Jim Smith, priest and miner

Last month one of the oldest surviving characters from Is the Vicar in, Pet? passed away. Jim Smith, 89, was one of our most frequent visitors to the vicarage, and quickly became known to us kids as ‘Uncle Jim’. He used to announce his arrival with a trademark three rings of the doorbell before letting himself in. The door was always open, of course – in fact, I don’t know of anyone in Ashington who locked their doors back then. An anecdote in the book tells how, when my visiting grandma enquired of us who she had just met in the corridor, my sister Sarah promptly declared, ‘That’s Uncle Jim,  he comes every day when Dad’s out.’

   Jim, a miner who also ran his own photography business, trained to be a Church of England reader and was later ordained as a priest, which is all the more extraordinary considering his lack of formal qualifications. In fact, he progressed so well with his studies that by the time he attended Durham University – which he fitted in around shifts at the pit – he was writing essays that knocked spots off those of his Oxford and Cambridge educated fellow students. Not bad for someone whose first job was as a butcher’s boy at the age of fourteen!

 

Unfortunately I couldn’t attend his funeral at St Andrew’s Church, but I hear that it was a joyous celebration of all that he achieved in his long and productive life.

Book news

Thanks to all my friends – as well as those I don’t know personally – who have continued to be great ambassadors for Bedpans & Bobby Socks and Is the Vicar in, Pet? There is no major news on these books at present, but it was great to hear Emma Gray (One Girl and Her Dogs) on Woman’s Hour a couple of weeks ago. Emma is such an engaging interviewee; it reminded me of the time Gwenda and Pat were interviewed on the same programme by Jane Garvey five years ago. Listen here, if you missed it before, for tales of tea at gunpoint, Gwenda’s lack of common sense, and a ‘dirty old man’ by the hot springs on the Alaska Highway. (I don’t think he was a dirty old man, apart from in the literal sense!) My main news, however, is that When the War is Over will be out in June and – as you can see here – finally has a cover!

The next chapter

Me, Dad, Wendy and Pat

It’s a long time since I’ve posted on either of my blogs, so time for an update! Though I’ve been working on my new book, ‘When the War Is Over’, which is about Gwenda’s evacuation to the house of the village schoolmaster in the Lake District village of Bampton during the Second World War, ‘Bedpans and Bobby Socks’ and ‘Is the Vicar In, Pet?’ haven’t been far from my mind, and articles earlier this year in Yours magazine and The Sunday Telegraph both helped to spread the word. Not sure if the very quick mention for BABS on Radio 2’s Chris Evans Show’s Top Tenuous slot would have achieved much, but it was very welcome all the same!

Look out next for Emma Gray, with whom I wrote ‘One Girl and Her Dogs’, on a programme called ‘Flock Stars’ which begins on ITV on Thursday July 30th. I think the title gives us a hint of what to expect as Emma puts her celebrity team through their paces as they try their hand at shepherding. Can’t wait to see it!

Writing my new book (hopefully the cover will be ready to share later this summer) has been a fascinating experience and I feel as if I’ve learnt a lot about those times. In May I went to stay with my parents and our friend Pat (of BABS fame) for a weekend just outside Bampton for some last-minute research. We even knocked on the door of the former schoolhouse (it’s now a private residence), Gwenda’s home for three years, but whoever lives there now must have seen us coming as no one answered. One person we caught up with was John Stacey, Gwenda’s fellow evacuee in the schoolhouse, who moved back to the village when he retired. It is incredible to think that it is now 75 years since they were living there together! Gwenda won’t thank me for it but I am sharing the photo of them we took (smile, Gwenda!). I think of them as Carrie and Albert Sandwich from ‘Carrie’s War’ by Nina Bawden, one of my favourite childhood books.

Next-door to the cottage where we were staying lives Wendy, who has her own red squirrel sanctuary attached to her house and owns a patch of woodland on the shores of Ullswater which is a haven for wildlife, while one of the participants of ITV’s ‘Seven Up!’ (the programme that follows a group from childhood at seven-year intervals) is a member of the local church (I wondered why I recognised him!). As in Gwenda’s day, there is a lot going on in these little places.

John and Gwenda, aka Albert Sandwich and Carrie

A nostalgic read for Easter

‘My mother is supposed to have told my father when they were newly married that she would go anywhere on earth with him except Ashington. She had never been to Ashington, just heard about it – everyone had. It had the dubious claim to fame of being the biggest mining village in the world.’

So begins my memoir about our first year in the town and about the characters who became part of our lives. It is a book set in the slightly crazy world of vicarage life, but it is also a book about childhood, about the 1970s, and about a way of life that has changed forever.

