Christmas at Castell Mawr 1938

Just to get in the mood, with memories of a time when several households could mingle at Christmas, here is an extract from A Time For Silence:

Christmas, 1938 at Castell Mawr.
© Thorne Moore 

Gwen has been busy because it’s second nature, she cannot be still. There are plates to carry, cups to wash and she must help, that is only right. But there are more than enough George daughters and George aunts and cousins to do all that is required, and Betty John has been firm with her. ‘Go and sit down, Gwen. Rest your feet. You deserve it.’

So she is doing what she has almost forgotten how to do: nothing at all. She sits, out of the way, soaking up the warmth and the exotic experience of being still, watching the scene with a sense of faintly wicked contentment. The children of Ted Absalom, one of the Georges' hands, are huddled nearby over the unspeakable luxury of an orange. Gwen leans down to help them with the peel, the small business helping to assuage the sinfulness of being idle.

The smell of orange. When did she last savour that? Christmases of long ago, happy faces that have vanished forever, her mother, her brother before the TB, her father still hale …All recaptured by the sweet sharp spicy warm smell of Christmas at Castell Mawr. The frosts have set in with a vengeance, but inside the old farmhouse, all is cheerful flickering warmth. A monstrous fire flames in the huge hearth, roaring up the massive open chimney. The oak beams are festooned with greenery and paper chains made by the children. Candles twinkle on the Christmas tree and the sideboard is groaning under the spread of hams and mince pies, cakes and cheeses and preserved fruit.

Rosie and Jack are red-faced with pleasure and overeating, romping among the other children with squeals of delight. Tom, smallest and slowest of the Absaloms, triumphantly bolts down the last of his orange and struggles over to join them.

Light and warmth and laughter. The resinous smell of greenery, flickering flames, a feast for the entire parish. The Georges are as careful with their money as their neighbours, but maybe that is why they can afford this annual prodigality.

It is all a far cry from the spartan Christmas chill of Cwmderwen, though Gwen has done what she can, saving up spare coppers from her housekeeping, and attempting rashly to roast a scrawny old hen, past laying, that should have had two days slow boiling in the stock pot to render it edible. They ate it regardless and the children had presents.

Not toys. John would never tolerate that sort of thing. Their gifts from the Chapel tree on Christmas Eve, dispensed by a Father Christmas looking strangely like William George, disappeared within hours of their return home. Jack’s tin trumpet was confiscated as he came through the door and Rosie’s bead necklace was gone by bed time. Toys have no place in the house. Rosie’s doll, Maggie May, survives only because she lives secretly in an old biscuit tin concealed just over the garden wall. But John permitted the mufflers, mittens and tam-o’-shanters that Gwen has knitted out of old wool and he accepted the new boots that Rosie must have for growing feet, with the old ones falling to pieces. He sniffed in disapproval at the sprigs of holly Gwen brought in from the woods to brighten the hearth. Christmas is a time for chapel and reverence, not for bawdy frolics and pagan merriment.
His disapproval, she notes, is reserved for the hallowed soil of Cwmderwen. No such censure for the celebrations here at Castell Mawr, but then who would dare criticise with Mrs. George presiding over the revelry from her rocking chair? One glance at her solemn bulk strapped into her best black satin will dispel any idea that there is anything ungodly about this gathering.

After all, they have spent most of the day at prayer, up at six, chapel at Beulah, then at Caersalem over at Felindre, then back to Beulah for the children to recite the pwnc and be catechised. And now the minister is come, to prove that all this feasting and laughter in a God-fearing house is perfectly righteous.

Mrs. George’s eldest daughter, Annie Lloyd and her sister-in-law Evelyn are organising the children into a choir. Hymns and carols around the Christmas tree, while Annie plays, thumping on the piano with joyously inaccurate goodwill. Rosie’s little voice rings out clear and pure above the others. Mrs. George looks across to Gwen, with a nod as if to say, ‘I told you so.’

The gesture of approval is dear to Gwen, but she does not need to be told that Rosie has musical talent. Of course she would have, with a singer like John for her father. It is his turn now. He is standing solemnly in the background, hands clasped behind his back, aloof even here, but they are having none of that, summoning him forward.

The Reverend Harries claps his hands. ‘Yes, come now, Owen. Let us have some sacred music worthy of the season.’

John demurs and then complies, standing dignified by the piano as Annie anxiously leafs through the music. Should Gwen offer to help? There is no need. John’s repertoire, which she knows by heart, consists mostly of hymns that Annie mastered years ago, and a few pieces from the great religious oratorios.

Calon Lân to start with, because Annie can play it with her eyes shut. John begins and his audience joins in, a quiet accompaniment at first and then a rising crescendo of hwyl. Then The Messiah. Every valley shall be exalted. The roof timbers are ringing, threatening to exalt themselves into the night sky. John is in truly wonderful voice, his breast swelling, the liberated spirit within him finding its wings and soaring as only music allows. He finishes amidst a roar of applause. The Reverend Harries beams round proudly as if this prodigy of Beulah Chapel were his very own creation.

A pause. They are debating. Some Bach? Annie is not sure she can do it justice.

The Reverend looks up suddenly, in Gwen’s direction. ‘But of course, we mustn’t forget Mrs. Owen. Quite a reputation in her youth, so I’ve been told. Is that not so, Mrs. Owen?’

Gwen smiles and shakes her head, eager to divert their attention. The smile is a mask concealing a sudden flutter of pain. In her youth. When was that? She is scarcely into her thirties and her youth is already something barely remembered, a dream of long ago from which she has woken with a vengeance. ‘Oh no, don't think of me, I haven’t played for years.’ When was the last time she had been permitted time to play, on her fleeting visits to Penbryn? She cannot remember.

They are not listening to her objections. Evelyn and Annie and her sister Betty have gathered round, cooing and twittering and insisting that Gwen must perform too. She can accompany John. What could be more appropriate than that?

‘I really don’t think—’
‘Play us one of your father’s hymns,’ suggests Mrs. George, and no one dares to argue, least of all Gwen.

Tentatively she seats herself at the piano stool. Perhaps she can no longer play. Her fingers ache from scrubbing and boiling and mending and milking and the onset of rheumatism. They cannot possibly move smoothly enough.

