PART 31: WHERE DO IDEAS COME FROM?

 GLIMPSES FROM THE PAST
This week I’ve been doing two writerly things: filling in a questionnaire for Ebury Books in connection with my forthcoming release in August of A MOTHER’S DUTY and also I’ve been working on the second draft of my latest book in progress LOVE LETTERS IN THE SAND. I enjoy this stage of writing because I’ve a good chunk of the story written and it is a matter of putting in more emotion, action and description but there are also gaps to fill in.

On Friday I was writing a new scene. Irene Miller, who has featured in some of my other books, is now a trainer nursery nurse in the late fifties. I’ve done some research on the subject but it’s not always easy setting up a scene when you don’t have that much information. But having read that part of the toddlers’ routine was having a ramble or walk in the morning online, I placed Irene with another nursery nurse and some children on a walk to the beach in Blundell Sands.

An idea struck me that I could have them chanting nursery rhymes on the way. This meant my scene would hopefully contain some realistic dialogue. Inexplicably the nursery rhyme that came into my head was Georgie Porgie, Pudding and Pies. The second line is kissed the girls and made them cry. Immediately I had a name for one of the little boys and the words to put in his mouth.  (There’s a lovely site on the internet that tells you where this nursery rhyme and others originated from.) http://www.rhymes.org.uk/
　
   Thinking of nursery rhymes took me back, not to the days when I was learning them myself but when I bought this enormous book of Nursery Rhymes to read to my own children. It had amusing illustrations and more rhymes than I had ever heard of and can remember now but it’s surprising what does come to mind.

My mind seldom stops working and I was reminded last Sunday whilst watching “Country File” of several days I spent on retreat near Whitby in Yorkshire because that’s where part of the programme was set. Mention was made of jet which can only be found in that area. It is fossilised monkey puzzle tree and jet was made into jewellery and was extremely popular with widows in Victorian times. In my book IT’S NOW OR NEVER I have a character who never actually appears but gets a mention as does Whitby and jet jewellery. Then on “Flog It” the other day Fireweed was mentioned as growing on bombed sites in London. And I was reminded that was another name given to Rosebay willow herb which also grew on what we called bombed hollas in Liverpool after the war. One of those snippets of information I remembered from childhood and put in a couple of my books set in 40s Merseyside.
 
Earlier this morning whilst walking and thinking of my writing, Maggie Thatcher popped into my mind and the rhyme, Maggie Thatcher, milk snatcher. When was this? In 1971 when she was Education Secretary and wanted to pass an act through parliament which meant children over 7 would no longer get free milk at school.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/7932963/How-Margaret-Thatcher-became-known-as-Milk-Snatcher.html
 Milk for secondary school children had been stopped in 1968 by Harold Wilson’s Labour government. It was the former Labour government leader, Clement Atlee who had introduced free milk for school children under 18 in 1946. 

I well remember as a child drinking my third of a pint through a straw along with the other 51 children in my class. I’m sure many other war babies like me and post-war ones, too, do. Which mean I can have my nursery infants in the 1950s drinking their free milk on their return from their walk. A true glimpse from the past.



　

PART 30: MY LOVE OF BOOKS AND BOOKSHOPS - TODAY AND ALL MY YESTERDAYS

 

On Saturday I went along to Formby Books to do a signing. Fortunately Tonythebook (Higginson) had some of my books in stock because the order he had put in two days before, including my latest book, had not arrived. These things happen as many a novelist will tell you. The lovely Jane Costello was also there to meet fans and sign copies of her novels. I had met Jane when she came to talk to the North West Chapter  of the RNA a couple of years ago. Her latest book is called THE TIME OF OUR LIVES and in brief is about a group of girlfriends going on holiday abroad where all sorts of mishaps happen. Unlike my books it is set in modern times.


https://www.facebook.com/june.francis1?fref=ufi  This link will take you to some photographs.

The highlight of the hour for me was when someone asked, ‘Is June Francis here?’ The lady asking was called Elsie and her family used to live in the street where I grew up off Whitefield Road in Anfield. She had seen the board outside Formby Books advertising that I would be there between 11-12. When she told her mother, another Elsie Clarke, aged 88, who still lives in Liverpool, she was given her orders to go and buy a signed copy of one of my books and make herself known. She had brought photographs of her mum and other members of the family. It was a real thrill, knowing that she and her mother remembered our family so well, especially my mother and brother, Don, and me. She took a photo of me for her mum and we exchanged email addresses.

