had done to promote our fair city. <br />
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I am preparing to get out the bubbly because I have finished the book I have been writing - the first since my stroke. Fittingly it is called Walking Back to Happiness and is set at the beginning of the Sixties. The title is that of the Helen Shapiro song which was a hit towards the end of 1961. I am just waiting for my agent's comments and then hopefully the publisher's.<br />
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In July I do have a paperback and Ebook out called A SISTER'S DUTY by Ebury, which is a reprint of my FOR THE SAKE OF THE CHILDREN. LILY'S WAR is out in paperback and has just been released as a Ebook and audiobook as well. <br />
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I am now planning to write a series of faction sagas centred on my ancestry starting in the 1830s up to modern times. It is a big challenge and entails a lot of research and the first book will be titled AND THEY CAME TO LIVERPOOL. So wish me luck, please?Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17190244059173638691noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8842308499814574051.post-39371413946617092712016-05-14T02:53:00.000-07:002016-05-14T02:53:14.441-07:00What's been going on and what's coming up;It's all happening at the moment in Liverpool and around about. A week ago I was at Croxteth Park preparing to do a sponsored walk for the charity Stroke Association. Fortunately it was a beautiful day and the whole occasion was enjoyable and well supported. The starting ribbon was cut by the Lord Mayor of Liverpool and we were led off by the children from two nearby schools who also sang beautifully to encourage us. I'm pleased to say that I've raised just over £140, more than I expected and I'm grateful to all those who supported me. If you want to know more about the Stroke Association, go to their website. As I know by experience Stroke comes out of the blue and it's good to know what to do when it happens. <br />
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Last Wednesday, 11th May, I went to St MargaretMary's in Knotty Ash, to give a talk to the Catholic Mothers' group which was very enjoyable, then on the Thursday, I attended a lunch at the Royal Hotel, Crosby to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the forming of Crosby Writers' club. I have been a member for 34years, a good time was had by all and we had a very interesting talk from Amanda Brooke, author who lives Halewood way, which is the south side of Liverpool.<br />
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On Thursday, 19th May, I will be talking and signing books at Crosby Library at 2pm and on Saturday, 28th May, I will be talking and signing copies of my latest books at the WriteBlend bookshop on South Road, Crosby at 2pm. All welcome.<br />
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In July, 'A Sister's Duty' will be released by publishers, Ebury Press in paperback and as an ebook. It was previously published under the title 'For the Sake of the Children' in hardback and paperback.<br />
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I remember way back in my late teens and twenties it was said that Liverpool was dying, people were leaving for the south and emigrating to different parts of the Commonwealth and not only people but companies, including shipping companies, which meant less jobs in my fair city. Then things started to change and it proved that Liverpool was still alive and kicking and it was still a city that had a strong position on the map of Great Britain. Our two fabulous football teams were famous in places far beyond these shores. I never forget going to Austria a few years ago and meeting a man from Latvia and when my husband and I said we were from Liverpool, immediately he recognized the name. Then, of course, there were the Beatles and other music groups who played their part in making Liverpool famous worldwide. And the Grand National horse race has brought crowds flocking in to the city for years and still does.<br />
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Liverpudlian actors and theatres have also played their part - as have writers, and I don't just mean playwrights, such as Willie Russell and Jimmy McGovern, but saga writers, like myself, and Lyn Andrews, Ann Baker, Joan Jonker, Elizabeth Murphy, and the woman who could be said to have started it all, Helen Forrester, I mustn't forget Katie Flynn and Annie Groves/ Sheila Riley. Not all these are Liverpudlians but they have made the city their own. On the crime side I must remember Martin Edwards and Ron Ellis. Then there are also writers, Beryl Bainbridge,Carla Lane, and Lynda La Plante who made their mark on television and the literary scene.<br />
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Now Liverpool is buzzing and it is one of the most popular tourist places in the country. The ships are back in the shape of enormous cruise vessels and it's just great.<br />
Last night son Tim took his camera into the city centre because there was some Light festival or scene going on - also the Beacon was open for visitors to go up to the top where the view would be fantastic. One can also get a brilliant view from the top of the Anglican Cathedral. For information about more events coming up go to the Liverpool website or that of the ECHO.<br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17190244059173638691noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8842308499814574051.post-62610361929261905872016-04-09T03:54:00.000-07:002016-04-09T03:54:03.103-07:00AROUND AND ABOUT NEAR THE MERSEY AND THE DEE:PART 64Friday evening between 6-8 I was at the Frodsham Literary Festival at a Meet the Authors event before there was to be a talk by poet Roger McGough at 9pm. There were 25of us authors with their books on display. Besides my friend Mills & Boon author, Annie Burrows, who lives near Warrington and myself, I knew only about five of the other authors, such as Margaret Murray who writes crime and I think lives in Manchester, but there were children's writers, poets, saga and thriller writers, the author at the next table had come all the way from Ulverston, birthplace of comedian and actor, Stan Laurel, in the Lake District, I wish I could remember her name but it's gone. Next to her was a woman who was a volunteer for VSO who had written of her experiences working in Africa. I found this interesting because I'm a supporter of VSO.<br />
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Actually getting to the event was a chore because although my husband and I had both visited the Frodsham area as children, we had not been there since and I had it fixed in my head that it was on the Wirral but it is in Cheshire and lies close to Runcorn, the other side of a narrow stretch of the Mersey from Widnes, and as a lot of you will know they are joined by the Runcorn Bridge. Fortunately, we discovered that there were road works going on in the area because a new bridge is being built presumably to ease the congestion there, so we decided to have a day out a few days before the festival and take a different route to the town of Frodsham which involved travelling through the Liverpool-Wallasey tunnel and the M53, crossing onto the M56 just before Chester which would take us to Junction 12 Frodsham and Runcorn.<br />
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Our memories of Frodsham were of - in my case, picking blackberries with my mam, sister and brother on the hill, for John, he remembered doing a run up the hill. The town is easy to get around and parking was no trouble. It has some ancient buildings with thatched roofs and a number of shops of the kind you see in small market towns, but there was a Morrison's and a W.H.Smith's. We went into the latter because John wanted to buy a copy of the Highway Code and I was delighted to find some 1000 piece jigsaws priced 2 for £20 with the kind of pictures I liked as doing jigsaws is something I enjoy doing when not writing, swimming or walking or reading. Then we found a fish and chip shop and bought some chips.<br />
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We did not remain in the area to eat them as John had suggested going to Thurstason on the Wirral before we'd left Liverpool as it was ages since we had been there. As children we had been wont to visit there via the ferry to Birkenhead and then bus.<br />