But they do. They awake, at her command, as if they had been waiting. She plays, one of her father’s best compositions, and it all comes back as if she were practising still at her old instrument in her room over the grocer’s shop.

She is the focus of all attention. It is not right; she feels a guilty twinge. They should not be minding her. That had not been her intention when she had agreed to play. She had expected John to sing the words, but he has not understood her intent and is silent, so she plays while the others gather round in earnest admiration, humming along, the Reverend and Sidney Lloyd finally adding the words.

It is such a pleasure, to be playing again. She had forgotten how overwhelmingly pleasurable it was. Annie has her hands clasped in ridiculous admiration and William applauds loudly, though Gwen realises, with an inner smile, that he is not just complimenting her, but currying favour with Evelyn Lloyd, whose enthusiasm is gushing.

‘Why, Gwen! I didn’t know you could play. Play some more. Here, let me see.’ While Evelyn is rustling through the papers, others crowd round in ungrudging admiration, but Gwen barely notices them. It is Rosie she sees, Rosie sitting still with the other children but suddenly apart in spirit, thumb dropped from her mouth, eyes wide with astonishment that her mother can do this thing. It is Rosie’s poised expectant eagerness that persuades Gwen to go on, quickly, into a silly little song that instantly has the children jigging and dancing. Rosie laughs with delight.

‘You are going to play the Bach accompaniment for John,’ the minister reminds her.
Of course. The Bach. She looks at John.

He is standing, stony faced, waiting, and her innards freeze. Has she done something wrong? She senses his petrifying displeasure, but his audience is impatient, the minister is nodding and she must play and he must sing.

Gwen turns back to the keys with a shiver. Beautiful sacred music that must be treated with respect, and she plays with greater care, giving it its due, waiting for John to share with her.
But something is wrong. Is it her playing? He sings, but they cannot keep time together. He has to keep correcting, missing, slipping, and it all goes awry. He stops in mid-phrase, hand to his throat, coughing, and immediately they are all consternation. He should not have exerted himself, not after so much singing in the chapel. He must rest his voice.

Quietly, Gwen rises from the stool and accompanies Betty into the kitchen to fetch tea and a spoonful of honey for the cracking voice. It is enough. Nothing they say will persuade her to return to the piano. Besides, their idle hour is done, they must be going. No help on the farm tiding things over in their absence, and they have chores to do, the cows to see to. Everyone understands when John abruptly announces that they must leave.

Gwen gathers up the children, bundling them into coats and scarves and gloves against the biting winter chill. Jack is a sturdy little boy, thank God. He’ll manage most of the walk back to Cwmderwen on his own now, although she’ll have to carry him if he is too slow. She has just time to smile at the company, her arm patted in benediction by Mrs. George as she follows John out into the frost. The little Absalom faces, glowing with food and excitement, peer round the matriarch's bulk at her, a picture of warmth in contrast to the needle-sharp bite of the night air. In contrast to the beds the Owens are returning to. No roaring fire awaiting them at Cwmderwen. Gwen will have to heat the stone bottles as soon as they get in, or the children will be all night shivering.

Too dark to cross the fields on a December night, the mired footpath too treacherous with ice. They must climb to the road. Their breath clouds in the cold air, their boots ring out on the cobbles of Castell Mawr yard. She hurries the children along because John is striding ahead, not waiting, and he will not have them dawdle. They must keep up. The track up to the road leaves them panting, and Gwen has to carry Jack in the end. Rosie trots along, gripping her hand.

At the gate, John stops, turns, waiting for them impatiently. She can see the anger still simmering in him. Why? All she did was play the piano.

‘Are you content, then, woman?’
‘Content, John?’
‘Putting yourself forward like that.’
‘I did not mean to put myself forward, John.’
‘Flaunting yourself!’ He turned away. ‘Showing me up in front of my neighbours.’
‘I’m sorry that I played badly.’

He does not hear her apology. He has already gone on.
Resigned, she follows. What has she done that was wrong?

Out in the open on the road, out from under the trees and the shelter of the valley, the sky arches over them, ink black, and strewn with a billion diamonds. A lid lifts off her world and her understanding. The stars twinkle with piercing clarity in the frost, so bright they cast dim shadows. A different light. A new comprehension. Revelation.

John is jealous.

The ice-cold knowledge washes over her. John Owen, her John, walking tall, upright and proud along the road, is a small man. Small and mean.

Immediately she pushes the thought to one side. It is not permissible, she must block it out, too humiliating for words. She cannot allow for the futility of it all, if that terrible thought is true. But for a moment it has touched, settling, searing onto her brain, a black treacherous scar that will not fade. He is not worthy of her.

Put it out of your head, Gwen, before it destroys you.

A Time For Silence. published by Honno 2012

Judith Barrow coming full circle

I have written four novels and each has been independent - different settings, different characters, different themes - but I have begun to feel the allure of keeping a story going, beyond the last page of a book. I have written short stories that accompany my novels, but I've never yet been brave enough to take on a whole series.
That is what Judith Barrow has done, with her Howarth Family trilogy, covering the decades from the Second World War to the late sixties, and she has completed it now with a prequel, A Hundred Tiny Threads, covering the early decades of the 20th century. I am hugely impressed.

Pattern of Shadows is the first of the Howarth family trilogy. Mary is a nursing sister at Lancashire prison camp for the housing and treatment of German POWs. Life at work is difficult but fulfilling, life at home a constant round of arguments, until Frank Shuttleworth, a guard at the camp turns up. Frank is difficult to love but persistent and won't leave until Mary agrees to walk out with him.

Sequel to Pattern of Shadows, Changing Patterns is set in May 1950, Britain is struggling with the hardships of rationing and the aftermath of the Second World War There are many obstacles in the way of Mary’s happiness, not the least of which is her troubled family. When tragedy strikes, Mary hopes it will unite her siblings. Will the family pull together to save one of their own from a common enemy.

The last of the trilogy, Living in the Shadows is set in 1969. There are secrets dating back to the war that still haunt the family, and finding out what lies at their root might be the only way they can escape their murderous consequences.

And so to the prequel: A Hundred Tiny Threads: Winifred is a determined young woman eager for new experiences. When her friend Honora - an Irish girl, with the freedom to do as she pleases - drags Winifred along to a suffragette rally, she realises that there is more to life than the shop and her parents' humdrum lives of work and grumbling.
 Bill Howarth's troubled childhood echoes through his early adult life and the scars linger, affecting his work, his relationships and his health. The only light in his life comes from a chance meeting with Winifred, the daughter of a Lancashire grocer.