      Several members of Formby Writers’ Group came along to chat, ask writing advice and bought some of my books. One of them, David, had asked me to read his manuscript several years ago and I’m pleased to say the book about his Irish childhood and growing years made it into print in the US of A.

     I must admit that talking of years gone by and being in a bookshop made me come over all nostalgic. I remember clearly my father first taking me to choose my birthday present - I think - it was my tenth birthday. I wanted a book but there were no bookshops nearby, so we visited the post office on Breck Road, the one near Belmont Road for those who might remember it.

     The books were all hardback and kept in a locked glass fronted cabinet. It was such a thrill getting my hands on the latest Famous Five book by Enid Blyton. Although I visited the local library every week, it was tremendously difficult borrowing a copy of Enid Blyton’s books because they were incredibly popular and never on the shelves.

      We had very few books in our house because there just wasn’t money to spare for such luxury items. My father had just one or two to do with art and sigh-writing and, of course, we had the family Bible that I think had been my grandfather Nelson’s. My eldest brother, Ron, possessed a book of WW2 spy stories, one on ju-jitsu and a copy of CORAL ISLAND. I think it was my brother Don, who had the TARZAN books. I sneaked them from their rooms because I was so greedy for reading material. I also read their comics: The Hotspur, The Wizard, The Dandy, The Beano, Radio Fun and Film Fun. But I also read School Friend and occasionally Girls’ Chrystal and The Girl.

      The year I was given my very first book, Dad bought me another for Christmas which again I was able to choose for myself from the Post Office’s locked cabinet. Of course, it was another Enid Blyton but one of the Adventure series with Jack and his parrot Kiki and sidekicks.

     Such books were so valued not only because I so love reading to learn and for escapism, but because my father would have had to save up to buy those books for me.

     Those visits to the post office became a twice yearly event which I looked forward to for months on end. When I was about fifteen I cadged an old orange box from the local greengrocer and painted it blue and used it as a bookcase. By then I had my own very limited library enlarged by the DAILY MAIL ANNUAL and SCHOOL FRIEND ANNUAL which my Aunt Flo and Uncle Bill, and Mam used to buy me at Christmas. I learnt the names of the planets from the DAILY MAIL ANNUAL, as well as the words to The Twelve Days of Christmas.  

       I never went inside a real bookshop until I started work and earned my own money. Working in Liverpool city centre I used to go out for a walk at lunch time and not far away was Wilson’s bookshop on Renshaw Street. The other bookshop I loved was Phillip, Son and Nephew’s in White Chapel. I would visit these shops and the book departments in big stores such as Blackler’s and Lewis’s, as well as W.H.Smith’s.

      Alas, not only have the best two bookshops in Liverpool closed down but so have Blackler’s and Lewis’s. As for W.H.Smith’s, it went and moved from the lovely building in Church Street where I used to do signings of my own books to the one in Liverpool One, which for me will never match up to its former home in Liverpool.

      On Tuesday by special request I visited Formby Books again. As it was a lovely sunny Spring morning, I sat outside the shop behind a table containing my books which had at last arrived and chattered to fans of my books and passers-by and sold quite a few books. This really is the way to do it, I thought.

     Alas, independent bookshops are getting fewer and fewer. The internet might have put us in touch with a larger market so we have more choice and e-readers do have certain advantages over paper books but they lack the wonder and magic I found as a child in public libraries, the old post office and our independent bookshops. It’s the same with supermarkets, books might be cheaper there but they don’t have the range that the independent have, mainly just bestsellers. Neither would I think of asking the staff for advice and to recommend a book. I know time can’t stand still - thank goodness or the working classes might never have the opportunity to learn to read - most of my great-great grandparents certainly couldn’t read or write - and there’s much I love about the new technology but there are some things that I will always feel nostalgic for and I don’t think I’m alone. 

