Wendy Robertson Life Twice Tasted
'We write to taste life twice:in the moment and in retrospect.' Anaïs Nin
Sunday, 19 June 2022
Father's Day Memories
4 Billy: A Daughter’s Tale
Thursday, 16 June 2022
New Aspects of Personal Freedom
One consequence of these last three years - involving as they have the destructive and distrantimg advent of Covid in addition to an increasingly disabled partner needing 24/7 personal care - is that I have only rarely been able to get out of the house. In consequence the world outside of my door has become a mysterious unvisited place.
Any time to give attention to my lifetime vocation for creative writing
has been squeezed into only very small spaces. Even so I have managed to use
these spaces to complete a collection of newly conceived short stories – Siblings
– and as well to nurture them into a broadcast over Christmas in collaboration
with Bishop FM. As well as this I have embedded the short stories into a book
which is now available on Amazon. (The post below describes this process.)
But I suspect that now, perhaps, things are changing. I have
managed to organise two afternoons a week when the very competent C will mind
both house and partner for two hours. In this time I can be my own self,
walking in the park, walking on the High Street, drinking coffee in a café. And
writing.
We had a practice run last Monday when I went out on my own into
my beautiful town and sat in the Fox’s Tale – my favourite café. I was buzzing
with the freedom of it all. I drank a little, ate a little and then I picked up
my pen and, very quickly, wrote a series of lines as a finger exercise (see
below).
After that I turned the page in my notebook and wrote very
quickly for 90 minutes, drafting a series of sequences sketches which will
certainly play their part in this year’s new novel set in 1963.
All very
good stuff – as my son would say. Then I came home to find that my house
and its precious occupant were still standing.
I certainly feel like a page has turned in this writer’s life.
In the Fox’s Tale (1)
freedom
is coming
out of the door
and
knowing all is safe
in the
house behind me.
freedom
is walking
down the ancient street
neatly
split between sun and shadow
making my
way among strangers
and giving
this one directions
to a certain
a bank. He smiles.
freedom
is eating
avocados, and drinking
cappuccino
with chocolate sprinkles
sitting
beside a young man with a laptop
and
wondering about his research as
he hums in
time to the music in his ears.
freedom
is chewing
a warm bagel
watching
the world, and
relishing
being outside and alive.
wr
Thursday, 5 May 2022
SIBLINGS STRUTTING THEIR STUFF
At last, after one or two to production hiccups, my new collection Siblings is now live for interested people on Amazon. Producing my own volumes is the most exciting late-life experience for me. Since Theft, my first published novel in 1972 (one keen reader remembers this novel here ) my novels have been produced by major publishers accompanied be a small army of accomplished proof-readers and marketeers.
I was always happy with their work, although sometimes the covers – beautifully painted - were more saga-esque than I would have preferred. I remember one editor telling me that if there was a woman on the cover – there was always a woman on the cover – this could produce thousands more sales. And if the woman was accompanied by a child, that could mean thousands more. The same applied if there was gold foil on the cover.
In those days I just wrote my novels alongside the many other things – children, husband, demanding profession - in my life. These novels would be long - often running to 80 or 90,000 words.
However, in recent years the world around me has changed radically: it has shrunk and slowed down, dominated as it is now by my role of full time carer. However, writing is my vocation, and I am still writing – now rather slimmer volumes - and publishing them myself through Amazon Createspace.
As my Auntie Alice (aka Eirwyn in my newest book Siblings…) wrote in my autograph book circa 1951. ‘I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul.’
This is never more so than my new collection of short stories, Siblings.
These later volumes are slimmer and perhaps do not appear so genre-specific as many of the early novels on my list. When I first started on this private publishing gig (see Damselfly ) I continued to produce in the long fiction form. – Becoming Alice – The Pathfinder – An Englishwoman France – without deliberately meeting the protocols of genre fiction. (One of these books - the novel The Bad Child features an extra perceptive middle child who resembles Ayla, the central storyteller in Siblings.) Other recent books feature short prose (Kaleidoscope) and poetry (With Such Caution) turning more and more to the seductive melding of memoir and fiction about which I have written here on Life Twice Tasted before. Of course there have been those larger novels one was Becoming Alice the other one The Bad Child. And I have another one in plan.