For the record, in my opinion, this is a great book, that places two people in the midst of some of the most earth-shattering and horrifying events of the early 20th century but shows it all through their very individual eyes, coloured by their own uniquely troubled situations. And, of course, knowing how it ends in the following trilogy adds a piquant regret to the tale.

Judith, like me, has lived in Pembrokeshire for many years and, like me, came here from a distant galaxy long ago and far away - Well, Yorkshire in her case and Bedfordshire in mine. Here, she tells how she came to Pembrokeshire.

We found Pembrokeshire by accident.

With three children under three, an old cottage half renovated and a small business that had become so successful that we were working seven days a week, we were exhausted. David, my husband, thought we should get off the treadmill; at least for a fortnight.

Pre-children, cottage and business, we always holidayed in Cornwall. But we decided it was too far with a young family and an unreliable van. We’d go to Wales; not too difficult a journey from Lancashire, we thought.

Once that was mentioned, David was eager to see Four Crosses, near Welshpool, where his grandfather originated from.

‘We could stay there,’ he said.

‘But the children will want beaches,’ I protested. ‘And I’ve heard Pembrokeshire has wonderful beaches.

We agreed to toss a coin and Pembrokeshire won. We’d call at Four Crosses on the way home.

I borrowed books on Wales from the library and, balancing our 8-month-old twins, one on each knee, I read as much as I could about the county. It sounded just the place to take children for a holiday. We booked a caravan and, when the big day came, packed the van to the hilt with everything the children would need, remembering only at the last minute, to throw a few clothes in for ourselves.

It took 10 hours.

In 1978 there was no easy route from the North of England to West Wales.

We meandered through small lanes, stopping for emergencies like much needed drinks, picnics, lavatory stops and throwing bread to the ducks whenever our eldest daughter spotted water. I’d learned to keep a bag of stale bread for such times.

The closer we were to our destination the slower we went. In the heat of the day the engine in our old van struggled; we needed to top up the radiator every hour or so. For the last 50 miles we became stuck in traffic jams.

We got lost numerous times.

All this and three ever-increasingly fractious children.

We arrived at the caravan site in the middle of the night so were relieved to find the key in the door.

The owner, a farmer, had given up and gone home.

I woke early. Leaving David in charge of our exhausted and still sleeping family, I crept out.

The sun was already warm; a soft breeze barely moved the leaves on the oak tree nearby. Skylarks flittered and swooped overhead, calling to one another. 

Although the caravan was one of four in the farmer’s field, we were the only people there. It was so quiet, so peaceful.

I walked along a small path. Within minutes I was faced by a panorama of sea. It seemed so still from the top of the cliff, but the water blended turquoise and dark blue with unseen currents, the horizon was a silvery line.

Faint voices from two small fishing boats carried on the air.

The sandstone cliffs curved round in a natural cove. Jagged rocks, surrounded by white ripples of water, jutted up towards the sky.

I fell in love with Pembrokeshire.

I’d always liked living so close to the Pennines. The moors, criss-crossed by ancient stone walls, were glorious with wild rhododendrons in summer, heather in the autumn. Even when brooding under swathes of drifting mist or white-over with snow, I was happy there.

But Pembrokeshire has a powerful glory of its own.

Within months we’d thrown caution, and our past lives, to the wind and moved here, much to the consternation of our extended family; as far as they were concerned we were moving to the ends of the earth.

But it was one of the best decisions of my life.

Find A Hundred Tiny Threads on Amazon

and Judith's other books

Up the Amazon without a paddle

My first novel was published as a paperback in September 2012 and a few days later it appeared on Amazon in a Kindle edition, which was, apparently, the way things were going now. I didn’t have a Kindle, but to show my appreciation, I downloaded the free Kindle reader on my laptop. I didn’t really want an electronic version of anything at that stage, but an encounter with Hilary Mantell finally persuaded me to invest in a proper Kindle reader. A hefty hardback edition of Bring Up The Bodies smacking you in the face when you fall asleep, reading, causes serious concussion, whereas a Kindle reader merely bruises the nose. And you don’t lose your place when it slides to the floor and shuts itself.

So yes, I converted to an e-reader and now I use it all the time, at least for fiction. And as an author, I have really learned to appreciate its value. My books have been on Kindle deals and sold A LOT, as a result. I mean, a serious lot. Enough to keep me afloat and writing.

Other e-readers are available, to coin a phrase. I have been on Kobo deals too, and have sold… several. Almost into two figures. What I have learned is that Kindle is the only e-reading platform that matters.

And Amazon knows it. If you want to self-publish, use Amazon. Put your book on Kindle. Easy-peasy, give or take the agonies of formatting, and your book is available to the whole world. Let them publish it as a paperback too. It won’t get into bookshops of course, but bookshops are so yesterday, darling.

My latest novel, Shadows, has been taken on by a publisher who markets books solely through Amazon. Even I, as the author, cannot buy discount copies to pass on at book fairs or talks. (You can’t imagine how amusing I find this.) If you agree to turn your back on all other platforms, Amazon and Kindle will offer you all sorts of promotion options. What’s not to love? Amazon, after all, is the leader so far in the lead, that all the others can’t even be seen for dust. No wonder Amazon’s founder Jeff Bezos was listed as the richest man in the world, if only for a few hours. His organisation goes from strength to strength. There is no stopping it. It would be idiotic not to buy into it.

But then, this is now, and as Scarlet O’Hara pointed out, so eloquently, “Tomorrow is another day.”

Remember 2001, A Space Odyssey?  Made in 1968. HAL, a computer, developing a mind of its own, takes on the humans it’s supposed to help and tries to eliminate them. It’s the perennial nightmare of out-of-control technology. Lovers of conspiracy theories have pointed out that if you move up one place in the alphabet, HAL becomes IBM. In 1968, IBM was the computer giant that was going to dominate the world. No-one could compete with it. Until, out of nowhere, Microsoft popped up. And now Microsoft rules the world, until…

My third novel, The Unravelling, is set partly in 1966, which I regret to say I can remember vividly, so no research was needed, and in 2000 or thereabouts, which is only seventeen years ago, but I had to research diligently to remember exactly where we were on our hurtling trajectory into a new world.