         

 

 

PART 29: SIGN WITH AN X

  I’ve just finished reading a book recommended to me by Tonythebook of Formby Books called THE ROSIE PROJECT by Graeme Simsion who is an Aussie. Previously an IT consultant with an international reputation and married to a professor of psychiatry who writes erotic fiction, this is his first novel. It gets good reviews and some stress that it’s a laugh-out-loud book. I enjoyed the novel and learnt something from it which is something I like to do when reading. But I didn’t laugh out loud once! I put that down to my age and you, dear reader, might find it hilarious. Years ago when I saw THE PINK PANTHER for the first time I nearly choked because I was laughing so much but when I saw it recently, alas, I only smiled faintly.

     When checking my emails earlier I received one from the VSO (Voluntary Services Overseas). It was sent by a man in Nepal, who was telling me about the different my support makes to those girls, who without it, wouldn’t have been able to go to school and learn to read and write.

     The thought of not being able to read or write fills me with horror. Yet if I’d been born two hundred and fifty/two hundred and sixty years ago into a working class family in Liverpool, it was highly likely that I would have been illiterate. In 1865 when my Norwegian mariner great-grandfather Martin Nelson, married my great-grandmother, Mary Harrison, neither of them could sign their name but made their mark with an X.

     I’ve often wondered why an X? Why not an O or another letter? It’s the same with voting papers or questionnaires. Why an X?

     By the time their son, my grandfather, William Nelson married my grandmother Ada Florence Cooke in 1896 now they had been taught to read and write and were able to sign their own names.

     Education is a marvellous thing.

     Whenever I do a talk on how I became a writer and my writing life, I always mention how my dad taught me my alphabet from a sign writing book. The letters were in all different kinds of scripts, some fancy, some plain, but I learnt my letters backwards and forwards before I went to school. That book was the only one in our house barring another one on how to draw figures. They were in Dad’s possession because he had a sideline in sign writing for shops and also enjoyed drawing, painting and making plaster models, him being a plasterer. If there had been more money in the family, then he might have become a commercial artist as his commanding office suggested when he was demobbed from the army after the war. He used his talent to decorate the envelopes containing the letters he wrote to my mother while in the army. I’ve often wondered where he got his artistic talent from and whether there were ever any-would-be writers in my ancestry. I suppose I'll never know but both my brothers followed in my father's footsteps and I have originals by my eldest brother Ron on my wall.
 http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/f/june-francis/ 


Above is a link to all my covers, including the latest ones to be published and reissued under a different title this coming year.

    

        

PART 28: IF YOU EVER GO ACROSS THE SEA TO IRELAND...

For hundreds of years the Irish have been leaving Ireland’s shores but their patron saint, Patrick, whose day is celebrated on Monday, did it in reverse. He wasn’t Irish but a native of Briton in the 5^th century. Believed to have been kidnapped by pirates at the age of sixteen, he was taken as a slave to Ireland and lived there for six years before escaping and returning to his home in Briton. He became a cleric and eventually returned to northern and western Ireland as a missionary and in later life became Bishop of Armagh.

Of course, there will be celebrations in Liverpool of one kind or another this weekend and on St Patrick’s Day, what with the city boasting a large number of Irish. There’ll be food, music and dancing.  Liverpool FC headquarters is said to be putting on a special menu that day which will include potato and leek soup with soda bread for starters and finishing with chocolate bread and butter pudding. No doubt Irish whiskey and Guinness will be the drinks of the day. 

 

I was amused to find online that - just for fun -  you can play a scene from films of the worst Irish accents created by famous film stars -  they included - Tom Cruise, Sean Connery, Kevin Spacey, Brad Pitt, and I must  mention Irishman, Pierce Brosnan. It also says somewhere else that a number of famous people (mainly Americans) claim to have Irish blood. Writers have to be careful about dialect. Overdo it and the reader cannot understand what your characters are talking about. So I'm careful to play the Liverpool accent down and have just one talking the lingo.

