Authors Electric

 As we near the end of the school holidays I’m wondering if summer scrapbooks are still a “thing”? I used to enjoy collecting tickets, stickers, tourist leaflets and other paraphernalia with my children to document the fun we had over the six weeks creating a permanent keepsake. A collage of summer scrap! Once or twice, there were competitions at school for the “best” scrapbook after the holidays, but as with most of these things it is impossible for all parents to compete especially with the families who jet off on lavish foreign holidays and generally have more disposable income for more exciting activities.  It’s not a level playing field when the only excitement you have to write about is … the local playing field! https://www.flickr.com/photos/w9ned/3883245679/ And yet making a scrapbook, as the name suggests, can be a very inexpensive activity. It is just a patchwork of ephemera. When I was a very small child, I had several scrapbooks which I filled with random pictu...

When I sat down to write this post, I was thinking about books and re-reading. Having recently moved house (and oh, the joys of arguing that the internet did not work, to discover 3 weeks and an engineer visit later that they’d connected the wrong house up, sure there could be a short story there, somewhere) I’ve been faced with the mammoth task of going through all my books. I should explain that we’ve already filled a bookcase with books to be read, and there are two more boxes of books that will get popped into this bookcases as we don’t have enough bookcase space for all the TBR pile… I should further mention each box measures 2 feet long, by a foot deep and a foot broad. And that there are fifteen of them. What can I say, I like books. (Don’t we all?) Anyway, I was contemplating these boxes and their contents. My wife and I discussed where we could store them. I suggested the loft, on the grounds they would be readily available to re-read whenever I wanted to. Wit...

What’s the earliest birthday of your own that you can remember? For me, along with quite a few other people, I believe, it’s my fourth. 1959, that would have been (no, please don’t bother to work out how old I am). May 1959 in St Eval, an RAF base near Newquay in Cornwall. I have a number of ‘memory glimpses’ that are clearly linked to this day, though nothing of much consequence happened, looking back. My grandmother – ‘Nana’ – came to stay, catching the train from Pontefract in Yorkshire and changing at Bristol… a long day’s journey which I remember making myself a number of times. It was always fun to have Nana to stay – she was different and exciting. And on this birthday she bought me a doll’s pram, a big one, nearly as big as a real baby’s pram, in my memory at least. It was second-hand – I’m not sure why, as we weren’t well-off but neither were we very poor. Not that its second-handedness bothered me – it made it more fun because it was navy blue and a bit shabby, and N...

   I like to think I have a good memory - you wouldn’t want me on your quiz team - I don’t remember facts, but I have a good episodic memory. I remember moments, feelings, clothes, interiors, conversation; the light on the field where my husband proposed, the colour of the curtains in the maternity suite - transient things. Then tonight I was looking through the chaos of my old photos - and I saw just how much I have forgotten.       I don’t remember the day that this photograph was taken and it is full of mysteries:   I am wearing a blouse of my mother’s which is odd. I am also wearing a long skirt and court shoes when everyone else is in shorts. Why? What am I doing with my legs and was it entirely wise when balancing a four year old on my hip? Who is taking this shot? Why are we all looking in different directions? I look miserable, but I know that this was a happy time, full of nappies, and milk, bedtime stories, incomprehensible childhood p...

Row17 [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons ]. This image was taken from the Geograph project collection. The copyright on this image is owned by Row17 and is licensed for reuse under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 license.   Aberdeen, Stonehaven, Montrose, Arbroath, Dundee, Leuchars, Cupar, Ladybank, Markinch, Kircaldy, Inverkeithing, Edinburgh Haymarket, Edinburgh Waverley, Dunbar, Berwick-upon-Tweed, Alnmouth, Morpeth, Newcastle, Chester-le-Street, Durham, Darlington, York, Doncaster [or Leeds, Wakefield Westgate], Sheffield, Chesterfield, Derby, Burton-on-Trent, Tamworth, Water Orton, Birmingham New Street, Cheltenham Spa, Gloucester, Bristol Parkway, Bristol Temple Meads, Taunton, Tiverton Parkway, Exeter St David’s, Dawlish, Teignmouth, Newton Abbott, Totnes, Plymouth, Liskeard, Bodmin Parkway, Par, St Austell, Truro, Redruth, Camborne, St Erth, Penzance. You may recognise these as the stopping poi...