I am happy with them all. Writing and producing books in this way is not dissimilar to having children, in terms of the protective pride one feels as they venture out there in the world
I am feeling that now in the case of Siblings, out there, strutting her stuff.
So here I am - rather weirdly with my editor’s cap on - talking about myself in the third person on the back cover of Siblings:
In this collection Wendy Robertson dances the borders between memoir and fiction, exploring the lives of seven siblings presided over by their mother who was widowed in the First World War. Their separate stories begin in the year 1922 in a mining village in South Durham. Each of the five sisters and two brothers has an individual story unique to themselves. The storyteller here is observant Ayla, the middle child in this talented family.
She tells us: “This collection of short stories is dedicated to my mother Barbara and her siblings. Her family of storytellers embroidered their often-told stories not only into the history of their own family but also significantly into the history of the 20th Century.”
She has published many novels and several books of short stories. Many of these reflect the history, landscape, and personalities emerging from County Durham, where she has lived most of her life. In that time she has also travelled researched, written other novels set in London. Coventry and North Wales and far afield as Singapore, America, and France. Discover more about these novels on her blog at http://lifetwicetasted.blogspot.com/
See her essay about dancing the borders between fact and fiction,
ORDER SIBLINGS HERE
Wednesday, 20 April 2022
‘The unexamined life is not worth living.’ Plato. 'The Midnight Mannequins.'
‘The unexamined life
is not worth living.’ Plato
I am aware that in the modern world an increasing range of
people have heartfelt aspirations to write. However it might be the case that
some people who have aspirations to write never quite manage to examine their own life or the lives around
them in the Platonic sense. Some people think that writing means ‘writing down’
as opposed to the reality of writing, which is observing, thinking and
transforming their own experiences to make them universal and truly felt by the
reader.
(Sadly at the present time some writing aspirations have
been built around ideas of fame and fortune which is a false doorway into that precious
room of writing.)
My admittedly long life in writing and publishing has been
divided almost equally between writing and teaching in and out of schools and
institutions. Then, after a number of published novels and short story
collections, this has inevitably culminated
in more recent years in workshops and courses in the community, addressing the
writing process.
And now I am reflecting on all the courses and workshops I
have facilitated over this long time. I have the feeling now that many people
who are not actually labelled ‘writer’ can indeed write and that some have a well-founded,
deep desire to see their stories on the page. These are people of talent and
persistence like Mike Daley who have developed their innate ability in the
Platonic sense, to examine their own life and the lives of people around them.
So I understand that many people who are not actually
labelled ‘writer’ can indeed write and have a deep desire to see their words
and creative perceptions on the page. In some cases these people have moved on
towards publication. One of the pleasures of doing all this has been meeting
people like Michael Daly, writer of The
Midnight Mannequins.
Some years ago Mike came to one of my workshops and - if
you like – ‘caught the bug’. And so
inevitably I have been thinking about these years of teaching as I read and
enjoyed his new published volume of short stories The Midnight Mannequins. .
It seems to me that, in going through this process, Mike
Daley has developed the complex literary ability to walk the line between
memoir and story- a delicate process I have written about this elsewhere on
this blog.http://lifetwicetasted.blogspot.com/search?q=+Memoir+and+Fiction
Mike certainly has had a life which is worth examining. His
witty and confiding tone has the familiar literary ring of the Irish voice.
Born in Roscommon, Ireland he came to Britain to join the RAF at the age of
seventeen. After a successful career culminating in the role of Squadron Leader
he left to become a university bursar in Durham city. In 1985 he was awarded an
MBE for military service in and was awarded the freedom of the city of London.