 

I’ve probably mentioned before that I was one of those Liverpudlians who when I went to Ireland, denied having  a drop of the Irish in my veins. The taxi driver in Co Mayo on the west coast, refused to believe my sister and I, saying if you came from Liverpool, you were bound to have some Irish in you. His words have since proved prophetical because I discovered on Ancestry that I have a great-great-great grandfather who was born in Ireland, also my husband’s grandfather was born in Co Antrim. The Irish family connection was strengthened when one of my nieces, Christine, married an Irishman. The wedding took place, not far from Naas, which happened to get a mention in one of my old Mills & Boon romances set in Ireland during the reign of Richard II. It was great fun writing it because for me Ireland had a touch of magic about it even in those days. As according to legend, St Patrick discovered in his day when he battled against the Druids for the souls of the Irish and eventually won.

 

PART 27: IT'S THAT TIME AGAIN This blog is copywrited.

Today is the first Sunday in Lent and last Wednesday (Ash Wednesday) signalled the beginning of a time when thousands of people decide to give up something they enjoy, such as chocolate, wine or cake for Lent. This despite the fact that often they’d say that they weren’t religious. I only discovered recently that some churches burnt the palm crosses from the previous years Palm Sunday and it is the ash from them that the priest would smear on penitents' foreheads at the start of Lent. I purchase the palm crosses for my church from a church in London, who see to the distribution of them throughout the country. They, in turn, buy them from a village in Africa called Masasi. They aren’t expensive but they provide a welcome income for the villagers who make the crosses from palm leaves.

When I was young growing up in Liverpool my parents weren’t churchgoers, although us children were sent to Sunday School with our penny collection clutched tightly in our hands. The one I went to was in Dawber Street, and was attached to St Chrysostom’s Church on Queens Road, Everton. Along with the stories my father told me, those Bible stories I learnt at Sunday School made a big impression on me as they were full of drama and courage and often humour. I also learnt to think of others worse off than myself. We used to collect halfpennies to help the Leprosy Mission, although I think in those days it was called Mission to the Lepers. It was a marvelous day years later when I heard about the drugs that had been developed to cure leprosy. There’s a wonderful novel by Victoria Hislop called “The Island” The title refers to Spinalonga, off the coast of Crete, that was a leper colony. The story stirs the emotions and deserved to be the million best seller that it was.

We kids also used to go to a Christian Endeavour hall on Breck Road where they would show films and sometimes lantern slides. It was there I saw my first photo of a chimpanzee so that when later we went to watch Tarzan films at the local cinema, I recognised Cheetah, Tarzan’s animal companion, straightaway.

This Lent I’m not really giving anything up but rather taking something up. There’s a book I read every now and again called “Finding Sanctuary” by Abbot Christopher Jamison who had an important role in the TV series THE BIG SILENCE and THE MONASTERY. "Finding Sanctuary" also has a sub title, Monastic Steps for Everyday Life. I grew up C of E but in the Seventies the ecumenical movement took off and, I’m glad to say, the different denominations of Christianity in our area came together during Lent and we got to see the inside of each other’s churches when we met to study aspects of our faith. So different to when I considered it daring to peep inside a Catholic church.

The book led me to a website called Sacred Space. It’s organised by Irish Jesuits and there is a Daily Prayer and reading for each day. You can also click on a Guide button and Looking for Inspiration button which is helpful for meditation. So I plan to visit the site everyday. The good ol’ C of E also has a good website with readings and prayers which I’ve often visited when leading the prayers in my church.

It’s good to mark off the year with special occasions. My mother always made pancakes on Shrove Tuesday which was often at half term and we always had fish on Fridays. Come the end of Lent no doubt it will be fish and hot cross buns in our house and chocolate eggs on Easter Sunday to celebrate the Resurrection of Jesus and the new growth of Spring. One of the first pieces of writing I had published in MY WEEKLY magazine was about Easter Customs, come Easter, maybe I'll remember to blog part of the article.

PART 26:WINDY WEATHER, FROSTY WEATHER WITH OCCASIONAL SUNSHINE! All these blogs are copywrited.

When I was a kid, there used to be rhymes we’d chant on different occasions. One was Windy weather, frosty weather, when the wind blows, we’ll all blow together. I used to sing it with my boys when they were small, making a game of the walk to school or the shops. We’d hold hands and run and then on the all blow we’d swing together and collide into each other. There was also When the North Wind doeth blow, and we shall have snow and what will the robin do then, poor thing? He’ll sit in a barn to keep himself warm and hide his head under his wing, poor thing. I was curious enough about the latter to google it and discovered that it is British and believed to date from the 16^th century, which means that probably my ancestors recited it when they were children.

