The Full Story
In a Nutshell
I came to Australia on a £10 passage when I was five and returned to England in a small car at the age of eight. (I wasn’t the driver.) So, it’s fair to say I grew up in an unconventional and somewhat spontaneous family. Since then I’ve cycled Britain’s length, survived the jungles of Belize, and taught all ages. I now divide my time between writing for children and my work as an Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) practitioner. I live in Melbourne with my husband, two teenagers and a Brittany Spaniel.
Between Kabul and Kandahar, perhaps Ghazni, 1978
Driving to England in 1978 – Afghanistan.
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Me, at John O’Groats, after over 1450km of cycling.
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Our Brittany, Nelson, chief story inspirer.
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Me, with two other story inspirers I know.
The Reason I Write
I was lucky enough to grow up in a language-rich environment.
My brother and I were an appreciative audience.
My mother was the queen of nursery rhymes – there wasn’t one she didn’t know – and these she’d sing or recite to us along with a host of other poems and rhymes many of which have gone to the grave with her.
She also wrote her own poems and stories, though these were never published. She was the one to read us stories in my early years.
Once we were beyond Enid Blyton’s The Folk of the Far Away Tree and could read for ourselves, it was our father who took over.
He read to us every meal time, ‘to slow him down and stop him getting indigestion…’ our mother used to say.
He read us all kinds of things – from the Fu Manchu stories as published in the original 1917 to 1920 Chums annuals which belonged to my grandfather, to Watership Down, The Lord of the Rings, and all CS Lewis’ Narnia books as well as his science fiction trilogy for adults.
And our father had the best repertoire of accents! The whole story came alive when he read aloud. I’d say he stopped reading to us when we left home, but the reality is, he still reads to us at the dinner table when we visit him even now.
I also grew up surrounded by music…
My father is a pianist and composer, and the whole family rang handbells, so coupled with my mother’s poems, rhythm and rhyme were very much a part of my life. It’s little wonder that I started making up my own rhymes and poems from the age of six. (They weren’t very good, I hasten to add, but I had fun messing around with words… and I still do.)
I made up my first poem while tidying all our toys off this lawn. Every toy we owned managed to find its way into the front garden that day. Chanting my poem was the only thing that got me through the job.
In my teens our family – I had two more brothers by this time – and a group of friends formed a concert party, and regularly put on variety concerts for different community groups. I was the nominated ‘elocutionist’ for our party. This involved finding the most entertaining poems I could and performing them for laughs to the audience. My favourites were taken from Roald Dahl’s Revolting Rhymes and Sister Madge’s Book of Nuns by Doug Macleod.
When I finished school I studied English Language and Medieval Literature at Durham University in England. Being fascinated with language and words as I was, I taught English as a Second Language (ESL) to adult migrants in Adelaide before training as a primary teacher.
As a specialist in English and a teacher of the early years, I relished story time.
I knew which books worked and which didn’t, and frequently made up my own stories on the spot if I couldn’t find a picture book which suited my teaching theme.
“Shhh! She’s about to begin!” My class, ready for a story.
I suppose it was the combination of storytelling on the fly to classes of 5-7 year olds, entertaining audiences in my teens at concerts with funny poems and stories, being read to from as far back as I can remember, and seeing the buzz children get when reading finally clicks and books come alive for them, that’s led me to do what I do.
If my writing hits the spot for readers and fires their imaginations as mine has been by oh so many storytellers over the years, I am both honoured and delighted.