Interestingly his fiction is not confined to any
journalistic accounting of these experiences. The titles of his short stories will
give you a clue. Besides The Midnight
Mannequins, we have How Was Your
Mother?, Jolly Good Show, The Price Tag, Love Letter, Lunch Without Laughter,
The Book Club, Bed Seven, The Tea Dancers, The Defaced Fiver, and The Dance Band. All these stories lead
the reader from one to another to explore the life experienced with weight, irony,
and knowing allusions ensuring that good writing is the product from unique ‘examined life’.
Read and enjoy! And – I would say this, wouldn’t I?
To obtain it : https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/The-Midnight-Mannequins-and-Other-Stories-by-Michael-Daly/9781398410404
Saturday, 29 January 2022
THEFT: The Fifty-Year Novel.
THEFT: The Fifty-Year Novel.
‘I am so pleased to have found you after fifty
years. You don't know me, but I would very much like to thank you for creating
something a long time ago that has had a prescient influence on my life.’ .Richard Temple
‘It had been on my mind for many years that I should somehow try to get in touch and let you know how deeply Theft had reached into my imagination.’ Richard Temple.
THEFT The Fifty
Year Novel
Wendy’s Story
In 1972 Carousel, a branch of Transworld Publishing,
published my very first novel THEFT.
At that time I was a young teacher with two
children, managing a family and a house and a working husband. At that time I
was writing, obeying the compulsion that had consumed me since I was eight
years old. At that time - as well as changing my library book 5 times a week - I
used to write my invented stories on A4 paper, then fold each story in half and
stitch the spine with my mother’s big tacking needle. In some of these ‘books’ page
I even pasted in a library marked up with dates of imaginary borrowers. (Then
and always libraries were my heaven-sent place in a rather difficult young
life.)
THEFT, written when I in my twenties, was longer
than these home-made beauties and took some time to write. Then one night I was
sitting in a group of women who were discussing an organisation called Books
for Your Children – a group led by Anne Wood, another teacher emerging from
South Durham. She happened to mention that some people were - even now! - writing
for children. So I happened to say that I’d written one, for a start. She asked
to read it and I willingly handed it over.
The next day she rang and said, ‘We’ll have it.’
Puzzled, I said, “Who? Who will have it?”
That was when she told me that she was newly
appointed editor for Carousel, the new imprint launched by Transworld.
My daughter Debora, now very grown-up indeed,
recently told me that she remembers the day when a box full of copies of THEFT arrived
on our doorstep and how excited we all were to see these books with their wonderful
cover spilling out of the box.
After that, as well as teaching and family et
cetera, I produced several children’s and adult novels before I took the bull
by the horns and designated myself a full time writer and proceeded to write
more novels.
THEFT is a story told using the context of my own South
Durham working class life and family. Here on the blog you can see that that since
the publication of Theft in 1972, alongside
teaching in schools and later working in higher education I have written a good
number of novels which celebrate my own cultural
context - I hope without stereotyping, romanticising or denigrating that life and its values. This, I
trust, ensured that at the core of all the novels are grains of
fundamental truth which are the sign of good fiction and will be recognised by
readers from widely different backgrounds – as turned out the case with Richard
Temple. See his story below.
Quite an important point here
is that, as well as my own South Durham setting, the novels are sometimes
located in such far-flung places as Spain, Russia, Singapore, USA and of course
- as with many migrant Durham families - locations such as Ireland Scotland and
Wales. I grew up very keen on both travelling and researching. And in my fiction,
characters are featured sometimes leaving and sometimes arriving in the
north-east of England my heart’s home. Like THEFT these
novels spring out of my identity as a South Durham person
And so now I have come to
full circle. I have just completed the collection SIBLINGS – short stories of
seven brothers and sisters living in just such as the location as the setting
for THEFT. To my delight these stories were broadcast over Christmas Anne will be published as a book lateOr this year.
