WE ALL MAKE MISTAKES WHEN WE HURRY: PART 55

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?’

‘Fine,’ I said, ‘Finished my manuscript and sent it off to my agent.’

‘How many is this now?’ she asked.

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.

‘So what will you be doing today?’ She wanted to know.

‘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.

Big Mistake was not asking him for a password!

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.

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.

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?

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.

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 Echo to me. Apparently the River Mersey is now so clean that you can eat the edible fish you catch in its waters.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.
        P.S. Must add that this Friday at 7.30pm I'll be going with John and Iain to Write Blend to A Midnight Nightmare to listen to the horror writer, Ramsey Campbell. Already I can feel a shiver down my spine.



　

THE HAPPIEST DAYS OF YOUR LIFE: PART 54

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.
    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.
    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.
    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.
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. 
     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.
     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 Echo that it had given the wrong image of our fair city to the viewers.
    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.

On Saturday 27^th 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

I SAW THREE SHIPS COME SAILING IN: PART 53

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.
     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 Echo 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.
     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 THE WHITE EMPRESS 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^th 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.
      THE QUEENS: 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^th century was named after his sister the Mary Rose and one of the ships that sailed with Christopher Columbus was called the Santa Maria. The queen’s erstwhile royal yacht was named Britannia that A at the end signalling that she was regarded as feminine.
     On the whole masculine names seemed to be used for fighting ships and aircraft carriers. My mother’s cousin’s ship was The Black Prince which was torpedoed during WW1 and sunk with the loss of hundreds of men.
     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 FLOWERS ON THE MERSEY. 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 FALLING STAR Misadventures of White Star Line ships. The Titanic 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.
      I always try to use real names of ships in my books and so I was able to use the Corinthia in a recent novel IT’S NOW OR NEVER set in the fifties because my cousin, Maureen, had sailed on that ship to Canada.
      I have crossed the Mersey by ferry numerous times and even cruised along the river one evening on the Royal Iris. 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.
       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. 
　 http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/three-queens-liverpool-2015-queen-9319505



　
　

IF YOU WANT TO KNOW THE TIME ASK A POLICEMAN: PART 52.

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. 

      I doubt the crime was reported to the police but Dad set about creating his own deterrent that would chop their fingers off if they tried to get in our house again and rob our meter or my pennies.

       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. 

      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.  

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. 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.

Why am I chunnering on about the police, etc.?  

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 Lewis, Midsummer Murders and George Gently which generally signals a crime scene. 

Jokingly I said, ‘I’m waiting for you to say “You shall not Pass” just like Gandalf does in the Fellowship of the Rings.’

      ‘Sorry, you can’t pass,’ he said apologetically.

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.

 So where do the police figure in my writing?

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 SOMEONE TO TRUST and enjoyed doing the historical research.

So bearing Tim’s idea in mind and I decided to do more research. In the library I was recommended a book called From Cutlasses to Computers - The Police Force in Liverpool 1836-1989. 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.

My police family can be found in MEMORIES ARE MADE OF THIS and IT’S NOW OR NEVER published by Severn House. Ask at your nearest library.

   
P.S. In today's Liverpool Echo 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. 

 

   

 

WHAT'S THAT SMELL? PART 51

Back in 1958 I started work in Liverpool city centre. I’d toddle off to Lewis’s during my lunch hour. Entering by the doors near Central Station in Ranelagh Street - which in those days was on a bus route so the smell of diesel fumes was strong - was sheer heaven as one was almost immediately inside the toiletry, make-up and perfume department. Scented with the products of Goya, Cote, Yardley, Max Factor, Elizabeth Arden and even Rimmel I’d be almost giddy with delight. You name it and there was a counter for it. I doubt I was the only teenager who’d try out a free dab of this perfume or that. In those days I couldn’t afford to buy such luxuries so had to make do with soap and water and a wash down as we had no bathroom.

What sent me off down Memory Lane in this direction?

One of the women in the changing room at Total Fitness health centre was using moisturiser after her swim and we got talking about how we never put anything else on our skin these days. But she did love perfume and that comment reminded me of my mam and the little bottles of scent she had on her dressing table in the old days. Favourites were Evening in Paris and Californian Poppy. Being of the same generation as myself, the mention of them struck a chord with my fellow swimmer who also liked a touch of lippy. Her mother had been a great believer in lipstick as a morale booster. As for Mam she always used lippy as she called it come Saturday evenings when she and Dad went to the pictures.

One of my favourite shades as a teenager was Coral. In fact if my memory serves me right, it was probably the most popular one going in the late fifties.

