This Represents 80 Years Since The End Of The War

I was born in London and was one of twelve children. I grew up in the East End of London during the war. My earliest memories are of sitting huddled together with my Mum and my brothers and sisters as we listened to the bombs exploding around us.

We were bombed out of our home twice during the war. I began writing at the age of thirteen. My Mum had just died, and I think I began writing as a way of coping with losing her, or perhaps in a way it was a kind of tribute to her or maybe even a way of keeping her alive in my memory, I don’t know. Anyway, I just never stopped writing, It became a lifetime hobby. I never saw myself as an author, I certainly never thought of myself as a published author, but here I am at the age of 86 and almost every day I wonder what I’m doing.

I don’t even write any particular kind of genre, I really just write whatever comes into my mind. I get easily bored, so I can never write one story at a time, I have to be writing at least two, so that if I get bored with what I’m writing, then I just switch over and work on the other book. It’s the same with my knitting, I have to be knittng two or three things at a time, so that I can change when I get bored. Like my writing, I’ve also been knitting for many years, my Mum taught me to knit when I was three years old. Of course there have been so many changes since I began writing. Then we had no typewriters or computers. Everything was written in pencil so I could easily erase my mistakes. As time passed, I had dozens and dozens of notebooks and hand-written sheets. Now I never leave home without my computer.

Together with my husband and our four children, we came to America in 1980, But before that we had spent seven years in New Zealand. Now we have an amazing family of 75 with number 76 due to join us in a couple of months.