Part 36: WHEN YOU COME TO THE END...

It came as a bit of a shock to me to realise that it’s over a month since I’ve blogged but I’ve told myself I should’ve feel bad about that because I’ve been working really hard getting to the end of my latest manuscript LOVE LETTERS IN THE SAND. Actually I didn’t get right to the end before sending it off to my agent because I reached a point where I thought I’ve had enough, I’m over the word limit and it could be that it might need another book to come to the end of the story and my deadline is the 1^st September … panic, panic. So I emailed it off to my agent and waited for her comments. She told me to spend some time thinking while she went through it and that’s what I did.

During the last fortnight or so I’ve been through her copy edits and comments and on Thursday evening I came to the end of the rewrite, feeling satisfied with myself, and emailed it off to her. I did have to bring the action forward a bit which meant reading through the notes, my researcher son, Iain, had done of events in 1958 as reported in the Liverpool Echo of the times and do a bit of research online but I think the story all hangs together and hopefully, my agent, publisher and readers will enjoy it.
    The titles of my latest books set in the Fifties are taken from songs. Not surprisingly as to me that decade has a lot to do with music, so when I felt stumped for a title for this latest entry for my blog I naturally began to think of songs and what came into my head was “When You Come to The End of …a Lollipop” which immediately made me smile and go online …and what came up but Max Bygraves singing the song on You Tube. (I did try to do a link to this but it was so difficult that I gave up but just google it if you want to see it.)
      I sometimes think that some of the words of today’s hits are crackers but after listening to Max singing what was a hit in 1960 I decided that there were some daft songs around in my younger days, too. It made me come over all nostalgic, though, because the version I watched showed a variety of lollipops and I could almost taste the Swizzels solid sherbet kind you gnawed on or gobstoppers that you could suck for ages and then there were sherbet dips and even toffee lollipops, as well as fruit flavoured ones. On the telly last evening there was a programme about how to make your own lollipops. I don’t think I’ll be making any but I will be making chocolate and sultana bread and butter pudding this evening as we’ve a friend coming to dinner.

     But since coming to the end of the manuscript and thinking about my blog, I homed in on its title AND THEY CAME TO LIVERPOOL which originally referred to my ancestry but now contains much more than just that. In the past month Liverpool have had a visit from the Giants. Whilst I didn’t actually go and see them myself, my photographer and filmmaker son, Tim, did, and as he knew one of the girls who was helping out with the project (she spoke French) he was able to get some interesting shots.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/timfilmmaker/   This is Tim's photo stream, to see the Giants, scroll down and you'll eventually come to them.

Of course, there were also lots of photographs in the Liverpool Echo and on North West television of the Giants, their tour of the city and their leaving of Liverpool by ship for France. They were such an attraction that thousands and thousands of people came to Liverpool to see them.

      There was a time when I was younger when the city was in decline and more and more people were leaving for pastures new. My brother Ron, left with his wife and baby daughter in 1959 for Essex, in the sixties my sister went to Cheshire, and several of my cousins went to America and Canada. Now Liverpool attracts many tourists from all over the world, thanks in part to the Beatles and the music scene, but also to its fabulous maritime history and its situation on the Mersey and it being within easy travelling distance of so many beauty spots on the Wirral, Cheshire, Wales, Lancashire and the Lake District.

      Recently I’ve been reading two books by the same author, Michael Mitton. One is called DREAMING OF HOME and the other TRAVELLERS OF THE HEART. In brief, the first is about finding a sense of home, a special place of acceptance and belonging. The second is about exploring new pathways on our spiritual journey, although it spoke to me about much more than that. I reckon it take a lot of courage to up stakes and go in search of that something you haven’t found yet.

      Now I’ve come to the end of my latest saga, I want to step out of my comfort zone and put parts of my blog in some semblance of order and turn it into a book, or even a couple of short books with extra material.

I forget where I might have read it but isn’t it true that in every ending there is also a beginning.