I love writing, and I love taking photographs. I’ve done both quite well from time to time, but I’m parking the photographs for the purposes of this telling, and hopefully you’ll follow this thread with me.
A good book or play can unlock a moment of pure personal epiphany; it can provide answers to long, tangled and gnarly questions. A good piece of writing can transport you away from the grey, rainy reality of a difficult day, or week, or experience. A great piece of writing can uplift you, transform your thinking, take you on a heart-racing, roller-coaster of adventure. As my children grew up, I had high hopes of sharing my passion with them and their friends but of course, they had their own ideas about that. My eldest studied Journalism but my youngest was not helped by some of the school reading schemes that made their way into the new millennium era of UK primary education.
Oh how my soul bled when having volunteered to help read with children in my youngest daughter’s class, I encountered the horrifically designed, cartoonesque set of books that were known as the Oxford Reading Tree, about Biff, Chip and the Magic Key.
According to Amazon, “the Oxford Reading Tree remains the nation's favourite reading scheme.” It seems the books have undergone a design make-over with new artwork and covers, which, they hope will heighten children’s pleasure in reading the stories. Well Lah! I truly hope so but try as I might, I can’t agree it’s the nation’s favourite. It certainly wasn’t mine.
Books are not neutral objects. What we offer children as literature inevitably tells them something about the world, themselves and where they might belong in it. I grew up learning to read with the Ladybird Books, beautifully illustrated, fiction and non-fiction books that fuelled my imagination, drove my desire to learn and nourished my soul. Ladybird’s Janet and John series inevitably began to lose relevance to children living in big cities, and in a much changed, faster paced, far more multicultural society.
Like me, I think there is a point where many people need permission to write, and then to share their work. I went to drama school and before that I both worked in, and was a member of a local theatre’s youth theatre. Amongst the many inspirational people I met during that wonderful time, some encouraged me to ‘Do! Explore! Pursue!’ everything that I felt a passion for.
So, I entered the Royal Court Playwriting competition with, as it turned out, a fantastic piece almost entirely written in the style of Tennessee Williams, a point made quite well by the kind person who fed back that ‘on this occasion I had not been successfully selected to go forward’.
Those years gave me a lifetime of skills I couldn’t have hoped to develop in another environment. It gave me enduring friendships, it gave me permission to write and it fed my voracious literary appetite which has dimmed somewhat as it rubbed up against the rough edges of life.
I once had a theatre colleague who ran his eye over my bookcase and with a sardonic air, asked me if I had actually read all the books on my shelves. I replied I had read most, some with more attention than others but I always had books I had yet to read, a treat for a ‘rainy day’ yet to come. I am not alone in being a bibliophile. An avid bookworm is an interesting person in my world. Recently, my daughter and her friend were packing up some books for me, bribed with pizza and a bottle of wine. I was delighted to hear what a great time her friend had discovering some of the gems on my bookshelves. She’s a film graduate, I wonder if the dog-eared first edition without a back cover she found will inspire her work in the future?
And now, dear reader, we have reached the other end of my thread. It was pulled this morning by a post from Eliza Skelton, the sister of a friend from drama school who died two years ago. Eliza is a singer and songwriter in her own right. She had written about finding a place for the writing her sister Sam left behind.
Eliza wrote this:
“Today is my sister Sam’s birthday. She would have been 61. Before she died she began work on a website to host her writing which I’ve had the great privilege to complete. Sam wrote down narrative ideas, short plays and stories, but often spoke about how the writing felt unanchored somehow - a little will-o-the-wisp floating above the earth, transparent and without solid form.
‘A tidgy thin voice in a big noisy world’ is how she might have put it.
When she moved to her beloved little house on the hill in Wales, she took year away from work to complete a masters in creative writing to help focus her ideas. She gathered seeds from her chosen solitude, from the Welsh hills which live in our family bones, from her walks with Charlie dog and Tubbs through ancient woodland and from the truth of her wildly lived experience perceived from oblique angles.
Will-o-the-wisp took form, grew limbs which in turn grew roots that planted deep in earth and soared into an infinite universe to fuel a howling voice.
Gritty and honest and hilarious, she wrote from an undefended heart that said this is who I am and if you dont like it, I will give no fucks, not even one.
To celebrate her 61st birthday, I’m very proud to announce the publication of her website where you can read her stories, poetry, academic writing, narrative memoir and plays and watch her performing her slam poetry.”
And so, we tie the ends of these several threads that have run across the years and lay them across the page of a book. One day, someone will pick up that book and open it to this page. Who knows what might happen? Perhaps they will pick up a pen and write?