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?

Punk & Prejudice

 

    If somebody had told me I’d hit fifty and then start chasing childhood dreams, I would have laughed but that’s exactly what happened. I had very simplistic aspirations as a child: get married, have children, be a writer. I did it in that order and as it turns out, it’s worked really well for me.
   I grew up in the thick of a large, Irish family in North London – our names of Murphy and Cody give an indication of how large – and emulating my grandma’s family values became my main focus in life; she influenced me from such an early age. Marriage and motherhood suited me, and living on the Dorset coast sets a particular pace; life isn’t to be rushed, dreams will be realised … one day. And then a wake-up call happened, giving me a suitably sized kick up the backside. It hit me that while I am perfectly content to bob along at my own speed, time isn’t so laid-back. It hurtles along, carrying us to the finishing line at an alarming rate, with people like me blissfully unaware of it. Our children have grown up: two at college, one at Uni and the eldest living in London since she finished Uni there a few years ago. They’ve all moved on and yet, I’m still dreaming that one day, when I grow up, I’ll be a writer.
   I’m from a long line of story-tellers. Most of us, I’m sure, have had to sit through Sunday lunch listening to a grandfather or great-aunt ramble on about a time gone by, and how things were so different then, and we don’t know how lucky we are.

My Grandma & her siblings at my parents wedding

   As I have pieced together my family history over recent years, and found contact with cousins who share the same Cody ancestors, it occurs to me how alike we all are in our artistic bent. We all have a drive to share stories, through writing books, writing songs and music, acting, dance, painting, photography. Any medium we can find to share our passion. Each generation has produced this talent, going back through the ages.

We found evidence from the 1870s of our great, great, great aunt, Ellen Wood, performing at Covent Garden as 'The Great Azella', before setting sail for fame & fortune in America. She sang, danced and performed acrobatics on a tightrope, creating quite a name for herself; though not quite in the same league as our more famous showman cousin, William Frederick Cody, aka Buffalo Bill.

The flying harness worn by Ellen 'Azella' Wood

   As cousins offered their insights into our family history, replicating my own knowledge, it became apparent that those lengthy lunchtime stories held a weight of truth - not just embellished rumours as I had thought - and our ancestors had successfully preserved history, passing it down by word of mouth. And although the tales from Ireland were of unbelievable hardship, starvation, loss of family and being forced to leave their homeland in order to survive; and of our Yorkshire grandfathers, drovers by trade, facing the arduous, dangerous journeys to London with their livestock, there was always a sense of achievement, of triumph, of spirit. As it turns out, my great aunt was right: we really are lucky and we can’t possibly truly comprehend what it was like back then. We can only imagine. And keep the stories alive for the next generation.

   Although my father’s side of the family dominated my early childhood, my Swedish mother’s side played an important part too and memories of sun-soaked summer holidays by the lake, still crowd my mind. Each July we would embark on the journey across Europe, crammed into a hot car that smelt of melting vinyl and cigarette smoke, to spend the summer months with my grandparents. The road trip was a huge adventure for us - well, for my brothers and me at any rate, not so sure about our parents - and the well-travelled route across France, Belgium, The Netherlands, Germany, Denmark and finally, Sweden, filled us with mounting excitement. The promise of two months of freedom was almost too much to bear; endless swimming and rowing on the lake, eating strange food and salt sweets, and being utterly spoilt by doting aunts and uncles, was always heaven.

My grandparents house backed onto Lake Drevviken, south of Stockholm

   But growing up within the two cultures was also confusing; I could never quite decide on my identity. We moved to Sweden when I was nearing the end of primary school, then my brother and I moved back to England to live with one of my dad’s cousins, half way through secondary school. By then, childhood idyll was a thing of the past and teenage angst had taken over: identity crisis set in. In England, I was the Swede with the funny-sounding mother; we were the Catholic kids who got picked on (and frequently beaten up) by the C of E kids. In Sweden, I was the prim and proper English girl who was good for help with English homework. And then, back in England again, I was the Swedish girl with trendy drainpipe jeans, when everybody else was still wearing flares. I never quite fitted in. I decided early on, I could either give in to the angst and endure the torture or I could make myself happy. Find my escape, my happy place. My bubble.
   Yes, of course I rebelled, but on a small scale compared to some. It was the era of punk rock; I endured ulcers in my cheek from futile efforts to push a safety pin through it. I left it half hooked in for a couple of weeks until the pain became too much. Long enough to prove a point, I felt. I smoked and drank before legally allowed, which enabled me to fit in, to go with the crowd, but my salvation lay elsewhere. In music and books. I arrived in England with a state of the art radio, which became an extension of my left arm. The size of an A4 folder, I cradled it in the crook of my arm and fed my fingers through the handle. Why it didn’t occur to me to simply carry it by its handle, I shall never know. Much cooler to have a permanently bent arm, apparently. It gained me friends and kept me company 24/7. It never left my side and I slept with my ear pressed against it every night, drifting off to the sounds of Radio Luxembourg. School was much more lax in those days and we were allowed to discreetly crowd round my radio in morning registration, eagerly waiting for our favourite hits on Radio One, the DLT show. Obviously, I had to turn it off during lessons but it remained on the desk, amid my school books, pride of place.
   I stumbled across the village library one day, quite by chance, en route to a friend’s house. I’d been living in the village for a year and had no idea it even had a library!  Reading had always been my escape but the books I had brought over from Sweden had been read over and over, and outgrown, so I was keen to find something new. As I worked my way along the shelves, I immediately spotted a title I recognised: Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë. My mother had had a copy by her bedside for years when I was younger. I’m not sure she ever completed it; she had been given a collection of classics by one of my many great aunts, in a bid to help her learn English. I know she appreciated the gesture but it probably wasn’t the best way to learn how the natives spoke in the 1960’s.
   Full of nostalgia, I borrowed the book and instantly fell in love; with the story, with the landscape and most importantly, to any romantically starved fifteen-year-old, with Mr Rochester. I went on to read the other Brontë books the library had and fell in love with Heathcliff, from Wuthering Heights. Working backwards on the shelves, I discovered Jane Austen and – as you probably guessed – fell in love with Mr Darcy. By now, the local lads didn’t stand a chance with me. How could they? Nobody compared to my new heroes.

I read Brontë and Austen on a loop, totally hooked. In an effort to remain cool, I always borrowed a couple of naff romances (which I usually read as well), claiming the classics were for an elderly neighbour. And so, at the weekends I would take my neighbour’s dog – a gorgeous Golden Retriever named Henry – for long walks along the top of Ironbridge Gorge, armed with my radio, my library book and my Players No 6 cigarettes. We would tramp through mud and bracken to sit under our favourite tree, where he would sprawl across my legs, keeping guard, while I lost myself to Mr Rochester. Or Heathcliff. Or Mr Darcy. And that is how I survived my teenage years, with my sanity intact. Relatively.