So off we set with the chips wrapped up tightly to keep them warm. We never did reach Thurstason because the journey across to the Wirral took longer than we reckoned on as Thurstason was not mentioned on the motorway boards, so we came off at Heswall and headed in the direction of West Kirkby and Hoylake. We decided to stop in West Kirby and parked on the front where there was a marina with several windsails skimming along the water, so we sat on a bench eating our chips and tuna sandwiches, watching them and looking beyond to the land on the other side of what John told me was the river Dee. We could also see right across the sands to Hilbre island at some point when we walking along the front. A place to which John and I had walked while the tide was out when much younger. <br />
An experience I put in one of my M&B historical novels, REBEL LADY, CONVENIENT WIFE, a story which is set partly in France.<br />
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Maybe it was because I could see Hilbre island that I was half-convinced that the water was not the Dee but the Irish Sea but the next day when I checked out the map, I realised that West Kirkby is just round the coast at the mouth of the river Dee and that's why we could see both Wales across the Dee and the Irish Sea as well. As for Thurstason that was further inland along a minor road and we must have passed it just after Heswall. <br />
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Heswall hospital was the place I was moved to from Myrtle street hospital in Liverpool after fracturing my skull and spine after falling ten feet from a wall at school when I was fourteen. I can't remember a thing about falling or how I came to climb the wall but I do remember being taken through the Mersey tunnel in an ambulance to the orthopaediac ward at Heswall hospital where I had to lie on my back for six weeks. An experience I've used in a saga.<br />
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While sitting at the front in West Kirkby, I thought how we could have saved ourselves a long journey if that was all we were going to do, by heading homewards and travelling just a couple of miles to the marina at Waterloo and then to the front near the coastguard station at Hall Road on our side of the Mersey and the Irish sea. From the latter can be seen the Wirral coast and the Welsh mountains and we can sometimes also see Blackpool tower in the distant northwards.<br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17190244059173638691noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8842308499814574051.post-3127466392457400362016-03-26T05:34:00.001-07:002016-03-26T05:34:47.206-07:00Easter remembered; Part 62When I was a girl living in postwar Liverpool, that is the latter half of the forties and the early fifties, Easter was one of the few occasions when my sister and I were bought a new frock; the other times were Whit and Christmas. We didn't have much say in the style or colour as it was Mam who did the choosing and price was all as she couldn't really afford to buy us frocks and she was no dressmaker or knitter come to that. So it was a case of her getting a cheque from Sturla's on Breck Road and paying the money back over a period of time, either that or visiting a van that used to come round and park on waste ground. We'd go up steps at the back and inside there would be clothes on hangers hung on racks that could be bought on tick. I don't know if Dad knew about these goings-on but I remember Mam running up a bill at Begle's, which was a tiny shop that you reached by going up a back entry and into a yard and thence into a room with a counter and behind that on shelves were groceries. Dad was furious when he discovered Mam was in debt and the bill was paid in double quick time. <br />
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Mam and Dad didn't go to church but us kids were sent to Sunday School at a mission hall, connected to St Chrysostom's church in Everton, so we had to have new frocks for Easter Sunday so Mam thought. Interestingly despite their lack of churchgoing, we not only always had fish on Good Friday but Mam would never hang washing out on the line that day. On Easter Sunday Dad would boil onion skins and place hen's eggs in the water. The eggshells would get a pattern on and turn a different colour. Despite a shortage of money we always were given a chocolate egg as well. A real treat.<br />
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Come Easter Monday, Mum and Dad would take my sister and I out, For some reason our older brothers never came on these outings. Maybe they considered themselves too big to go out with their little sisters and had other plans to do with their mates. Occasionally we would go farther afield to places such as New Brighton by bus and ferry or even to Chester. More often than not it would be to Newsham Park or Sefton Park, the latter meant taking a bus. We would feed the ducks and play ball on the grass.<br />
We would have never thought of these occasions as Quality Time as a lot of working parents and their children regard them now. <br />
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Mam did not go out to work until my younger sister was at secondary school, so for years we had plenty of time to spend with her, unless we were playing out in the street with our friends; games such as skipping, rounders, tick, giant strides, top and whip, two balls, hopscotch, etc. There were numerous games which kept us fit and prevented us from getting overweight. We also walked most places. <br />
This is turning into a real nostalgia indulgence so I'll finish by wishing you all a happy Eastertide. Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17190244059173638691noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8842308499814574051.post-47312062267605096722016-03-20T02:36:00.002-07:002016-03-20T02:37:14.479-07:00WE ARE THE GREATEST: 62Two weeks ago John and I went for a two night break in the Lake District. It only took us an hour and three quarters to get to Ambleside. Staying in the Elder Grove B&B among the guest were four blokes (note that word, not guys but blokes. I am utterly fed up of the use of the word guys which is used not just for men as in the musical Guys and Dolls, but for women and children as well. I don't know how many times my husband and I have been referred to as You guys and as you'll have gathered I don't like it one little bit.) Rant over. <br />
Anyway, these blokes were from Suffolk and one of them asked me 'How long was the drive to Liverpool from Ambleside?'<br />
Apparently it was about fifteen years or so since he had visited Liverpool to see a football match and he would like to go and visit our fair city again and have a proper look around. <br />
I told him he would find it much changed. Immediately he mentioned Liverpool One. I said that there was much more to see than that and named several places , beloved of Liverpudlians and tourists alike so whetted his appetite to set foot in Liverpool even more. Another guest from London stressed how fortunate John and I were living where we did, not only were we within a shortish drive of the Lake District but Chester, the Wirral, North Wales, the Pennines and the beautiful Lancashire countryside as well. <br />
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John and I didn't need telling that because we've always known we live in one of the handiest places to visit beautiful countryside and coast and places of historical interest around as well as having some of the friendliest and quirky characters going. <br />
<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17190244059173638691noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8842308499814574051.post-20133932066946446132016-03-05T00:45:00.001-08:002016-03-05T00:45:16.192-08:00Bay Television: Part 61Last Thursday evening we had a camera crew visit Crosby Writers Club. I had never heard of Liverpool's own television channel until then. The reason for the visit was that our club is celebrating its 70th anniversary this year and it is believed that we are the oldest writers club in the country. During the proceeding I was interviewed about my writing life and membership of the club and I had the opportunity to promote my latest book MANY A TEAR HAS TO FALL as some copies had arrived that morning. I also did my best to promote our libraries which are in danger of vanishing from the face of this fair isle of ours and that is a disgrace. I doubt I would have ever succeeded as a published writer if it were not for our libraries and Crosby Writers Club. For all the talk we hear about the need for literacy for the country's children, there is never mention of the damage that closing our libraries is doing. The part that free public libraries did in helping educating working class poor families is phenomenal and it is time the government and local councils thought again when it came to the subject of what is more important to the nation. <br />