In 2000, in Britain, broadband was just being introduced. I didn’t get it until several years later. Accessing the internet, for me, meant hi-jacking the phone line late at night or early morning, and waiting in agony as every web page maliciously containing an image took half an hour to download.

The Unravelling involves a woman, Karen, trying to trace someone from her past. In 1990, what would she have used? Phone books? A trip to the records office in London to trawl through marriage indexes? In 2000 she did have the internet if she could get at a computer. She could try a search engine. The big one was Yahoo, or Alta Vista if you wanted to be really serious. Everyone on the internet used Yahoo, little thinking that a search engine called Google, dreamed up by a couple of Californian students in 1998 would soon sweep Yahoo into the gutter.

There was a new social networking website Karen could use in her search. It was called Friends Reunited, created in 2000. Still a very small thing in the period when my book is set but it grew and grew. It grew huge. So huge that by 2005 it was bought up for £120 million. Nothing was going to stop it. Except that now it no longer exists, because in 2004 a bunch of students including Mark Zuckerberg launched a thing called Facebook. Then there was Twitter. Then there was Instagram. And then, and then, and then…

So, in the publishing world, Amazon is top dog today, but who knows what will pop up tomorrow and leave it as a small smudge on history? Self-interest tells me, as an author, to take whatever it has to offer, because I and other writers, traditionally and self-published, would be fools to resist. But where will we be when the wheel turns and we are left dependent on a company that no longer matters? We need a strategy, to prepare. The trouble is, I have no idea what we should do. Any suggestions?

Alex Martin spinning Katherine Wheels

I am continuing my cunning plan to interview other authors (i.e. let them do the work), with an interview with Alex Martin, author of the Katherine Wheel Trilogy and other works.

 

Romance, history, adventure and suspense unite in Alex’s Katherine Wheel trilogy: Daffodils, Peace Lily and Speedwell.

  

 The story begins in Edwardian England, with feisty Katy Beagle working as a maid at Cheadle Manor and follows her marriage to gardener Jem Phipps, her rebarbative dealings with Lady Amelia Smythe at the big house, and her long friendship with Cassandra, daughter and eventually heir of the manor. As domestic crises, catastrophes and dramas are played out, the setting moves from rural Wiltshire, through the horrors of wartime France, post-war America, the early years of motor racing, and back to the manor. The stories see Katy fight her way from domestic skivvy to ambitious motor mechanic and successful business woman, while the fortunes of the feudal manor slip into obscurity.

Here is my interview with Alex

Question: The Katherine Wheel books are a huge undertaking, covering such an action-packed period and must have involved a huge amount of research. How did you go about it? Did you start with months or years of in-depth research, or plunge in and research it as you went along?

I wrote Daffodils over a period of ten years. I wasn't writing every day, of course, and it was the daunting mountain of research that kept stalling me. I never set out to tackle WW1 but was interested in how plumbing had gradually arrived in our little village in Wiltshire and in learning about that I, just like the characters in the book, got drawn into that global conflict - very unwillingly. Plumbing, I hear you say? Yes, we had a very old neighbour - he was nearly 100 years when he died and he'd lived in our humble string of tiny cottages since he was 4. I dubbed it Skid Row. He could remember when the only drinking water came from the village pump on the green, which features in Daffodils, as Katy has to carry it to her house in buckets all the time. He was a wonderful raconteur and told me with great relish and much embellishment how the six cottages had first one tap to serve them all, then one between them until the great day dawned when they had actual sinks with taps installed inside their old walls. And that's how The Katherine Wheel Series began. Now I have a shelf groaning with books on WW1, much of which made for sobering reading. I was shocked at what I discovered, especially the brutality and stupidity of how the British Army treated their gullible cannon-fodder, which I have woven into the story.

Question: Katy Phipps is such an unusual heroine. Not many heroines spend their days in greasy overalls, wielding wrenches. I like her immensely. Do you?

Not at first. I was in agreement with the village chorus, voiced by the likes of Martha Threadwell, the village Post Mistress and her acolyte Mrs Hoskins, housekeeper to the sly vicar. We all thought Katy a flighty, shallow flirt, and so she was. The whole Katherine Wheel Series is a study of how a young, naive, ambitious girl becomes a resourceful, compassionate and successful woman in her own right and how her character deepens and develops through her ordeals. I didn't think the world needed another book about angelic nurses, either, and as I researched the era, I was struck by the vanguard of valiant women who stepped up and swept the streets, emptied dustbins and drove ambulances. During my research I found that only aristocratic young women were allowed into the FANY to drive ambulances, so Katy, with her working class roots, was assigned to the WAAC. There she learned the trade of car mechanic and it was perfect because it lead her nicely into setting up her own garage in Peace Lily, getting involved in the glamorous world of motor racing in the 'twenties in Speedwell and even coming up with an ingenious invention that changed her life.

Question:  As the stories progress, you settle into a fine balance between two couples, Katy and Jem, Cassandra and her American husband Doug, closely connected, yet living very different lives.

Did you find it difficult switching perspectives, or did it help to keep the inspiration flowing?

Thank you. No, it wasn't difficult. In the very early days of writing Daffodils, an agent took an interest and left me in no doubt that the upper classes could be just as fascinating as those they considered beneath them. I loved switching from Katy's life to Cassandra's apparently easier one and particularly making each impact upon the other. In Speedwell the consequences of their inter-relationship manifests with devastating effect.

Question: You obviously know Wiltshire very well. Is Cheadle Manor based on a real place?

Not the manor house, funnily enough, but the little row of cottages where Katy and Jem set up home is based upon the humble abode where my kids were born and the geography of the two villages is very much the same. Although I was born in greater London, I grew up in Wiltshire before moving to south Wales thirty years ago. I do know and love it well but I'm hooked on living by the sea now. Cheadle Manor itself is entirely a figment of my imagination, which is always useful because you can create a place entirely designed to your own satisfaction and to fit the plot.

Question: Have you ever been tempted to write a scene in which Lady Amelia Smythe is throttled? I know I would enjoy it.