AND NOW…
And now for the special
reason for telling you this long story. I received a letter from a perfect
stranger Richard Temple, who lives in London and is now retired from his job as
a graphic designer at the BBC. He has his own story to tell about theft and its
role in his quite long life.
Richard Temple’s Fifty Year Story
of THEFT
Letter One: Richard and Christine
Hello Wendy,
I am so pleased to
have found you after fifty years. You don't know me, but I would very much like
to thank you for creating something a long time ago that has had a prescient
influence on my life.
I'm talking about your novel, THEFT.
I was about eleven when I read it. My mum was a
good chooser of books and had bought it to keep me happy while I was recovering
from mumps and very miserable about going away to a boarding school at the end
of the summer holidays.
THEFT was so
enthralling. I loved every sentence. I also loved the fact that the
story-teller and main character was female. Being a boy, I realised for
the first time that girls liked a bit of excitement too and weren't really that
different from me. That, and the fact that a lot of the action was at
night.
But I was transfixed by the setting, the rows of
terraced houses in the North East, the curtain that was a kitchen door and the
community spirit and the warmth of the mother telling the story. It
really had meaning for me and I understood it, even though I had a very
different life myself. I was a middle class child growing up in
Cheltenham and went to boarding schools.
I read the book four or five times and took it away
to school with me, so I could escape the rabble and travel away to the cobbled
streets and night adventures somewhere warmer, in the emotional sense.
The illustrated cover was very good too. The moonlit image stuck in my
head and visualising it brought back the feelings and people inside the book
for my entire life.
When I was twenty-two I went to London to work for
the BBC. My bedroom at home had been emptied by then and turned into a
guest room. All physical signs of my childhood existence had disappeared,
along with my books, and that was that.
In London I met a girl. She was a nurse from
Gateshead. It felt like we'd always known each other and after a few
months I went up North to meet her family. Until then I had not made the
connection with Theft but
I soon did. My accent, the sense of being different and 'posh'. But
soon I realised that these people were warm, not hostile, they were tolerant
and included everyone no matter how odd they might be, which was a far cry from
my own world until then.
My girlfriend had grown up in a terraced house in a
street just like the one in your book. It was the 'sixties but even then
there was no bath, no hot water, no heating apart from coal fires. There
was even a curtain across the doorway. Her mam had worked in a
shop. Her dad was a train driver who had become ill with the coal dust
and died far too young. They had a cobbled street,
strange gas-style street lights and even a pub on the corner like the one on
the cover of Theft.
She was living there when I read the book and I can
see her almost as if you had been writing about her. I really felt as if
I had entered into the book that had made such a strong and meaningful
impression on me. My girlfriend also had an older brother who had looked
after her much of the time when they were growing up and they had near scrapes
and similar tales to tell.
My Geordie girlfriend is now my wife and we have
been together for thirty-five years. I told her about your book early in
our friendship. One day my mother was emptying her loft and gave me a box
that she had put all my books in years before. To my joy, there was the
moonlit street, the kids running for their lives and 'Theft' in rounded
letters.
Christine - that's my wife - grabbed it and read
it, and like me loved every bit of it. The almost supernatural attraction
it had for me when I was eleven is not lost on her and she finds it as strange
as I do.
We settled in London but often go back to the North
East. Although in London, the house we live in is in a Victorian terraced
street. Sadly the cobbles went years ago, although there are some left
along the gutters and in the lanes. Now Theft is
kept above the fireplace in the bedroom and I would not be without it.
Thanks Wendy.
Richard.
Richard Temple: Letter Two:
THEFT and Family Life.
Dear Wendy
I am bowled over and overwhelmed by your reply to
my humble thank you, I really am. I will follow your links and listen to
the stories of Siblings. I can't wait to hear it.
It had been on my mind for many years that I should
somehow try to get in touch and let you know how deeply Theft had
reached into my imagination. It remained a 'should do' item on several
lists until I was mildly unwell with covid last year and, lying in bed feeling
miserable, raking over life in general, my eye fell on the spine of Theft. I
thought of you and realised this was my chance to do what I had always intended
to do, but never had. I reached for my tablet and started Googling and
soon found your blog. Obviously I found it fascinating and was even more
delighted to see an email address.