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Right, now I have that off my chest I want to inform you a bit more about Bay Television - according to my son Tim it takes its name from Liverpool Bay which, of course, takes in more than just Liverpool itself. Think of the Wirral for instance.<br />
Anyway, it is on freeview so anyone in the country can view it. I don't know when the film will be shown yet but when I do, I'll blog about it. The programme is a Books programme. In the meantime you could take a look at their website:<a href="http://www.baytvliverpool.com/" target="_blank">http://www.baytvliverpool.com/</a>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17190244059173638691noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8842308499814574051.post-90262002899322564042016-02-20T01:59:00.000-08:002016-02-20T02:15:05.750-08:00Last night I watched this great programme called sea ports about Liverpool: PART 60After a busy day swimming, shopping, writing and reading, my son Iain brought up on iPlayer the above programme which I had missed on Thursday on BBC 2 because I had gone to Crosby Writers Club where Roger Philips of Radio Merseyside was judging our Article Competition, he also told us something about how he because a presenter on Radio Merseyside which proved very interesting. Roger was a Mancunian and for those who haven't heard that term it means he's from Manchester but he is now a honorary Liverpudlian. Anyway the above programme was mentioned as was Liverpool's new cruise ship terminal.<br />
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But the programme was about more than the new cruise ship terminal and all that the team there are doing to make tourists welcome and to get the best out of their visit to Liverpool. We had an insight into the working day of a family of tug boat sailors who tugged large ships along the Manchester Ship canal. Then we were taken to the beautiful island of Anglesey where a couple of pilots awaited a Greek tanker to guide it through the Mersey estuary and along the river to a oil refinery on the Wirral side of the Mersey. I knew already there were wrecks in the river as well as sandbanks.<br />
When I was a girl I was often taken on the ferry across the Mersey to Seacombe or New Brighton and Dad would point out the buoys that marked wrecks of ships sunk during the war. As for the sandbanks, my grandfather was a stoker on a dredger that helped stop the river from silting up. There were lovely views of both coastlines of the Mersey and of course the iconic Liver birds atop the Liver Building always brings a lump to my throat. Apparently Liverpool is one of the few ports were when passengers land they are immediately in the city and there is so much to see of interest in the immediate vicinity.<br />
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There were interviews with some of the tourists from a cruise ship which I think was called Sea Princess; a number of them had come primarily to see the Cavern and Penny Lane because of their links with the Beetles. We also were invited to empathise with some hardy souls who swam across the Mersey for various good causes in terrible weather conditions. We also saw some amateur boat builders on the Wirral, renovating an old sailing boat - smallish - and watched as with the wind in its sails it braved the waves. <br />
The programme finished with shots of the visit of the three queens, Victoria, Mary II and Elizabeth in celebration of Cunard's 100 anniversary - a never to be forgotten sight.<br />
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P.S. At 6-8pm Friday, 8th April, I will be at Frodsham Community Centre at a Meet the Author session as part of the Weaver Words, Frodsham Literary Festival, Wed.6th April to Sunday 10th April. There is a short story competition and various speakers.<br />
for more information visit their website; Weaverwords, Frodsham Literary Festival.<br />
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My website is <a href="http://www.junefrancis.com/">www.junefrancis.com</a><br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17190244059173638691noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8842308499814574051.post-90302892783800832182016-01-30T07:48:00.000-08:002016-01-30T07:48:00.711-08:00I WROTE THIS A MONTH AGO AND THEN WAS UNABLE TO GET ONTO BLOGGER: PART 59<br />
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</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">It’s ages since I’ve
been in Liverpool after dark but having bought tickets for the Liverpool Echo
Carol Concert at the Anglican Cathedral, son, Tim, who goes into the city most
days, decided he would drive us there, avoiding the city centre. It was the
last Friday before Christmas and a lot of the shops would be open for late
night shopping, so it was going to be chaotic. When we said we’d walk down to
Central Station and get the train home, he said, ‘Definitely not as the trains
would be packed. He would come and pick us up.’</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">I’m glad he did.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">The cathedral was
magical with a beautifully lit up Christmas tree and it was packed with people.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">Joe Riley who writes for the Echo was the Compere
and there were several special guests, including Pauline Daniels who has played
Shirley Valentine on the stage, a 14 year old girl, Angelina Dorin-Barlow sang
three solos and had the voice of an angel, John Hayden, an expert on bell-ringing,
spoke about how the clappers on bells are muffled when they ring out the dying
of the old year, but the leather mufflers are removed to ring in the new year
with a joyous sound. The cathedral bells have a claim to fame which Joe told us
about but which I can’t remember now but the cathedral has a very good website
if you want to know more. The really special guests were the Appleton Family
whose son has been undergoing treatment at Alder Hey Children’s Hospital for
the last five years. The concert was in aid of the hospital which is known
worldwide. There were also several guest ensembles: Liverpool Cathedral Youth
Choir, Choirs of St Mary, West Derby, and Holy Trinity, Southport. All the
singing was glorious and I pitied those exhausting themselves doing their
Christmas shopping. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">For me, the occasion brought memories flooding back
because when I attended Liverpool Girls College, our school and St Edmund’s
used to celebrate Ascension Day in a service at the cathedral in the fifties,
there was no shop or restaurant then. I was also confirmed there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As for Alder Hey Hospital, Tim and I were to
visit there over a period of six weeks after Tim fell out of a conker tree and
broke both wrists, cracked a kneecap and broke his nose. It was to be eight
years before his nose was to be fixed as his bones were still growing. At
twenty-one,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>a slither of bone was taken
from his hip and a new bridge made for his nose, but this was done at Whiston
Hospital’s special plastic surgery unit.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">We were also reminded of this when I fell from some
steps outside a shop recently and landed on my nose. Fortunately I
suffered no broken bones but my face was a mess with cuts and a swollen nose
and two black eyes. Still, I’ve had a lot of sympathy from folk and
encouragement from Tim and my husband thinks I’m brave and uncomplaining.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">But setting this aside, I must tell you about the
view from outside the cathedral which stands on St James Mount, we could see
the lit up ferris wheel down by the waterfront and it was down to the
waterfront<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>that Tim took us as he had returned
home earlier via the dock road, after going past the Albert Dock where there
were trees decorated with lights but also a couple of sailing ships. The way
one ship was lit up was in the outline of a Christmas tree.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">Whilst considering the amount of electricity being
used, I was also thinking of my ancestors’ day when they didn’t have
electricity so never had the pleasure that Christmas lights <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>provide us with in the darkest times of the
year.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">Last time I blogged was in September after I
suffered a stroke and I told you I would be taking a break from writing. Well,
now I am writing the next book. "Walking Back to Happiness" and I'm into the era of the sixties. My latest</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">
saga “Many A Tear Has To Fall” will be published in March in hardback. Check out your nearest library.