Yes, she's a one, as they say. I adore writing about her and she's a useful plot twister too. I have sketched out a fourth and final book in The Katherine Wheel series, Woodbine and Ivy, and this will push the characters on twenty years, with their children becoming embroiled in the second World War, which defined their generation. Lady Amelia will be tapping on by then, so she might not survive the ordeal and I shall spare her nothing.

Question: Did you have the complete trilogy planned when you started, or were you just expecting to write the one book? Has the wheel finished turning or is there more to come?

Not at all! I decided to get serious about my lifelong ambition to write stories when they pushed the pension age to a distant speck on my horizon. I joined a website called www.youwriteon.com which is funded by the Arts Council and very clever. The idea is to post a piece of your work for it to be randomly critiqued by peer members, whose work you also criticise. Encouraged by all my stories reaching the top ten, and even the top five for The Rose Trail, friends I had made via the site encouraged me to self-publish The Twisted Vine. Then I thought I might as well finish up the plumbing idea set in Wiltshire by writing Daffodils and the whole thing just snowballed.

Question: You have a fourth book, The Twisted Vine, a thriller set among grape-pickers, and the vineyards of France are very convincingly drawn. Did you draw on your own experiences, when writing it?

Very much so. I, just like Roxanne in the book, was running away from a disastrous relationship to France, where I had a vague idea I might be able to get work picking grapes. I was just as green as her, though perhaps my French is a little better! I can vouch for the research about 'les vendanges', as the grape harvest is called, being utterly genuine. It's really hard work. You get up with the dawn, often picking grapes dusted with frost or, in the south, in the baking heat and work until sunset. Some farmers feed and house you well, others can be pretty grim. I learnt a lot and never regret the experience. I thought it would make a good backdrop to a mystery but I didn't personally experience the scene in the car with Armand; that was an anecdote from a friend who'd gone hitch-hiking around the same time. Even the episode in the convent was based on that real experience. However the rest of the plot is entirely fictitious. I particularly liked writing about Louis' bitterness, softened by his love of his native soil and Armand's twisted profile.

Question: What's next?

I have a lot of ideas to explore; just hope I have enough energy, discipline and time to finish them. However, the next book is written, It is currently with my editor, my son Tom, a scientist and writer and who is both brutal and professional in his role. It's called The Rose Trail and is a ghost story set in dual time, both modern and during the English Civil War. This has entailed researching another horrific war, one which divided families up and down the land and tore apart old loyalties in the name of religion. A fascinating period in our history. Again it is set in Wiltshire where a real battle, depicted in The Rose Trail, took place and creates a dramatic climax to the historical thread. I'm hoping this book will set up a series of paranormal tales with the two women, Persephone and Fay, going on to solve more creepy mysteries using their intuitive psychic powers.

Click on the hyperlinked titles of each book above or below. They are all on Amazon and in local bookstores around Gower, where I live. Here's the links again.

The Twisted Vine

Daffodils

Peace Lily

Speedwell

Blog: In The Plotting Shed.

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Interview with Judith Barrow

I have decided, after a long period of hibernation, to restart my blog, concentrating on matters of writing, authorship and books. I am beginning with a interview with fellow Honno author, Judith Barrow. Judith grew up in Saddleworth, on the Pennines, but has lived in Pembrokeshire for more than 30 years.

 

Judith has written the Shadows trilogy, a wonderfully evocative trilogy, the life, loves and tribulations of Mary Howarth and her family.

The story begins, in World War II, with A Pattern Of Shadows. Against a domestic background of family strife, jealousies and dramas, Mary is working as a nurse at the Granville mill that is now serving as a prisoner of war camp for Germans. The one thing she should not do is fall for a German doctor, Peter Schormann, but she does. In the second book, Changing Patterns, with Mary and Peter living in Wales, she struggles to deal with the prejudices of the time and to sort out her relatives who remain in Lancashire. The war is over but strife and tragedy is not. In the third book, Living In The Shadows, the action jumps forward to 1969. A new generation and new dramas, but there’s no escaping the legacy of the past. It keeps catching up.

  

So here is my interview with Judith

Question: You have written a brilliant trilogy. Did you set out to write the full cycle, or did the first just tempt you into continuing?

Nothing was further from my mind when I was writing the first novel.

The idea for Pattern of Shadows sprang from an occasion when I was in Lancashire researching for a different book. I came across an article about an old cotton mill that was one of the first prisoner of war camps for German soldiers in World War Two.

What I read fascinated me. Not only because it was in Lancashire, near to the Pennines where I grew up but also because, as a child, I spent quite a lot of time in a cotton mill.

Now, before anyone thinks I’m older than I actually am, or that I was exploited as a child to labour in a textile mill, I should explain:

In the nineteen sixties my parents worked in the local cotton mill.

My mother was a winder (working on a machine that transferred the cotton off large cones onto small reels (bobbins), in order for the weavers to use to make the cloth). Well before the days of Health and Safety I would often go to wait for her to finish work on my way home from school. I remember the muffled boom of noise as I walked across the yard and the sudden clatter of so many different machines as I stepped through a small door cut into a great wooden door. I remember the rumble of the wheels as I watched men pushing great skips filled with cones alongside the winding frames, or manoeuvring trolleys carrying rolls of material. I remember the women singing and shouting above the noise, whistling for more bobbins: the colours of the cotton and cloth - so bright and intricate. But above all I remember the smell: of oil, grease - and in the storage area - the lovely smell of the new material stored in bales and the feel of the cloth against my legs when I sat on them, reading until the siren hooted, announcing the end of the shift.

When I thought about the POW camp I wondered what kind of signal would have been used to separate parts of the day for all those men imprisoned there. I realised how different their days must have been from my memories of a mill.

So I knew I had my setting. An industrial town with a POW camp on the outskirts of that town.

I knew what kind of story I wanted to write: I would write a love story, a life story, a family saga.

And I knew the type of family that I needed to live in that town, be involved in some way with the camp. They had to be as real to me as I hoped they would be to my future readers. (See how optimistic I was before I’d even started the book?!!) They had to be a set of diverse characters with interesting lives and one of them had to be the protagonist.

And I knew right away what the protagonist would be like: a young, strong, sometimes feisty woman, with a great strength of characters, loyal to family and friends, independent yet mindful of familial responsibilities. Finally I knew her name, Mary Howarth.

What I didn’t know was how much she and her family would come to mean so much to me.