    Growing up in Liverpool I don’t remember ever seeing a barn and the only robins would be on Christmas cards. Sparrows, pigeons and gulls were the only birds with which I was familiar. It’s different today because we have a garden and at this time of year all kinds of birds are regular visits to the seeds, nuts, bread and other scraps John puts out for them. We also do the same on our early morning walk across the Leeds-Liverpool canal and the field that leads to Waterloo.  

I’m reminded of these rhymes due to the atrocious weather that has been hitting Britain and is still giving so many people a miserable time. Fortunately Merseyside hasn’t come off too badly. A week or so ago on Windy Wednesday the worst damage our property suffered was a buckled fence panel and a toppled plant pot. We’ve had scarcely any frost and some of last year’s geraniums are still flowering in a pot just outside the back of the house.

Whenever my son, Iain, does research for me, I always ask him to check the weather at times, such as Christmas, New Year’s Eve, Easter and various bank holidays as I consider it plays very much a part in our lives. There are certain years that stand out in my memory. Early 1947 was when the snow seemed to last forever and snowman lingered for ages as did the icy slides in the street and on the bombed holla where there had once been a church. The summer that year was a hot one when the tar between the cobbles in Whitefield Road melted and we’d poke at it with lolly ice sticks. 1976 was the long hot dry summer during which I sat the exam for Geography O level whilst pregnant with my youngest son, we also bought our first car for which we paid a £100. We motored down to Dawlish in Devon, which has been so much in the news lately because the storms put the railway out of action. The car broke down on the way home and we had to wait from 10am until midnight before the AA Relay came to our rescue and took us home. Daniel was born in the autumn of that year after the rains finally came.

 Daniel was to accompany me to Ireland during the school summer holidays in the late 1980s. We took our bikes on the ferry and cycled from Dublin into the Wicklow Hills, having never been there before to stay with the relatives of a friend of church. I wanted to research an historical romance set in Ireland in the reign of Richard II. It was unusually hot and the tarmac stuck to our bike tyres and the tips of Daniel’s ears got sunburnt and peeled. The house had no running water and an outside loo with no main drains. Some water was collected from a tank on the roof but I remember carrying a bucket to the river for water, too. Within two days the rains came and we managed to get a lift in a van to Dublin where we stayed in a youth hostel there. Unfortunately Dublin Castle was closed to the public as it was being renovated. Today, I would have discovered that online before we left home but at least I got the feel of the city and the experience came in useful when I wrote not only FATEFUL ENCOUNTER but also my second saga FLOWERS ON THE MERSEY set in Liverpool, Ireland and on a ship going to America during the Irish Civil War.





As I have no photographs of us in Ireland or France, here is one of Daniel and I outside the lovely Ely Cathedral when he received his Open University Mathematical Science degree in 2006.



Daniel also went with me to France by train and hovercraft a year or so later. Another first for both of us and the research that time was for an historical set during the time of Henry V. We stayed in Calais for a couple of days but my plans to go further afield were scuppered by the railways going on strike. The weather wasn’t too good either. GREY is the word I’d use. Still it was an experience and the book LOVE’S INTRIGUE was eventually published here and in France.

The weather this morning was bright and sunny and temperatures did reach 10 degrees C, and lifted the spirits but by 2pm it has clouded over and after visiting Caradoc Mission in Seaforth for a Ladies Brunch, sitting at my desk finishing the blog I started a week ago isn’t a bad place to be. Any minute now I expect it will rain.  

 

 

PART 25:I NEVER KNEW THAT!

   
Part of the reason I joined Ancestry is because I’m naturally nosey. I love ferreting out the whys, wheres, whens and hows of things. I also have a lazy streak. I remember my brother, Don, saying that he thought it was a family thing. I’m not so sure about that, although when I was in labour with my son Dan, the midwife said that she’d never come across such a relaxed baby. Still Don and I wouldn’t have been the first two in our family to be able to put down a deposit to buy our own houses if that were true. Although our parents lived in rented property all their lives, us four Nelson offspring managed to buy our own houses, be it ever so humble. I might be a naturally couch potato but when it’s absolutely necessary I can work my socks off.