For those with a Kindle two of my historical romances which I wrote years ago are out in Ebook format
for the first time on Amazon. </span></div>
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">My next paperback will be Lily's War published 21st April</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">P.S. My son Tim Francis also has an E-book up on
Amazon called<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“It’s Still Out There”. A
children’s book that he has written and illustrated.</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">Kindle medieval: Love's Intrigue and My Lady Deceiver.</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">OUT AND ABOUT </span></div>
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">As a local writer I have been invited to appear at the Frodsham Literary Festival at the Community Centre on Friday, 8th April 2016 between 6-8pm to promote my work and sign books.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span><br />
<br /></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17190244059173638691noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8842308499814574051.post-88564214467462727462015-10-10T02:09:00.000-07:002015-10-10T02:09:05.550-07:00You Never Know the Minute. PART 58<br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">I don’t know how many times I’ve heard the above words
spoken when something unexpected has happened but I heard it more often
recently because at the beginning of September I had a stroke. The charity The
Stroke Association have Four letters<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>to
help people if they suspect someone is having a stroke FAST which not only
means fast action is necessary but F for facial weakness, A<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>for arm weakness, S for speech problems and T
for time to call 999 or to get the victim to hospital right away. I was
fortunate in that I was at home<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>with my
husband and two grown up sons and I had some signs- the lower right side of my
face was dragged down and my husband said I was talking gobble de kook. I just
thought I was talking slowly. So he and Son no 2 wasted no time driving me to
Fazakerley hospital straightaway. I saw a doctor immediately and then a stroke
specialist, I had a brain scan, as well as a deep scan on my neck, as well as a
chest x-ray and a heart monitor thingy, this after various tests to check the
strength in my arms<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and legs. During my
time in the hospital I had my pressure, temperature monitored regularly and had
blood tests. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was fortunate in that I
only had a slight weakness in my right arm and I was able to talk almost normal
by then but the stroke had affected my swallow muscles. I was admitted and in a
short while was taken up to Ward 33. I had a room to myself off the main ward
which surprised me, with a toilet and shower off it, as well as a television in
a straight line with the bed. Maybe this was because the main ward was full up.
</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Anyway, I can’t
fault the care and attention I received including the meals I was served, This
despite I could only eat food that could be mashed with a fork or served in
gravy, sauces or custard or yoghurt.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Much is written and said about the National Health <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and of course, no organisation is without its
faults but I consider we are so blessed in our country having such a health
service. </span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">During my life as a writer I have not only had to research
certain illnesses but needed to know the names and situations of hospitals in
Liverpool and various other places. I also had to be certain that they existed
during the period the book was set. Fortunately I remember a little about life
before the Health Service although I was only a small child at the time. I also
have used stories my mother and mother-in-law told me. E.g. my eldest brother,
Ron, caught scarlet fever when he was only a toddler and was taken to the fever
hospital. My mother had to step in a bowl of disinfectant before she could
approach him but was not allowed to get really close to him to give him a hug
but could only talk to him from behind a curtain soaked in disinfectant. My
brother lost his hearing in one ear as a result of the scarlet fever. </span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Interestingly my son’s best friend since primary school lost
his hearing in one ear recently and was sent for a brain scan. IAvailat was
discovered that he had suffered a mini stroke and it was that which had caused
the deafness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">I was in hospital for five days and since being home I have
had visits from the speech therapist and an occupational therapist, as well as
a volunteer from the Stroke Association. I have kept up with facial exercises
for my swallow muscles and my son who has done acting but now has his heart set
on being a film director/ writer put links to voice training exercises on my
computer. My swallow muscles are now strong enough for me to eat a normal diet
but having discussing my writing with the occupational therapist, we came to
the conclusion that it would be sensible for me to take a break and not begin
work on the next novel for a couple of months. Fortunately I had finished the
novel I had been working on before my stroke. The thing is that my brain is
going to be busy repairing itself for a while and needs all the help it can get
from me, so I need also to rest and relax.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">One of the ways I relax is by going to a couple of meetings
the Stroke Association organise in Crosby and Orrell. One is a music meeting
where we sing a mixture of songs which include a fair number from the fifties
and sixties, good for strengthening the voice and face muscles. The other
meeting we have quizzes, the kind where you have to recognise and name faces of
famous people and also tunes, good for the memory. Both meetings are fun and one
is meeting other<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>members of what I call
the SS, STROKE SURVIVORS.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A writer’s
working life is a solitary one, so it has proved good for me to get out and
meet people I wouldn’t meet normally and I’m finding it interesting as a
novelist because I’m spotting characteristics that I can use in my writing, not
that I put real people in my books, too risky, bit the odd interesting
characteristic can colour my writing.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Well, I think that’s all for now as I can’t type as quick as
I used to be able to.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Please check my new website: www.junefrancis.com for news of
my books being issued next year .</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Available now: A<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>DAUGHER’S CHOICE<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>pb<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>EBURY PRESS</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>LOVE LETTERS IN THE
SAND<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>hb<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>SEVERN HOUSE’</span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17190244059173638691noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8842308499814574051.post-60533707850810499162015-08-21T04:34:00.001-07:002015-08-21T04:34:40.052-07:00CITY OF MUSIC: PART 57<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">Liverpool has been in the news a lot lately due to
one of her most famous daughters returning home to her final resting place. We
saw a lot of Cilla Black on the telly in her early days when she was famous for
her singing, rather than her appearances on “Blind Date” or “Surprise,
Surprise. She really could belt a song out and my all time favourite is “Anyone
Who Has a Heart”. Cilla never lost her Scouse accent and yet I’ve never caught
a hint of it when she sang. This despite there are those who have been heard to
say she laid the accent on a bit with a trowel. If she did then that was most
likely because her being a Liverpudlian was so very much part of her persona.