And that, when I finished the first draft and the story was neatly tied up, I would be so lost. I didn’t want it to end there. I re-wrote it. And then re-wrote it again. In fact I re-wrote it six times. Until, in the end I realised that the family hadn’t finished with me; those characters wanted more of their story told.

So I wrote the sequel, Changing Patterns. Set in 1950/51 it is a continuation of their lives in the aftermath of the war, during the hardship of rationing, and shows how each copes with the result of their actions during the war.

It felt natural, then, to leap forward in time to reveal how the next generation of the Howarth family was affected by all that had gone before. So I wrote Living in the Shadows, set in 1969


Question: Your books are set in industrial Pennines and rural Wales, both areas that you know well, and that comes across strongly in the books. Do you find either one easier to evoke?

One of my favourite things when I’m writing is to evoke a sense of place through description. It only takes a few words or sentences here and there. You don’t need a great dollop of narrative to create a setting. I just close my eyes and picture what I want to see. Sometimes an image will come to me that I know I’ll need as a background for a particular scene, a certain part of the story. When that happens I write it and keep it in a separate file.

But in answer to your question, I have to say it was easier to evoke a town in the industrial Pennines because I grew up a few miles away from such a town in the sixties and, although at the time I was oblivious to the fact, that it wasn’t too long after the war. And I do remember a lot of the late sixties, which is the era of the last book of the trilogy.

Ashford, the fictional town in the book, is actually loosely based on Oldham. I say loosely but for one fact which I’ll tell you about later.

I was brought up in a village in the Pennines. I loved the hills and the moors so it was simple to picture the surrounding area; to describe how it was then. And every Saturday my mother and I would catch the bus to Oldham to go shopping and pay the bills. So going back in time to the days of the old-fashioned Woolworths, the market, the shops on the High Street was a brilliant reminiscence for me.

We moved to Pembrokeshire in the late seventies so I needed to combine the research of rural Wales during the war, immediately afterwards and in the sixties with how I’ve seen it since we’ve lived here. I love the coastline, the countryside, the farmland and the slower pace of life here in Wales. And I know that much of the natural areas haven’t changed too much. But I have to admit, putting together the two, the research and what I saw was a little more difficult. It took me a lot more time and a lot of effort before I was happy with the descriptions, the evocation of the little village of Llamroth

Question: The trilogy is a family saga, covering a period from World War II to the trendy 60s, and each period is conveyed very convincingly. How much research did you have to do?

Simply put… loads. I have thick files of the research I did for each book. Each folder contains a section on the society during each era: the politics and politicians’ names, the social attitudes, houses, furniture, domestic appliances (if any and, if not, what was used beside a sweeping brush, donkey stone and, on washing days, a dolly tub and mangle) clothes, food and recipes, the newspapers and magazines at the time (including children’s comics), toys, films, radio (or television) programmes, shops. Anything and everything to bring the world that the characters move around in to life.

I have to admit, though, I didn’t have to do quite as much research for Living in the Shadows; I was very aware of the life around me in 1969!


Question: A central presence in all three books is the Granville, an old cotton mill that serves as a prisoner of war camp. Is it based on a real place?

Ah, now. This is what I meant when I said the industrial town in the Pennines is loosely based on Oldham except for one fact. The Granville is based on reality. It is created from Glen Mill, the actual POW camp on the outskirts of Oldham.

Glen Mill was a disused cotton mill built in 1903 it ceased production in 1938. At a time when all-purpose built camps were being used by the armed forces and there was no money available for POW build, Glen Mill was chosen for various reasons: it wasn't near any military installations or seaports and it was far from the south and east of Britain, it was large and it was enclosed by a railway, a road and two mill reservoirs.

The earliest occupants were German merchant seamen caught in Allied ports at the outbreak of war and brought from the Interrogation centre of London. Within months Russian volunteers who had been captured fighting for the Germans in France were brought there as well. According to records they were badly behaved, ill disciplined and– oddly enough, I thought–hated the Germans more than they did the British. So there were lots of fights. But, when German paratroopers (a branch of the Luftwaffe) arrived they imposed a Nazi-type regime within the camp and controlled the Russians.

Later in the war the prisoners elected a Lagerführer; a camp leader. This hierarchy ruled the inner workings of the camp and the camp commanders had to deal with them.

The first ever talk I gave was to about a hundred and fifty people who, I was told just before the talk were, ‘Friends of Glen Mill… you’d better have done your research.’

I had. It went okay. But I’ve never known such sheer panic about a talk since.



Question: There’s a love story running through the books, but because it is a family saga rather than a simple romance, you follow a host of diverse characters. Do you enjoy playing with a large and complex cast, rather than concentrating solely on one protagonist?

I do! It’s like life; we’re all intermingled with one another in this world. We don’t live in a vacuum. As John Donne says” No Man is an Island.”

It’s fun, thinking about what one character will be doing while another takes over the plot, the story, for a while. A bit like characters on stage; they never stop acting.

As long as I remember that whatever the others in the cast do, ultimately it affects the protagonist (and/or the antagonist) in some way, I can keep an eye on everyone. Obviously it can go wrong in the first few drafts but, in the end, it works well.

Perhaps I just like making life difficult for myself.

But the way I write is to give separate chapters, different times, to the main characters’ point of view. I think it works. It’s important that the reader knows just who they are following, exactly whose perspective they are reading.


Question: Do you plan to add to the story, or do you think it’s now complete?

I thought the series would be over by the end of the trilogy. It’s not! My WIP is the prequel set between 1912 and 1924. Working title, Foreshadowing. And it tells the story of Winifred and Bill, Mary’s parents.


Question: Have you always wanted to be a writer, or did it creep up on you?

We were rather isolated as a family so I was a bit of a loner as a child. From being small, I wrote to invent characters that would fill my world and I’m embarrassed to admit I would act them out when I was on my own. I loved English in school and would write huge long stories that the poor teacher had to plough through. I had wonderful English teachers that always encouraged me. Depending what was happening in my life I either wrote a lot or hardly anything but I wrote every day. As an adult I began sending out short stories and poems with moderate success. The novels I wrote I hid away. It was only after I had breast cancer that I found courage to let the world see my books.

It was the best thing I did. But there is a tale to it. Perhaps it’s best I just share it here: http://bit.ly/1Usy8xI


Links to Judith's books, website, blog etc.