      The mention of socks, reminds me of a conversation I had with two of my sons the other day. On the telly there was a lot of talk about the poor and food banks. I couldn’t help but say those fateful words I remember… What I remembered was only possessing two pairs of socks and having to wear them inside out to make them last the week. No hot running water, no washing machines, central heating, television. In winter there would be frosty fern patterns on the inside of our bedroom window; the oven shelf in the black leaded grate would be wrapped in newspaper and put in our bed to warm it. As John and I took our morning walk on the field the other side of the Leeds Liverpool canal, the other day, we discussed gloves. No shortage of such in our house now but when we were kids, I remember wearing a pair of socks on my hands to play out in the snow. When they grew sodden wet, I’d go indoors and warm them on the fireguard. He didn’t have gloves.

  But I digress.

  I haven’t been on Ancestry for a while but this morning I logged on and the first thing my gaze lighted on was a photo of my uncle Stan Milburn which had three quivering leaves attached which meant hints with possibly more information about him. I clicked and what came up was a link to Wills and Probate October 1952. An aspect of family history I had never explored for obvious reasons.  Uncle Stan never married, worked all his life and had lived with my grandfather in a rented two up, two down, nr Anfield football ground. He died when he was only in his forties and apparently left £138.10.0d to May Lillian Nelson. My mother! I never knew that! I could not resist googling to see what that amount would be worth in today’s money - £2776.15p.

  I would be eleven that year and I could not help thinking that perhaps it was due to that windfall I was able to go to grammar school after passing the scholarship and that Dad was able to buy the old army tents that meant we as a family went on our very first holiday away to North Wales the next year.

 How fortunate we were, not only in my mother being left money by her brother but that it was used to benefit us children. It was also the thought of that holiday that gave me the saving habit. ‘You’ll need spending money,’ we were told. So the pennies I earned by going for Dad’s ciggies or newspaper went into a wooden moneybox he made for me. I also did an old lady’s messages on a Saturday and she gave me a shilling. Infuriately my money was stolen when our house was burgled and the gas meter broken into. Even so the saving habit stuck with me. 

     When John and I married and lived with my parents for three years we saved up for that deposit on a house ( our old home was destined for demolition and bit the dust five years after we left and my parents moved into a flat). We managed to save £1100. I couldn’t resist checking what that was in today’s money - £13959.23p. Not bad considering part of that time John was still serving his apprenticeship as a printer and I didn’t earn loads. The house is paid for now so it was worth risking taking on a mortgage. We still live in the same house.

     But there is something to be said for renting. My grandparents Nelson who rented must have moved home at least six times. Most likely to do with the job or as their family grew or to be near relatives. I know my grandfather started out in Toxteth, lived in Everton, Kirkdale, Bootle, Edge Hill, Everton again and finished up in Woolton. He did volunteer in his forties in 1914 to fight in the Great War and registered at Preston. He was not away for long because it was discovered he had a heart condition before he could go and fight.

     In my last blog I think I mentioned my 3 times great-grandfather, John Cain, who was born in the Isle of Man, exactly where I didn’t know. This time round on Ancestry I discovered there was a link available to a IOM website. My problem is that John Cain was a common name in those days and at least four of them married women whose first name was Ann, the only bit of information I had about his wife. But the couples didn’t marry in the same year, but they all lived in the area of Braddon and Germain. Braddon is derived from Brendan who was a Celtic saint and there is a church named after him, Kirk Braddan. Going on the premise that John and Ann were most likely married a year or so before their first daughter, Ann, was born, I came to the conclusion that he married an Ann Quirk around about 1821.

     Like many Manx people they came to Liverpool. They had four children born here and then John was widowed and he and his youngest son lived for a while with his daughter Ann who married my great-great grandfather, George Brookes. The latter information I had been aware of  for some time. John Cain finished his life in Walton workhouse at the age of 66 and was buried in Walton Park cemetery in 1862, stated as being near Stanley Park which is the same cemetery where my parents and Uncle Stan were put to rest. Now I didn't know that!