Last time I saw her in the flesh was on at the Empire theatre in Lime Street a
few years ago when she played the fairy godmother in “Cinderella”.
Despite touching seventy as one might expect of a fairy, she flew down onto
the stage (on wires, of course), looking extremely glam in a white and
sparkly gown. She had come a long way from the young girl who wanted to sing and
worked at the Cavern.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"> Now I’m not going to go on about Cilla because you’ll
have read and seen enough about her life since her unexpected accidental death
in Spain. Rather I want to say that it seemed odd to me that
Cilla should be so in the news, just as I’d emailed the manuscript of my latest book, (Many
A Tear Has to Fall), to my publisher. One of my characters, Monica,
sings with a group and appears at the Cavern and is hoping to sign a recording contract
with an agent. The year is 1960 and I remember it well. I never set foot
in the Cavern myself but my husband went there as a teenager, so he was able to
describe it to me. I also have a cousin who later was to work at the Iron Door,
a place that never became as famous as the Cavern. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">The Cavern started out as a jazz club and Maggie,
the heroine of my story, goes there with a jazz enthusiast who is not all that
he seems, but that’s all I’ll say about him at this stage. Music was very much
part of my life as a teenager growing up Liverpool, even though I was never at the centre of the music
scene. But me and the boyfriend would visit the music stores, Cranes,
Hanover Street, Rushworth and Draper’s, Whitechapel, and Nems also on
Whitechapel, to buy records or sheet music. At the time I had no idea that Nems
was owned by the family of Brian Epstein, who was to become the Beetles’
manager, as well as that of other famous musicians and singers on the Liverpool
scene. I was also aware of where the smaller store, Hessy’s was situated near
Dale Street, where would be pop stars, bought their instruments. I never passed through its hallowed doorway but only gazed
through the window at the guitars, saxophones and other instruments on show.
Although both of us had sung in choirs, neither of us ever played
an instrument, although John’s mother had a piano in the parlour as did many a
household in those days.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">It wasn’t until we were married and much older that
John bought his first guitar and taught himself chords and the like, purely
just for fun. At one time he even purchased a mandolin. Our two elder sons
never showed any real music bent, although Iain was in the school choir and
later the church choir. We had to wait until Daniel, son no 3, requested a
keyboard for a prezzie one Christmas before discovering that there was some real
musical talent in the family. He taught himself, not only to play keyboard but
to read and write music. He was eventually to play the organ at St Mark’s Methodist
church in Netherton, as well as our local C of E, St Paul’s,
Litherland. He even had a go at playing various organs around
Merseyside, including the magnificent one at the Liverpool Anglican Cathedral whilst doing an organ course. As well as that he has written the music
for several short films written and directed by son No 2, Tim. <a href="http://www.timjfrancis.com/slate.html">http://www.timjfrancis.com/slate.html</a></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">So where does this love and talent for music come from? I remember whilst doing research for one of my
earlier books FRIENDS AND LOVERS reading that it could be due to the number of Welsh and Irish who settled here, as well as
Liverpool being a port and so it being a haven for sailors who always enjoy a good tune. If that’s true, then it’s certainly in my family’s
blood. Although, I don’t like to discount the part played by the English, Manx, Scots and
Norwegian in my ancestry and a whole host of other Liverpudlians who enjoy a good singsong. </span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">P.S. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I noticed this morning that my book MEMORIES
ARE MADE OF THIS is selling at the reduced price of £1.78 in ebook format on Amazon.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17190244059173638691noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8842308499814574051.post-3034167623022945892015-08-10T04:03:00.000-07:002015-08-10T04:03:03.917-07:00Big News! Big News! : Part 56<span lang="EN">
When I wrote the above title I couldn’t help hearing Cliff Richard singing the song from “Summer Holiday” which came out in 1963 in my head. The film filled me with a desire to go abroad, so fortunately due to my father-in-law having a win of several hundred pounds on the pools that year, John and I were able to spend a fortnight in Majorca for our honeymoon the following year. There was a popular song around then called “Majorca, the Isle of Love.”<br />
</span><span style="font-size: medium;">But I digress. My big news is that my new website is up at </span><a href="http://www.junefrancis.com/"><u><span style="color: blue; font-size: medium;"><span style="color: blue; font-size: medium;"><span lang="EN">www.junefrancis.com</span></span></span></u></a><span style="font-size: medium;"><span lang="EN">. Alleluia! </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: medium;">
My son Tim has worked like a Trojan getting it done in just over a week. I played my part in typing up all the blurbs from my books, as well as various other items that I hope readers will find interesting. Also I had the task of choosing photographs for the background of the various pages. <br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-size: medium;"> We decided not to go for the obvious when it came to photos by having beautiful shots of the Liver building and the waterfront. Instead we chose other lovely places in Liverpool’s fair city. Such as Newsham Park lake with the Seamen’s Orphanage hidden amongst the trees. The orphanage gets a mention in <i>Flowers on the Mersey, </i><i>Tilly’s Story </i>and <em>Sunshine and Showers </em>and the park features in several of my books<em>. </em><br />
<i>
</i>
</span><br />
<span style="font-size: medium;"> There are also shots of Abercrombie Square gardens as background on the saga pages. A couple of scenes from <i>The Pawnbroker’s Niece</i> took place in the gardens and one of my main characters buys a house in the area. It is now part of Liverpool University and during the Thirties when the book is set there is a scene where students are collecting money for Rag Week. An event which I remember as a teenager during the Fifties. If I remember aright the money went to support local hospitals. <br />
