Authors are always told: write about what you know. But as you grow older, the experiences you’ve lived through become ever more complex. Are today’s children happier than when I grew up in the ‘50s? Are their mobile phones any substitute for the imaginative play shown in the film link below? People thought differently back then. I didn’t have to make any ‘special’ friends. I simply played with all the children who happened to live in my road. In the school holidays and weekends, I was sent out to play and told to come back at tea time. We all played elaborate games with a minimum of playthings. If no-one had anything, we ran up the gulleys which surrounded our road and played in the dirt on bombsites. At 5 I went on my own, on the Midland Red bus, to my dance school - 5 miles away. Looking back, I don’t believe it was any safer back then. Most things which happened locally were never reported, so we lived our lives in carefree ignorance. Sometimes there was a rumour of a ‘dirty old man’ in a raincoat…..but we all just giggled and ran away. So, my memories, blurry with time, compete with my love of wartime adventures, as told by my father, plus my humorous adventures in France. My life so far has been an eclectic mix, as reflected in my fiction and non-fiction - sometimes serious, sometimes funny, but I hope always interesting! As Joni Mitchell said: you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone.
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