Fear not the Future – Make it!
Hello – I’m Jackie, born much earlier, in London. When I was six our little family moved to Essex (well before the days of Essex Girls… We were almost all very innocent and chaste in those days.) I was a voracious reader, and envied the rich kids in the stories, brought up by a ‘Nanny’ not their grandmother. They always spent whole summers down in Cornwall, which had cliffs with smugglers’ caves, and rock pools and all sorts of delights I never found in Margate or Ryde, in the Isle of Wight, where we went for a week or two each summer. Indeed, my searches for those caves and pools led to my frequently wandering off and getting lost. I learned that getting lost is a good thing, as it generally leads to the most exciting discoveries!
Try everything once:
When I was fifteen I left school and started my first job as Messenger Girl to an Artists’ Agent – the nearest I could get to become an artist. I loved that job, and got to know exactly where to get on and off at any given stop on the London Underground. I met a few famous artists, too; including handsome Ronald Searle, who was my first Unrequited Love. I must have been tiresome, but he let me down very gently.
Then I got a job working for Vogue Magazine – but sadly, only in the Accounts Dept., not Editorial or Illustration in which I still believe I’d have developed if I’d had the chance. If ever there was a fish out of water! Always bottom of the class in maths, I did not last long. This was followed by a very interesting spell as a filing clerk for the romantic Hudson’s Bay Company in the city. We would see the trappers coming in from places like Fairbanks in Alaska and Windhoek in Africa, wearing their Davy Crockett coonskin hats and bearing bundles of furs; and on Auction days, the Jewish dealers in their long black coats and formidable black hats.
Dad and Mum moved to Edinburgh, and Dad sent for me to go up and stay for six months while learning Shorthand and Typing at the Pitman College. Not what I wanted to do, and I was a pretty poor pupil, but the touch-typing has stood me in good stead.
A series of office jobs followed, until I married my first husband, had two children and a few jobs to fit in; selling in the local Jaeger shop, then part-time in a posh pub, and even a spell at GCHQ in Cheltenham. That marriage ended badly, and I left in 1968, and sued for divorce. I got little sympathy or help, except from the lovely woman next door who begged me to leave for my own safety, and offered help as long as her husband did not find out. That’s how it was in those days…
I worked in an hotel and also started modelling at local Art Colleges. Money was tight and I often used to hitch between them. Those were hard, lonely times. My boys were in a boarding school difficult to visit without a car. However – I have drawn on those experiences for my books, and some of the fascinating people I met – many of whom befriended me.
Those were the Days!
I moved to Bath in 1970… A spell with the founders of Bath Arts Workshop, from which arose the famous Bath Reclamation Company. Even more famous is Bath Natural Theatre, who still exist and travel the world causing eyes to pop in cities as varied as Paris and Zagreb. My friend Ralph Oswick, who managed them for many years, is now recognised as a Local VIP.
The One True Hippy:
I did a lot of hitching up and down Britain, whenever I could. It was quite safe, and I relished the sights and the interesting drivers I met. It was easy to find a ‘crash-pad’ on a stranger’s floor, and I was never, ever compromised. A few hosts I remember. One was a poet in Oxford, whose couch I used a few times. He became very famous. The most charismatic was the man in Edinburgh who gave up his bed for me, and made for me a most artistic vegan breakfast in the morning. His room was very bare and extremely clean. He had no books – had given them all away as he had read them all. He did my tarot and shared his philosophy of Life. I have always thought of him as The One True Hippy; and ‘Guthrie’ is now a much beloved character by readers in my books – ‘The Rebirth of Alice Chastity Parsons‘ & ‘Alice Moves On’.
I meet Graham in 1974:
It turns out that Graham and I often moved in the same circles, and attended or helped with the same events, but did not meet for four whole years. We immediately recognised that we were on the same wavelength, despite the disparity in our ages. That has never been a problem, and only three times has anyone remarked on it in our hearing.
Apart from our honeymoon in 1976 – ten days in Sousse, Tunisia – only just emerging from its biblical way of life, and the four years in New Orleans, we contented ourselves in taking our students for evening excursions around Cornwall in the 1990’s. We could afford no holidays until 2000, when we bought a ‘package’ in Crete for an end-of-season week. We learned that the Cretans love us Brits.
The next year – 2001 – was our 25th Wedding Anniversary, and at the suggestion of Richard, my younger son, we splashed out on air tickets to Pisa and hired a car, which we drove for two magical weeks around Tuscany and Umbria. We fell in love with Italy then; a love that has endured. To date we have taken different routes to and through our favourite country five times, revisiting places like Puglia (or Apulia, as Italians call it) which we discovered before The Daily Telegraph! It appears in one of the following blogs…
Over the Next Hill:
Graham says the rumour in my family about ‘Gypsy blood’ may be true; he moans every spring about my ‘itchy feet’!