There were several members of the Abercrombie family that achieved some fame, including Sir Ralph Abercrombie who fought in the Napoleonic Wars. <br />
On the <b>About June</b> page there is a background photo of a row of merchants houses built during a time when trade made Liverpool affluent for some and resulted in workers from here, there and everywhere flooding into Liverpool seeking their fortune that many sadly did not find, including several of my ancestors. There are also several photographs of me taken at various stages of my life, including one that appeared in the Liverpool <i>Echo </i>in 1949. <br />
For my historical novels we decided on a photograph of part of the ruined Ludlow Castle in Shropshire which my husband and I visited when researching <i>The Man Behind the Façade </i>which was set in Tudor times. <br />
<br />
<i>Having finished my latest</i> ms <i>Many a Tear has to Fall which is with my agent, I’m hoping to get back to the ms I started writing last year about my family, ancestry and Liverpool history, as well as hopefully have some time away from my desk and enjoy the summer, weather permitting. I’m also hoping to catch up on some reading and have taken up the latest craze of colouring books for adults! </i><i> </i></span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17190244059173638691noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8842308499814574051.post-59212948279549383652015-07-22T05:27:00.002-07:002015-07-22T05:28:26.020-07:00WE ALL MAKE MISTAKES WHEN WE HURRY: PART 55<span lang="EN"><span style="font-size: medium;">
</span></span><br />
I was in the ladies changing rooms at Total Fitness this morning getting ready for my swim and one of the women said, ‘So how are you?’ <br />
<br />
‘Fine,’ I said, ‘Finished my manuscript and sent it off to my agent.’<br />
<br />
‘How many is this now?’ she asked. <br />
<br />
I had to think. Was it 35 or 36 books I’d had published? So this one must be number thirty-seven. I found it hard to believe that I could have written at least a million words over the years. <br />
<br />
‘So what will you be doing today?’ She wanted to know. <br />
<br />
‘I must do my blog and then I’ve got to start getting stuff ready for the new website my middle son Tim is going to design for me. The one I have now hasn’t been brought up to date for over a year as my youngest son Daniel who designed and looked after it for me is still on his travels somewhere and as we haven’t heard from him we can’t get into it. <br />
<br />
Big Mistake was not asking him for a password! <br />
<br />
Anyway, back to the changing rooms. I was telling the women how the draft I had sent off was my fourth and one commented on the spelling mistake she had found in a book. <br />
<br />
I said, ‘Some mistakes slip through. In my case this happens despite reading back every day what I’ve written the day previously before continuing with the story. Then it gets read right through again. Then my agent will go through the ms more than once, then I’ll go through it once more, taking note of her comments, then my editor at the publisher’s will read it and I will go through her comments, then it will be printed and we’ll both go through every page checking for mistakes, note any printer’s errors and then go through the final copy as it will appear in book form. By then one would think any errors would have been spotted but as we all know that aint necessarily so. <br />
<br />
Take my last blog for instance. I was reading it through this morning to remind myself of what I had written and there at the very bottom I had made a glaring error. I can only apologise to Bob Stone and Holly Bushnell of WRITE BLEND, book and coffee shop on South Rd, Waterloo, for typing WRITE BREND. I have to confess I was in a hurry to get the blog out there and as an old song goes We All Make Mistakes When We Hurry. Or should that be Worry? <br />
<br />
Can scarcely believe it’s just over a month since I wrote that blog and so have been wracking my brains to come up with what to entertain readers of my blog this time. <br />
<br />
The first idea that struck me was not the above (which I’m now wondering might have been a mistake) but something my husband read out of the Liverpool <i>Echo </i>to me. Apparently the River Mersey is now so clean that you can eat the edible fish you catch in its waters. <br />
<br />
This reminded me of the times I’ve described the Mersey as being khaki coloured. I’m sure I’m not the only one who remembers when it was a dirty oily greeny shade of blue. Although having said that many a crab survived in the rock pools washed by the tide at New Brighton and the same could be said of the jellyfish that could be seen on both sides of the river. <br />
<br />
I confess to missing the sight of the old liners, tugs, cargo ships, dredgers and the New Brighton ferries that used to crowd the Mersey. Container ships and these huge cruise ships just don’t have the same magic in my eyes. Although, no doubt, my mariner ancestors probably had mixed feelings about the passing of the old sailing ships and the arrival of the steamer. Life before the Mast in Victorian times was no fun.<br />
<br />
But at least every now and again there is a week when the modern tall ships arrive and there is something beautiful about a ship in full sail. <br />
<br />
I can recall when the Liver building was blackened with the smoke from thousands of chimneys. When in winter the smog was so bad, you really couldn’t see your hand in front of your face. In a way it was thanks to the deadly Great Smog in London in the fifties which killed hundreds, that the Clean Air Act was passed. <br />
<br />
Over the years some buildings which should have had just a face lift were demolished in Liverpool. ‘Whatta mistaka to maka’ as the Italian captain used to say in “Hello, Hello!”. But there were other buildings, such as St George’s Hall and the India, Liver and Cunard buildings that were given a good scrub and power wash to emerge from beneath the scaffolding and plastic covers to look as good as the day they were built and now give pleasure to thousands, if not millions, of visitors. <br />
<br />
I am reminded of these things because of the manuscript I have just sent off called MANY A TEAR HAS TO FALL which was a hit for Cliff Richard in the sixties and before then it was a hit for Tommy Edwards, known as the silky-voiced crooner, in 1958. My story features characters, who like all of us, make mistakes but come through in the end. <br />