Pattern of Shadows http://amzn.to/1toWbaY

Changing Patterns http://amzn.to/1U1AzHM

Living in the Shadows http://amzn.to/1Uc0Ghp


Website: http://www.judithbarrow.com

Blog: https://judithbarrowblog.com/

Twitter: @barrow_judith

Facebooks: judith.barrow.3

Pinterest: judithbarrow

Goodreads: Judith_Barrow

Google+: JudithBarrowauthor

Linkedin: judith-anne-barrow-02812b11

about me: http://about.me/jbarrow

the very being or legal existence of a woman

In India, one of the rapists who brutalised and murdered a young woman on a bus, has offered an excuse for his crime. "A girl is far more responsible for rape than a boy. A decent girl won't roam around at 9 o'clock at night. Housework and housekeeping is for girls, not roaming in discos and bars at night doing wrong things, wearing wrong clothes."

In Britain we are tempted to give smug thanks that we live in a country where women are not treated with such utter contempt. We are and always have been so thoroughly civilised here.

Except, of course, that we haven’t.

1982 a motorist raped a teenage hitchhiker. I remember the case very well, because the judge at Ipswich crown court, Bertrand Richards, merely fined the rapist, since the victim was obviously just asking for it. ''I am not saying that a girl hitching home late at night should not be protected by the law, but she was guilty of a great deal of contributory negligence.'' It’s one of a vast ocean of cases where rape victims have been let down by the courts or the police, and the belief is still widespread that in many cases, the women victims are responsible for the crime committed against them.

Not so long ago, some women could be raped repeatedly without the law even recognising it as a crime. They were called ‘wives.’

1736 Judge Matthew Hale established that as marriage was a legal contract, the wife ‘hath given up herself in this kind unto her husband, which she cannot retract.’ Refusal was not permitted.

1991 R.v R: The House of Lords finally declares Hale’s ruling to be a legal myth. 1991.

But still, we think, Britain is a better place for women than many other countries and cultures. Yes, there are still glass ceilings to break through, and a great many theoretical equalities that amount to squat in real life, but we’re not generally treated as possessions, as second-class citizens, as sex-slaves, oppressed, covered up, despised, subjected to forced marriage, mutilated…

Not now. But we haven’t been where we are for very long.

Women allow themselves to be ‘given away’ by their fathers at their weddings, and, okay, it’s on a par with wearing something borrowed, something blue: cute and meaningless. But for centuries, it had plenty of meaning. Parents arranged marriages, and girls were the property of their father until the moment they became the property of their husband.

1870 – 145 years ago – Married Women’s Property Act: a wife was allowed to keep her own earnings. Before that, any wealth she earned or owned became her husband’s property. She couldn’t draw up a will or dispose of anything without her husband’s consent.

1882 Married Women’s Property Act: wives were granted the legal status of ‘Feme Sole.’ They existed in their own right. Previously, a wife was legally defined as a ‘feme covert.’ In the words of 18^th century lawyer, William Blackstone, "By marriage, the very being or legal existence of a woman is suspended, or at least incorporated or consolidated into that of the husband, under whose wing, protection, or cover she performs everything."
 Mind you, when my mother’s cousin writes to her, she still addresses her as Mrs. Peter Moore.

1990 – just 25 years ago – She’s finally taxed separately.

Which is okay if she’s allowed to work. My grandmother, a seamstress, marrying in 1921, had to make do with a quiet civil ceremony, in order to keep the marriage secret from her employer. Once he found out, she was unemployed. Married women couldn’t work and be economically independent.
Not that they had much of an income to give up, because women could expect to be paid pin money, while men were entitled to a proper wage. As wage slaves, at the beginning of the industrial revolution, they were in demand, as a source of very cheap labour.

1842 Mines and Collieries Act: women were excluded from working in mines, not because the work was too hard or dangerous, but because it involved them wearing trousers and working bare-breasted: it “made girls unsuitable for marriage and unfit to be mothers.”

Women proved themselves capable of any job, in times of war, when the men were needed for cannon fodder, but they were pushed back to the kitchen as soon as the surviving men wanted their jobs back.

The marriage bar on women in most professions, including the civil service, lasted until the 1950s.

1970  Equal Pay Act: at least employers were required to pay lip service to equal pay for equal work. Amazing how tiny distinctions in job descriptions could get round it.

1975 Sex Discrimination Act. You’d think it was simple, wouldn’t you? No more discrimination in jobs, services, etc on grounds of gender. But…

2015: first women members of the Royal and Ancient Golf club, first woman bishop…

Equality in employment requires equality in eduction of course.
Women have struggled for it for centuries, from Margaret Cavendish in the 17^th century and Mary Wollstonecraft in the 18^th. Tudor royal women were educated as well as their brothers, but it was downhill after that. Young gentlemen learned Latin and how to run the Empire. Young ladies learned deportment. When education began to be regarded as a good thing for the lower orders, in the 19^th Century, the girls had their share, but the 11 Plus, in operation after World War II was still deliberately skewed in order to prevent girls consistently out-doing boys. At my Comprehensive school, in the late 1960s, no argument: girls did housecraft and biology (fluffy bunnies and how to cook them) and boys did metalwork and physics (how to get to the moon).  There’s still a struggle to get girls to study STEM subjects.

12^th Century: Oxford university already up and running, for boys, followed by Cambridge in 1209.

1869: a mere 660 years later – Girton, Cambridge, first college for women. The founding of a women’s college in Oxford was condemned by theologian Henry Liddon as “an educational development that runs counter to the wisdom and experience of all the centuries of Christendom.”

1948: Cambridge finally awards degrees to women. 1948

1865 Elizabeth Garrett became first woman qualified to practice medicine, courtesy of the Society of Apothecaries, which promptly changed its rules, to stop other women getting uppity ideas.
Of course, women had always been concerned with medicine, and probably did less damage than the official male doctors. But then if they did too much and were suspected of being a little too wise, they always ran the risk of being condemned as witches.

1727: Janet Horne was the last woman executed for witchcraft in Britain. Being Scottish, she was burned. England hanged its witches.

Women’s function was not to be educated and employed, but obedient wives and mothers. .  In the 1940s, The Queen Mother explained why a proper education wasn’t necessary for her younger daughter Margaret: “After all, I and my sisters only had governesses and we all married well—one of us very well.”

