| I was born
in a tiny, primative house next door to a fire-station: my Dad was
a fireman. I spent my first term at infant school trying to deduce
my teacher's name: having missed it the first day, I was too shy
to ask. (it was Mrs Christmas) Shyness was always my torment.
Junior school was okay, because we wrote stories all the time. But
my sister and brother, both older than I, were brilliant and I wasn't.
Not stupid, but unremarkable and, first and foremost a daydreamer.
All my memories of Enfield County School are tinged with fear: fear
of not being liked, of not understanding, of causing irritation,
of falling exams. It was suggested I would be wasting people's time
to stay on into the Sixth Form. I offered to add Russian O-level
to my miserable 2 A-level timetable. That was rather worse. To study
Russian was tantamount to being a communist. The teacher (a great
woman called Daphne Giles) was deliberately refused room space for
Russian lessons, and had to teach us in the cloakrooms. As for literature...
Well, years later, when I went to college, and the tutors asked
"What do you think of this book/play/poem?" I was perplexed.
"Me?" At school they had always told us what
to think.
At about that time, I discovered theatre - Fry, Marlowe, Webster,
Rostand... it was like discovering the secret elixir of life. |
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I
never considered writing for a living. It was my hobby and far too
enjoyable. So I did a series of jobs very badly (being so vague):
secretary, trainee teacher, sub-editor. To my delight, I found myself
working on a children's story magazine, where they let me write
some of the stories. By this time I had had the benefit of severall
excellent friends who gave me back the confidence school had knocked
out of me. One day I found I had more writing work than I could
get done on the train commuting into London. So I gave up commuting,
got married and wrote full-time (bliss). Now I have a nine-year
old daughter, Ailsa (mostly bliss) and more books in my head than
I shall ever have time to write! |
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