How you have managed to accomplish so much is
beyond me. What an achievement. All those books and everything
else; truly amazing.
You were kind enough to say my story was
beautifully told in a way that hinted that I might be a writer. From you,
that is indeed an accolade, probably the greatest compliment I've ever
had. I will have to let that sink in. I've always been told I'm a
writer, but I have never published a book, nor even reached the end of writing
one. I can write a chapter, but then I feel the need to get up and walk
around and that's the end of it. Ten minutes later I'm bored with that
story and have a new idea for a different one.
I am actually a graphic designer and worked for
many years at Television Centre in Shepherd's Bush, London. I'm more or
less retired now, so maybe now is my moment to get writing.
I tried to keep my first letter to you a brief one
although there are more strange parallels between Theft and my
own world. I mentioned my wife Christine, whose childhood felt so
familiar. Like you, she always enjoyed books and was the first ever in
her family to get A-levels and then reach university. She studied English
Literature and our love of reading, especially modern poetry, brought us
together. Perhaps like you, judging from what you have said, education in
all its forms has been her metier and she jumped across several unexpected
stepping stones to eventually becoming a senior university lecturer. She
has always been totally confident about her childhood and proud of her home and
her wise and clever parents who did not have the same opportunities. I am
proud of that too, although I can't claim any credit for it.
Thank goodness for education. It really does
transform and there is nothing better. Although thinking about how easily
I found your blog, the World Wide Web springs to mind as close second. My
son is in his second year at university and one of his lecturers made the point
a few weeks ago that his generation of students is the first to enter
university with no experience of the world without the internet. That was
quite a thought. He has always used it to teach himself.
That brings me to the next thing I want to tell
you. Your daughter says that the books we encounter in childhood are
transformative. She is right. I think they can be for adults too,
but perhaps less subtly. We read Theft to our son
William several times when he was growing up. He too loved it. In
terms of being transformative, it prompted wonderful discussions about his
north-eastern heritage and he was fascinated to hear all about his mother's
life in the terraced house in Gateshead that was so similar to the book's.
The concept of a house where children were bathed in the kitchen sink is a real
one for him. Those stories have made him, I am pleased to say, very
realistic about education and how different life is for him as a result of
it. He's ambitious and interested in politics and that has a lot to do
with your book. So who knows how long and how far Theft might
continue to work, its magic.
You have achieved so much, have so much to be proud
of and that alone is an inspiration. I too read The Secret Garden as
a child and got a lot out of it, even though it terrified me. I did also
love the translated books of a French author, Paul Bernard. They were
often adventure stories about a group of kids set in France. They gave me
a life-long interest in France. The long roads, the empty countryside and the
rambling, dilapidated villages where it's a good thing to sit with a Pernod,
smoke Gauloises and contemplate nothing much, apart from life itself.
Richard.
Thank you Richard for giving me permission to print your story and for making this week so much brighter, Wendy.
Tuesday, 11 January 2022
A Voice Actor’s Perspective - ANNE DOVER
Anne Dover: Meeting Wendy Robertson, and collaborating with her as her narrator for the recent Siblings project, (broadcast on Bishop FM Dec 2021 - listen at https://damselflybooks.com/bishop-fm/ - has been an honour and a total delight.
Wendy R: And a delight for me, Scroll down to see the whole of this story...
I am often asked, how I became a ‘voice actor’ and what was my training for such a job?
I suppose I was fortunate to have parents who
encouraged my sister and me to read aloud, and - as was fairly common among the
rural Durham mining community, where I lived - our entertainment was self-made.
No T.V. in those days, although we had a radio, and a piano around which we
would sing, and would harmonise anything that my Mother could play _ hymns
mostly, and some light opera ballads. My Dad’s Welsh blood had given him a
lovely tenor voice, and he had learned somewhere about voice projection, and
gave us vocal tips to make the best of our homespun performances.