Their role was ordained, by law and by God. The Book of Common Prayer recommended this reading for marriage services: “Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the Church: and he is the Saviour of the body. Therefore as the Church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing. And again he saith, Let the wife see that she reverence her husband.”

1928; The bride’s vow to obey became optional in the Prayer book. Optional.

1837: civil registration removed the church’s monopoly on marriage – but not on divorce, which was virtually impossible for anyone not called King Henry.

1857 Matrimonial Causes Act: men could divorce their wives for adultery. A woman could divorce her husband if adultery were accompanied by cruelty, incest, bigamy or desertion.

1937 Matrimonial Causes Act: the situation was equalised.

Why would any woman possibly want a divorce? Marriage was a state of bliss – at least, she’d better find it so, or else. A man was allowed to lock up and beat his wife, without restraint.

1853 Aggravated Assaults Act: a wife was granted the same legal protection from assault as a poodle.


1895 The City of London prohibited wife-beating at night, because it kept people awake.

1976 Domestic Violence and Matrimonial Proceedings Act: wives could take out injunctions against violent partners. We’re still struggling to convince the police to treat domestic violence as a crime and not a private matter.

1351 Treason Act. Husbands were never actually permitted to kill their wives. A husband who did so would be guilty of murder, and might even be hanged. On the other hand, a wife who killed her husband was guilty of petty treason against her rightful lord. The penalty for treason for women was burning at the stake (hanging drawing and quartering involved stripping and was therefore indecent for women. Burning was okay).

1784. John Wesley was busy saving the world. Jane Austen was 9. The Prince Regent was just about to start building the Brighton Pavilion. And Mary Bailey was the last woman to be burned at the stake for murdering her husband

1828 the crime of petty treason was downgraded to murder.

Wives existed to have babies and had no legitimate business preventing conception, even though they’ve been trying to for millennia. Moderately reliable methods have only been available from the 1870s, and it wasn’t until the 1920s that the likes of Mary Stopes ensured they were publicly advocated (for married women). Real control only dates from the 1960s, with the pill and the Abortion Act.

When a couple with children split up, it’s usually the mother who gets custody, much to the resentment of many fathers. Their resentment is nothing to that felt by women in earlier times. Children were the property of the father, who not only gained automatic custody but could deny the mother any access.

1839 Custody of Infants Act: a non-adulterous wife could have custody of any children under 7, if the Lord Chancellor agreed she was of good character.

1873 Custody of Infants Act: a good wife could have custody of children under 16.

1886 Guardianship of Infants Act: a widowed mother was permitted to be sole guardian of her children, without being monitored by a sensible man.

All these laws, concerned with the welfare of women. Passed mostly by men.

1832. Reform Act. Started the redistribution of the franchise. Sounds good, except that it actually withdrew the franchise from women who might previously have been permitted to vote on property grounds.

1838 The great Charter. The radical revolutionary chartists demanded votes for all men. Not women.

1869 Municipal Franchise Act: women ratepayers could vote in local elections! BUT

1872 a court ruling limited it to single and widowed women.

1918 Representation of the People Act: all men over 21 could now vote, and, be still my beating heart, all staid and matronly women over 30. But girl, did we have to fight for it, against not merely ridicule, but torture. It certainly put paid to the notion of chivalrous English gentlemen who treated women with respect. Force-feeding for jailed suffragettes, not always through the obvious orifices, was a form of violence not far removed from the way rape is used as a weapon of war.

1928 Representation of the People (Equal Franchise) Act. We hadn’t all turned up at the ballot box, simpering, giggling and asking for help to hold the pencil, so finally – equality.

1929 Margaret Bondfield first woman Cabinet Minister.

1958 Life Peerages Act: women were allowed to sit in the House of Lords. Phew.

1979 – oh, let’s pass over that one.

2015 – Harriet Harman’s Pink Bus. Hang on. Are we going backwards here?

So here we are. Still woefully under-represented in Parliament/government, which remains a public-school boy’s club, but we’re getting there. We’ve broken into all the professions, if only by our finger tips. If we’re brave enough, or well-enough funded, we can take employers to court when they treat us unfairly as women, as entire city councils have discovered. We can marry who we like, even if we make a complete pig’s ear of it and make ridiculous choices for all the wrong reasons. Or we can choose sex without marriage, or complete and utter independence, and we will not be hauled before the village elders and flogged or stoned.

We can dress how we want, let the world see our faces and our hair. We can believe and think what we want, and voice our thoughts, loudly, without permission. We are not usually gang-raped if we’re suspected of being lesbian. We don’t have to live in shuttered quarters and avoid the sight of the opposite sex. We can walk and drive, unaccompanied. Our small daughters are not subjected to genital mutilation or sold off in marriage to dirty old men. We are free to use contraception, to have many babies, or just one, or none at all. If we conceive outside marriage, we are not sent to Magdalen laundries, to have our babies stolen from us by nuns from Hell. We are not shot in the head if we dare to demand education.

We’re lucky. We don’t live in that nasty, patriarchal, misogynist, Mediaeval world out there, full of fear and hatred of women. But it wasn’t so long ago that we did, so smugness really isn’t called for. We have what we have because we’ve struggled for it, and sisters, we need to be sober, be vigilant, because our adversary, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking to drag us back into the dark.

Scotland the possibly brave

I don’t live in Scotland, have very little Scottish blood, and I won't be voting in the referendum, but… I have come to the conclusion that it’s really time to end the “union” that is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The thing about our union is that it came about, piecemeal, through conquest, repression, persecution, feudal genealogical alliances, bribery and incompetence among capitalist interests, hundreds of years ago, before any of our present values were remotely acceptable, let alone the norm.

When the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was at its height, Wales had been conquered, Scotland had been bought, Ireland had been starved, any English workers who wanted rights were transported, and democracy was a dirty word. So how about ending the Union, not so that little nation states of Scotland, Ireland and Wales can go off into isolationist ghettoes, but so that we can re-form, not a union, but an alliance, of modern adult societies who share civilised values, cultures, interests, and even a currency, who can agree with each other without having to submit perpetually to rule by an Eton-dominated public school ra-ra debating chamber in mock Gothic in the middle of London.