Much Ado About Media

    I cannot believe a year has slipped past and my blog has sat idle. I on the other hand, have not. Book Two in the Cobbled Streets saga completed and ready for publication, a new novel under way and a series of children’s books started; work-wise it’s been a busy year. Family-wise the same. 2017 ended with our youngest two securing their Uni places; one locally, the other 300 miles away. And despite being immensely proud, I knew that 2018 would bring heartache as our youngest flew the nest. Leav­ing her in the chilly North, I stared after her as we drove away, burning her image into my brain, knowing I wouldn’t see her for some time. As it turns out, with the aid of modern technology, I get to ‘see’ her every day. She video chats on her way to lectures in the morning and on her way home after nights out. I get photos via messenger of which outfit she’s wearing and what food she’s eating. And Facebook keeps me up to date with everything else.

Technology – the thing that I resisted for so long and now reluctantly embrace – has kept the family unit in touch, and separation so much easier to bear. My eldest phones for a chat during her daily commute across London, the conversation always punctuated with “I’m going underground again – speak to you in a few minutes”. I get to hear my son’s music via SoundCloud, and read my other son’s writing via email. We have a family group chat on Messenger, and follow each other on Instagram, Twitter and, some of us, Snapchat. It does mean of course, when we all get together the conversation is peppered with, ‘”yeah, I know,” when we share news that is in fact, no longer news!

Technology and social media are such a normal part of our lives now and this is carried through in novels, film, tv and theatre. Imagine if Jack the Ripper had had access to social media; it doesn’t bear thinking about but crime dramas such as Luther give you an idea of how it could have been. If you're a fan of Last Tango In Halifax, with the brilliant Derek Jacobi and Anne Reid; imagine if the characters had had mobile phones when they were teenagers.

She would’ve texted him to rearrange their date so he wouldn’t have thought she had stood him up, they wouldn’t have spent sixty years wondering ‘what if’, and there wouldn’t have been a story line for such an entertaining drama.

   In my first novel, the characters relied heavily on social media; without it, the story would have taken a completely different turn. The second novel however, is set twenty years previously and as a writer, I had to remember back to a time before such technology; before the birth of the internet. It made me realise how much we take it for granted, how much it has changed our lives and how we communicate with each other. Personally, I’d be lost without my smartphone and without the use of the internet. I love to do research – my hobby/addiction is the family tree. Without the internet, it would be a frustrating and limiting armchair hobby, I have to admit. I have found so much information, made contact with family members and made some startling discoveries and unearthed secrets my ancestors took pains to hide. But sometimes my joy is tinged with sadness; with a futile wish that I could share my discoveries with relatives long departed. Relatives who spent their lives wondering, ‘what if’.

School photo of Grandpa at Salesian College, Battersea.

My grandpa, a kind and patient man, was given away at birth. He had no idea until my great gran did the whole, ‘Ta-da, I’m your real mum’ bit when he was a young adult. Instead of the rapturous reunion she had imagined, he angrily rebuffed her, feeling deceived and cheated.

Taken 1908 

He never spoke of his childhood; all I know is he was a boarder at the Salesian Roman Catholic College in Battersea, near the dogs home, and as an adult, set about to adopt any many dogs as he could from there – or rather, as many as his wife, my grandma, would allow!
   She was an equally kind and patient person and while she understood Grandpa’s resentment towards his birth mother, she couldn’t allow him to deprive their children of their grandmother. And in turn my father made sure we visited her regularly. She was a great story teller, my great gran, and I remember her many tales of a time gone by but none really shed any light on my grandpa’s unknown family. It wasn’t until the birth of the internet introduced me to Ancestry that I finally found the information I personally think Grandpa would have loved to have known. You see, although my great gran was a wonderful, loving woman who doted on us and my parents, she never forgave my grandpa for rejecting her. And in a bid to punish him, she refused to divulge to him who his father was. For that information, he had to wait until her death, and as she lived to the grand old age of 93, he spent best part of his life with unanswered questions. By then, it was territory he didn’t wish to revisit and besides, it was too late as his father was long dead.

My grandparents, Maisie & Buck

   And so, the whole affair was shelved. Until I discovered Ancestry. I have traced his family and discovered his ancestral roots were London, Cumbria and Ireland on his mother’s side, and Devon on his father’s. I have made contact with relatives and learnt some fascinating family history that makes me smile, and cry, but most of all makes me wish I could have shared it all with my grandpa. All in all, I am learning to appreciate and love technology more as time goes by. It’s just a shame that with all this knowledge at our finger tips, there’s no way of emailing the dead!

Coming soon: Close Your Eyes - Book Two in the Cobbled Streets saga. Set in Haworth, West Yorkshire, it follows the life of Mary O'Shea (first seen in Cobbled Streets & Teenage Dreams). When sixteen-year-old Mary O’Shea and her parents moved from Ireland to a bustling Yorkshire village, she assumed her life would continue in the same vein despite the change in location. Awkward and naive, with an over-protective father, she stuck to her safe routine of school studies, a Saturday job and spending time with her small circle of friends. Nothing exciting ever happened and that suited her fine. Until the day that she was thrown together with the notoriously troubled Richard White.

Close Your Eyes unravels the tale of a dangerous infatuation; a destructive love that couldn’t possibly have a positive outcome. Or could it?