Even then I never put anything on my skin, except Nivea or Astral sun cream when sunbathing. Mam’s favourite skin standby was Pond’s Vanishing Cream. I always presumed it was the cream that vanished once on her skin but thinking about it now presumably she used it hoping it would make any wrinkles disappear. I knew girls who used Max Factor’s pan stick which completely covered the skin like a beige mask.

When I did earn enough to splash out on perfume, I bought Yardley’s Lavender Toilet Water or Attar of Roses. Eventually I graduated to Sandalwood, Coty L’Aimant or Tweed by Lentheric.

In those days we used a lot of talcum powder. Is it only me who never uses talcum powder these days? Avon’s body lotion has taken its place in the hope that it will keep my skin from looking like a prune.

Yet I must be getting old because I remember when shampoo used to come powdered in packets called Amami and we rubbed it into our dry hair. Oh the joy when I switched over to liquid gold in a bottle called Sunsilk that left my hair squeaky clean.

I only ever expected my boyfriend and the men in my family to smell of Brylcreem, clean skin or sweat. It was to be a few years before they began to use Old Spice shaving soap and aftershave. As for deodorant that was a toiletry of which we gave little thought. The men used Lifebuoy soap and we girls used tablets of Lux, Camay or Pears translucent. I do remember Dad also washing his hair with the Sunlight soap Mam used to scrub the collars of his shirt. He being a plasterer he often came home with hair thick with powdered plaster.

Times change and these days a waft of fragrance can be left in their wake when one of my sons pass before me down the stairs on their way out. The male is no longer looked upon askance or asked with a suspicious look, ‘What’s that smell?’ They, too, have discovered they like a heavenly scent for themselves. And us women like it - in moderation. 

FERRY ACROSS THE MERSEY: PART 50

I’ll never forget the feeling of being on an overcrowded ferry forging through the waters of the Mersey while the sun sank in the sky as the boat headed for the landing stage at the Pierhead. I had sand in my knickers, in my hair and between my toes despite all my efforts to get rid of every grain with a towel stiff as a board from hanging on the line in our backyard in the sun. No doubt we were on the last ferry from New Brighton to Liverpool and that’s why we were all wedged together like sardines in a Skipper’s tin and the boat seemed to dip heavily from side to side.

This was in the fifties, a few years before Gerry and the Pacemakers' record hit the charts or Liverpool became famous for its musicians rather than just its football teams, actors and comedians, the Grand National and being the second premier port in the country.

I might have mentioned it before but I doubt it will hurt to repeat what my mother often said about Liverpudlians having salt water in their veins. Most of us also prefer to live beside the seaside or at least within a short distance of it. Maybe that’s why when my eldest brother moved south he ended up living in Westcliffe-on-Sea and three of my cousins who crossed the Atlantic settled near the coast, one in Canada, and two in the US of A.

So maybe it’s not surprising that my very latest 50s hardback LOVE LETTERS IN THE SAND has several scenes set on local beaches. A couple of characters reminisce about their memories of New Brighton and there is also a couple of scenes set on the ferry and the beach.

I also have lots of memories of beaches this side of the Mersey. From Seaforth Sands to the dunes of Formby. More recently Crosby has hit the headlines because of the Iron Men. I reckon it also has the best view of the Wirral coastline and on a clear day the mountains of Snowdonia that can be seen from such a distance. In the other direction even before one approaches Southport one can see Blackpool Tower further north.

Besides beaches being places of pleasure they can also be dangerous. I could not resist putting on one of my characters’ mouths the tale of my mother sinking up to her thighs in sticky black mud. I cried, thinking she was going to get swallowed up in a patch of sinking sand. Fortunately it did not happen but her brand new white sandals were ruined. We were also warned about keeping an eye on the tide and not to go wading out to sandbanks.

My brothers, my sister and I all learnt to swim at Margaret Street baths in Everton. My father’s method of getting us to lift our feet off the bottom and go for it was bribery. When I managed to swim a breadth he gave me a shilling. I was paid another shilling when I jumped into the pool. My husband learnt to swim by being thrown into Burroughs Gardens swimming baths at the age of four by one of the attendants. John’s father worked there as a stoker and the pool was empty of people at the time. My husband went on to enjoy skin diving as a hobby and I have never lost my love of swimming.