P.S. <em>Must add that this Friday at 7.30pm I'll be going with John and Iain to <strong>Write Blend </strong>to A Midnight Nightmare to listen to the horror writer, Ramsey Campbell. Already I can feel a shiver down my spine. </em><br />
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<em> </em>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17190244059173638691noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8842308499814574051.post-69115795214812229792015-06-20T05:29:00.000-07:002015-07-22T05:31:14.322-07:00THE HAPPIEST DAYS OF YOUR LIFE: PART 54<span lang="EN">
Early this morning I was getting myself geared up to write something for my blog about A DAUGHTER’S CHOICE which hit the shelves in paperback format a couple of days ago (it’s also available as an e-book). It’s the sequel to A MOTHER’S CHOICE but the action is set seventeen years later at the end of the fifties. But then I discovered there was a classic B&W film on BBC 2 called THE HAPPIEST DAYS OF YOUR LIFE. Made in 1950 it starred those stalwarts of the British film industry of the times Alastair Sims, Margaret Rutherford and Joyce Grenfell, as well as other familiar faces to those of us who remember when a trip to the flicks several times a week was one of our prime entertainments. <br />
I plonked myself down on the sofa, glad that I’d only missed the first ten minutes and remained there until the credits at the end. The action takes place in a boys boarding school and, due to a mix-up at the Ministry of Education, on the first day of term the girls from St Swithin’s turn up, having been sent to the boys’ college due to their school having been damaged during the blitz. You can use your imagination to what happens next. It’s very much a film of its time so don’t be thinking St Trinian’s. <br />
Children’s books set in boarding schools were popular in the fifties. Despite a lot of the readers were ordinary working class kids like myself. For boys there were the Billy Bunter series by Frank Richards and the Jennings books by Anthony Buckeridge. As well as Enid Blyton’s Famous Five adventures stories, I read her boarding school tales set at St Mallory’s and St Clare’s, although some of the latter were written in the forties. Boarding school stories also appeared in comics such as the Hotspur and Wizard for boys and Girls’ Crystal and School Friend for the likes of me. Obvious the writers also believed that schooldays were the happiest of your life.<br />
When I was at Liverpool Girls’ College during the fifties, there were grownups who told us the same thing. Maybe they were remembering the long summer holidays when they were young. Once they started work at fourteen or fifteen, there were few holidays and no doubt they missed that freedom of wandering where they willed, playing in the street or losing themselves in a book or in films at the kids matinee. <br />
When I was trying to learn Latin verbs in class I can’t say I felt happy and don't get me started on Mathematics. English and History I loved and the summer holidays. </span><br />
<span lang="EN"> But I have to admit and have probably said it before that I remember the latter half of the fifties with fondness and that is why I enjoy writing about that era. The scars of the blitz were beginning to disappear and rationing was over. When I left school in 1958 and got myself a job, rock’n’roll was all the rage as were net underskirts beneath flared skirts, waspie belts and pony tails. Dad bought our first telly even though the reception wasn’t always brilliant and I bought my first bike from my own wages. </span><br />
<span lang="EN"> In 1959 Liverpool’s first mass X-Ray campaign took place and within a few years time the scourges of TB and polio would be almost eradicated from our country. Also in 1959 Bill Shankly became manager of Liverpool football club and Alun Owen’s NO TRAMS TO LIME STREET was shown on telly much to the shock horror of some of Liverpool’s citizens who complained to the Liverpool <i>Echo </i>that it had given the wrong image of our fair city to the viewers. <br />
Not that all these snippets get a mention in A DAUGHTER’S CHOICE, although just like myself, heroine Katy was at that age where clothes and music played a big part in her life and a night out at the Grafton dance hall was not to be missed. She also found a boyfriend.
But Katy has problems that played no part in my life, one of them finding out that the couple she believed to be her parents weren’t and naturally this discovery was to change her life. I really enjoyed writing this book. <br />
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On Saturday 27<sup><span style="font-size: medium;">th</span></sup> June at 1pm I will be giving a short talk and be available for signing copies of A DAUGHTER’S CHOICE at Write Blend, a new book and coffee shop on South Road in Crosby. You can find it a few shops down near the Liverpool Road end, on the left hand side <br />
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</span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17190244059173638691noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8842308499814574051.post-18610319024155552642015-05-24T07:45:00.000-07:002015-05-24T07:45:01.274-07:00I SAW THREE SHIPS COME SAILING IN: PART 53<span lang="EN">It’s Whit Sunday and when I was a little girl this would be the day I’d be wearing a new frock and white pumps because Whit was a religious bank holiday when we celebrated Pentecost and the Holy Spirit descending. Some of us still do. But a lot of people in Liverpool will be are celebrating three ships sailing in to the Mersey. <br />
The last fortnight or so a lot of publicity has been given to Liverpool FC captain, Steven Gerrard, who is leaving our fair city for America. He’ll probably travel by jet but in the fifties most likely he would have gone by luxury liner. He could do the same now because over the last decade or so cruising has suddenly become extremely popular. So it’s not surprising that the <i>Echo </i>has given even more space in their newspaper to the arrival of the three Queens in the Mersey this weekend. They are the super duper liners, Queen Elizabeth, Queen Mary 2 and Queen Victoria and it isn’t only the city that has been alerted to their arrival. Thousands and thousands of visitors are expected to invade the waterfronts both sides of the Mersey, jostling to get the best view of this unusual sight.