Our Sundays were spent at the Wesleyan chapel in Willington
in County Durham, where concerts were held and my sister and I had to recite
poetry and sing at the Sunday School Anniversaries. Sometimes we had to compete
against each other at Eisteddfods, which I suppose were begun I suppose when
the Welsh miners merged with the Durham community.
My Dad, who worked at the local colliery, was encouraged to
become a ‘local’ preacher and had a certain presence and we formed ‘Mr. Roberts
and his singing family’! As a result, my
sister and I were used to and enjoyed getting up on any stage to perform. She
became a successful Cabaret singer, while I left Durham for Newcastle just as
Tyne Tees TV studios began broadcasting. I was a fashion model at the time - in the 60’s - and was asked one day to make
an appearance on a T.V show, which in turn led to an opportunity to voice a T.V
commercial, and that was the beginning of my vocal career.
In my family, we were never told to be quiet. Every book we
read was an opportunity to act it out. So, using the voice for performing
purposes was second nature, and my sister and I used to copy accents and voices
for fun, just to make each other laugh. After I left school, I got a job as
Receptionist and Telephonist at a local garment factory, where I enjoyed
practicing my ‘posh’ voice on the telephone, and as a bonus was given the task
of ‘modelling’ the coats for the factory owner when he came up from London.
(The reality was that as I was 17 and skinny, all the coats were too big, and I
was derided because the coats didn’t fit). But when the boss’s wife arrived - French,
petite extremely glamorous, with poodle tucked under her arm - I amused myself
by trying to copy her accent and longed for her style.
The main character I remember, in my first audiobook, was a
Liverpool girl from the slums, so I listened endlessly to Cilla Black speaking,
and simply copied her voice which I could hear in my head while I was
recording.
So in fact I never did have any form of training, it was just
something I found, when given the chance, I could do voices and for this I
think having a decent ear for music was an enormous bonus. I feel I was lucky
to be in the right place at the right time.
Nowadays, after Covid, I record from my tiny
home studio (actually a walk-in cupboard). Lockdowns meant for some time we
travelling bands of audio voice workers were prevented from dashing around the
U.K to recording studios and people like me began to record at home, and now,
it has itself become a way of life for me. My travelling days are over
now, but the voice lingers on and I suppose that as long as publishers and
authors desire to hire it, I will be delighted as always to clear my throat,
and become the many characters that the audio book requires.
The first audiobooks were designed to help and
be used by people with sight loss, but I’m happy to say that the industry is
booming, and becoming a way of enjoying a book for sighted people, who simply
love being read to as much as I delight in narrating for them. Of course
without the authors, we narrators wouldn’t be able to narrate.
Long may they all continue putting pen to paper,
and captivating our imaginations, and sometimes ……our souls.
Love to all Listeners….everywhere
Anne Dover.
Anne voices Ayla, who is the storyteller in Siblings.
Wednesday, 5 January 2022
The Writer as Outsider
For several years now, perhaps triggered by
the isolation engendered by the Covid situation, I have spent much of my time -
as I say in a recent blog post (scroll down) - dancing on the border between memoir and
fiction.
One outcome
of this has been my new collection This has resulted in at least one distinct
collection called Siblings: seven distinct stories of a family of seven
siblings. The stories are all told by the middle child – called Ayla. She is
the storyteller.
This book will be published in the spring but you can listen again to these stories on Bishop FM.
I have
written elsewhere about middle children – for example in my novels The Bad
Child and Becoming Alice. Inevitably some observers will say that is
this is a deep reflection on my own role as the middle child in a diverse
family who relishes the role of the outsider.
But I would
assert that this outsider feeling transforms itself to a creative resource when
one is a writer who can reflect on the events going on around her.
There is a poem about this feeling in my book WithSuch Caution – a Life Glimpsed in Short pieces.
I thought
you might like to read it. Here it is, Wx