The book begins with a prologue which involves my heroine getting into difficulties in the sea. A scene I hadn’t really envisaged when I started writing. It started with a different opening altogether. Yet having decided on the Pat Boone song that was a hit in the fifties for my title, I realised I had to get a scene on a beach in somewhere quickly and that is why I eventually settled on the opening I did, praying that it would grip my readers. I also set a chapter or two in Blackpool where I was born in a hotel on the South Promenade during WW2.

LOVE LETTERS IN THE SAND is out in hardback this week, 31^st March 2015. Please, do consider supporting your local library if you have one by ordering it.

If You Ever Go Across the Sea To Ireland: Part 49.

A few years back I remember going to the evening do of a wedding in Liverpool’s Irish Centre at 127 Mount Pleasant. I remember being surprised once inside the building because it was quite fabulous. Then I discovered that it used to be the old Wellington Assembly Rooms and dated back to 1815. Those who know their history will remember that the Battle of Waterloo was fought June that year. Some will also know that Arthur Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington, was a native of Ireland.

Growing up in Liverpool I recall that two popular songs during those times were “I’ll Take You Home Again, Kathleen” sung by Josef Locke, who I remember appearing in pantomime at the Pivvie in Lodge Lane. Mam would take my brother, sister and me and we would meet her sister, my Aunt Flo and our Hawitt cousins there. As for the song “If You Ever Go Across the Sea to Ireland” that was generally more likely to be heard sung by a slightly drunk Irishman on St Paddy’s night.

Ships have been sailing across the sea to Ireland from Liverpool ever since King John gave Liverpool its charter way back in 1207. The first time I set foot on the Emerald Isle was during the summer of 1969 when I went with my husband, John, and friends on a diving holiday near Durras, not far from Bantry Bay on the Atlantic coast. They had been the year before and the weather had been fantastic but when John and I and baby son, no 1 went, Ireland lived up to its reputation and rained more days than the sun shone. I didn’t dive but it was still a holiday to remember in that John got caught in some currents and nearly got swept out to sea. As it was he had a long walk back after a heck of a swim, too, before we saw him again. That holiday was also memorable for the size of the crayfish, mushrooms and having potatoes in their jackets served from the pan in Kinsale. I remember thinking there was something mystical about that green land. That was also the year we saw headlines about explosions on the billboards in Dublin on our way to the ferry to catch the boat to Liverpool.

My second trip to Ireland was years later and I went by bicycle and ship with my youngest son, Daniel. It was the school summer holidays and I was planning on writing an historical romance set in the 14^th century. I was going there to do research. We cycled into the Wicklow Hills and stayed in an old farmhouse where mice ran along the rafters and the toilet was a bucket with a seat in an outhouse covered in rambling roses. Water was fetched from a nearby river and the fireplace had a cooking pot like a cauldron that hung on a hook. We were made very welcome and met interesting people. It was also the perfect setting for part of my book FATEFUL ENCOUNTER. We didn’t stay there long because I needed to do some research in Dublin. Unfortunately the castle was closed for renovation but there was still the museum to explore and the Liffy to wander along and the Book of Kells to see at Trinity College.

I was to use that experience again a few years later when I wrote FLOWERS ON THE MERSEY set mainly during the early 1920s.

September 2005 was the year I returned to Ireland with my newly widowed sister who was doing the driving and we were on our way to a B&B in Naas. Our niece was marrying an Irishman and the weather was perfect. The church was actually in a small village in Co Dublin and it was quite an occasion. The bride looked beautiful and the food was fantastic, as was the music and the wine flowed.

My sister and I were to return to Ireland again. This time by coach and ferry and the journey was long as we were staying on the coast in Co Mayo. This was after the big monetary crash and there were many deserted looking newly built houses. What stands out for me is visiting Croagh Patrick, the mountain visited by many pilgrims. That and being asked by a taxi driver where in Ireland did my family come from. I told him we had no Irish blood. He didn’t believe me, saying that everyone in Liverpool had a drop of Irish in them.

Was he right? When it came to tracing my ancestry a few years later, there it was in black and white William Walker, born 1791 in Ireland. I know that he was a weaver by trade who settled in Manchester and it is via his daughter who married and came to Liverpool that I am related to him. My difficulty is that there were numerous William Walkers in Ireland. Only the other year on WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? that II discovered comedian Graham Norton had a William Walker in his ancestry.

But Walker doesn’t sound very Irish to me and when I looked it up, it says that the name originated in Scotland or Yorkshire and had some connected to the word fuller. Now way back in medieval times fullers were involved in the clothing trade. So if my Walker ancestry came originally from Scotland or Yorkshire, but some were born in Ireland, do I still have a claim to having Irish blood? Happy St Patrick’s Day!