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My fellow Liverpudlian novelist Lyn Andrews is coming over from the Isle of Man to travel on one of the Queens. Her very first Liverpool based saga was called <i>THE WHITE EMPRESS </i>so it’s not surprising she has a strong link with Cunard liners. Elsie and Keith, a couple from my church, St Paul’s, Hatton Hill, are members of the Cunarders and will be sailing on the Queen Mary 2, having boarded the ship at Southampton and cruised to Cork and Dublin and then across the Irish Sea to Oban before sailing down the coast to Liverpool (if I have my facts right) before sailing to Guernsey. During the cruise they will celebrate their joint 87<sup><span style="font-size: medium;">th</span></sup> birthdays. Even Carole and Norman, who own the b & b, in Ambleside where my husband and I stayed last week will be in Liverpool to join one of the Queens for a cruise. <br />
<i> THE QUEENS: </i>This leads me to question why isn’t one of the liners named after a King of the British Isles? Why no King George VI? Even Henry VIII’s ship that sank in the 16<sup><span style="font-size: medium;">th</span></sup> century was named after his sister the <i>Mary Rose </i>and one of the ships that sailed with Christopher Columbus was called the <i>Santa Maria</i>. The queen’s erstwhile royal yacht was named <i>Britannia </i>that A at the end signalling that she was regarded as feminine. <br />
On the whole masculine names seemed to be used for fighting ships and aircraft carriers. My mother’s cousin’s ship was <i>The Black Prince </i>which was torpedoed during WW1 and sunk with the loss of hundreds of men. <br />
Naturally as a writer of Liverpool based sagas I have used shipping and sailors in several of my novels. The book I remember most is <i>FLOWERS ON THE MERSEY. </i>For research I paid a visit to the Maritime Museum down by the Albert Dock. It had not long been open when I went there. I was able to go on a mock-up of one of the emigration ships with sound effects. I also purchased a copy of a slim book that gave all kinds of information about voyages to places such as Australia. I was able to discover the kind of food that was served. For further information about liners I bought a book called <i>FALLING STAR Misadventures of White Star Line ships. </i>The <i>Titanic</i> was one of them but it was some of the other tales which brought tears to my eyes. The book was extremely useful when it came to describing a collision between two ships in the fog in FLOWERS ON THE MERSEY. <br />
I always try to use real names of ships in my books and so I was able to use the <i>Corinthia</i> in a recent novel IT’S NOW OR NEVER set in the fifties because my cousin, Maureen, had sailed on that ship to Canada.<br />
I have crossed the Mersey by ferry numerous times and even cruised along the river one evening on the <i>Royal Iris. </i>I have crossed the Irish Sea to Ireland and the Isle of Man, as well as visiting the Isle of Skye and the isle of Iona in the Hebrides. It took some time before I crossed the English Channel to France and sailed round part of the coast of Crete. <br />
But I have never been on a cruise on a big liner because my husband is a fell runner and so he prefers terra firma where there are mountains. If I did ever get the opportunity to go cruising I would choose to visit the fjords in Norway because that is the country where my mariner great-great- grandfather, Hance Nelson and his mariner son, Martin, my great-grandfather were born. Martin married a Liverpool lass from Toxteth. As it is for now I think I’ll just have to make do with gazing in wonder at the beautiful Queens of the Sea, Elizabeth, Mary 2 and Victoria.
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<a href="http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/three-queens-liverpool-2015-queen-9319505">http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/three-queens-liverpool-2015-queen-9319505</a><br />
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</i> </span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17190244059173638691noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8842308499814574051.post-58581065851303158082015-05-02T08:00:00.000-07:002015-05-02T08:55:33.240-07:00IF YOU WANT TO KNOW THE TIME ASK A POLICEMAN: PART 52.<br />
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">When I was a little girl the above words were often spouted because few
of us in our neighbourhood had watches. In fact a lot of us had very little of
this world’s goods and so it made sense to believe it was perfectly safe to
leave your doors unlocked and sometimes open. But just as there were policemen
on the beat in those days there were also thieves about. I remember our gas
meter getting broken into and all the pennies in the wooden moneybox Dad had
made me were stolen.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I doubt the crime was reported
to the police but Dad set about creating his own deterrent that would chop <i>their
</i>fingers off if they tried to get in our house again and rob our meter or my
pennies.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Growing up in the forties
and fifties I developed what some called a healthy fear and respect for the
police and other people’s property. Even walking along someone else’s wall and
seeing a policeman approach would have me scrambling to the ground like
lightening. When I found a ten shilling note amongst the autumn leaves on the way
to the flicks I didn’t keep it but handed it in to the nearest man in uniform
who just happened to be the retired soldier who was the doorman at the
cinema.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My cynicism these days
suggests that no doubt he pocketed it and bought himself a couple of pints when
he knocked off work. My husband was also brought up honest. When he found a suitcase full of the old white five pound notes he took it home and showed his dad, who instantly
ordered him to take it to the police station in Tuebrook and hand it in. This he did and
that was the last he heard of it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">The closest I ever got to a
policeman was when one visited our primary school to give us a puppet show and
teach us our kerb drill. </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Occasionally at home there
would be mention of someone called Icky the fire bobby who would come and lock
us up if we didn’t behave. But he never did make an appearance. Our
neighbourhood was working class but reasonably respectable. Although I remember
hearing of a punch up outside the chippy around the corner and a lad getting
his eye gorged out. My eldest brother’s brush with the police would seem
ludicrous today in that he was taken to court and fined for playing football in
the street.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Why am I chunnering on about
the police, etc.?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Early yesterday my husband and I were doing our early morning walk.
Normally we only meet dog walkers, cyclists and the odd jogger. We certainly
didn’t expect to come across a very youthful looking policeman standing on the
path. In the background we could see that tape one sees on telly in such
programmes as <i>Lewis, Midsummer Murders </i>and <i>George Gently</i> which
generally signals a crime scene.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Jokingly I said, ‘I’m waiting
for you to say “You shall not Pass” just like Gandalf does in the <i>Fellowship
of the Rings</i>.’</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>‘Sorry, you can’t pass,’ he
said apologetically.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">So we had to retrace our steps
and make our way home by a different route. It was not the first time we’ve
encountered a policeman on our walk. A few years ago there was a naked body in
the canal which fortunately had already been reported to the police by a couple
of fishermen. The police arrived a few minutes after we did and we were quickly
escorted away from the spot. Not a pleasant experience as it reminded me that
one of my aunts had drowned in the Leeds-Liverpool just a few miles away
beneath a bridge in Kirkdale. It was during WW2 and I was only a toddler at the
time so was unaware of the tragedy.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So where do the police figure in my writing?</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">My son, Tim, who has a degree
in Screenwriting from John Moores University, had an idea to write a series
about a police family. It never got to the screen because it was a period piece
and he knew that it would be expensive to put on. He suggested I had a go at
writing about a police family. I had already written a saga about the
Liverpool’s police strike of 1919 a few years earlier called <i>SOMEONE TO
TRUST </i>and enjoyed doing the historical research.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">So bearing Tim’s idea in mind
and I decided to do more research. In the library I was recommended a book
called <i>From Cutlasses to Computers - The Police Force in Liverpool 1836-1989</i>.
I found it fascinating and it gave me a respect and admiration for those
earlier pioneers trying to bring law and order to Liverpool’s city streets and
for those today, including policewomen who also helped with my research.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">My police family can be found
in <i>MEMORIES ARE MADE OF THIS and IT’S NOW OR NEVER published by Severn
House. </i>Ask at your nearest library.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"> </span><br />
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">P.S. In today's Liverpool <em>Echo</em> it was reported that a man had allegedly been sexually assaulted in Rimrose Valley Country Park on Thursday night. The police were called to the crime scene. </span></div>
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