‘Funny and touching’ – Amazon reviewer

‘An uplifting book that leaves you with a warm heart’ – Kathryn Brown, author

‘A gentle story of a cosy, secure childhood among a community whose hearts were as warm as the coal fires that burned in their hearths’ – Jane Shilling, Daily Mail

Available from your local bookshop or from Amazon

My apple store

I’ve been fortunate to have an abundance of apples this autumn. Our own apple trees didn’t produce a great crop, but the tree of an elderly neighbour was covered in them and having watched most of them rot last year from my kitchen window, I practically invited myself over to pick them for him. As well as using them in jams and jellies, I’ve been trying out lots of recipes for apple cakes – ones with cinnamon go down well in this house, though I think my new favourite is one containing root ginger. But for the sake of this blog, I had to make a childhood favourite, Austrian Apple Slice. It is supposed to be cut into 24 squares, but Gwenda always says that it was just sufficient for our family pudding on a Sunday. As with her other recipes, it’s very easy.

9 oz plain flour                                3 oz caster sugar (though I used granulated)

1 oz ground almonds                   3 tbsp milk

Pinch of salt                                    1 egg (separated)

6 oz marg

Filling: 1½ lb grated apple (I whizzed mine in my blender),  6 oz sugar,  2 oz raisins or sultanas

Mix flour, almonds and salt, then rub in marg. Stir in sugar and mix to a dough with milk and egg yolk. Divide into two balls. Roll each ball to fit Swiss roll tin. Line bottom of tin with first half and cover with the apple mixed with sugar and raisins. Lay second half on top. (This usually breaks into numerous pieces, says Gwenda, but it doesn’t matter at all.) Beat egg white till frothy and paint over top before sprinkling with a teaspoon of sugar. Bake at gas mark 5, 180C, for 45 mins or until a rich brown. Serve hot or cold with cream.

I was surprised to make an almost perfect one in which the dough didn’t break up and have to be patched together, but I think that was because I used a slightly smaller tin so my dough was a bit thicker. Just as tasty, too, though you get a crunchier effect on the top by using the standard size tin.

Thank you, Sunday Post!

A big thank you to Bill Gibb at the Sunday Post for interviewing me for the ‘My favourite holiday’ feature which appears in today’s paper. I’ve always had a soft spot for this Scottish newspaper – also sold in Northern Ireland and the north of England – as my grandparents used to buy it every week and give us kids the comic featuring Oor Wullie and The Broons, who are still going strong! And it’s been supportive of all three of the books I’ve written or co-written – Emma Gray’s ‘One Girl and Her Dogs’ as well as ‘Is the Vicar in, Pet?’ and ‘Bedpans & Bobby Socks’.

Thanks also to Bill and all at the paper for the recent feature in sister paper The Weekly News.

Close encounters with the clergy

If you are not put off by the title of this post you will learn that I have just finished reading another book about life amongst clerical households.  ‘Acts and Omissions’ (SPCK) is a novel, not a memoir, and is written by Catherine Fox (no relation!) who as the wife of the dean of Liverpool Cathedral must also know a thing or two about what the clergy get up to at work and at play.  I enjoyed it enormously and can’t remember laughing out loud so much over a book for a long time. You don’t need to be a member of the Church of England to appreciate this tale of life on a fictional cathedral close, but it will probably give you an extra chuckle if you are. An all-seeing narrator guides us around and drops us in on the various characters in a manner that feels both Dickensian and thoroughly modern at the same time. And I can assure you that these characters are as flawed and as foolish (and in some cases as foul-mouthed) as the rest of us.

Catherine wrote ‘Acts and Omissions’ in an unusual way – releasing it in weekly instalments on her blog, where she is now doing the same with its sequel, ‘Unseen Things Above’.  I lent my copy to my mother – see picture – who was short of holiday reading. I know, I know – I am always telling people to encourage others to buy their own books and not to lend them out, so I apologise now to Catherine (who has also written a book about her quest to get a black belt in judo) and assure her that I will be buying the book as a gift for some other people very soon.

 

 

Cheesed off

It’s a while since I’ve posted a recipe. I’ve been asking my mother for her Farmhouse Flan one for ages but it seems to have got lost in the dusty archives of her recipe collection. Luckily, Pat – her partner in crime and fellow star of ‘Bedpans & Bobby Socks’ – came to the rescue with her copy.  I always loved the taste of this flan. I  seem to remember it being produced on Sunday teatimes if Dad had visiting preachers and something a bit special was required.  It’s not unlike a quiche, but I don’t think quiches had made it up to 1970s Northumberland – and my father would probably not have eaten anything so-called if they had. In fact, the addition of the tomato sauce in this recipe is Gwenda’s attempt to disguise the fact that there was cheese lurking inside it.  Dad was very conservative when it came to food in those days, but Gwenda found that tricks like the above, or simply renaming dishes to hide an offending ingredient, usually did the trick.

I think the amount of bacon is rather generous – in fact, I made a second, smaller flan to use it up –  and I don’t remember there ever being mushrooms in ours, but I’ve given the recipe as it was given to me, and I’m pleased to say it still tastes just as I remember.

4 oz grated cheese

3 large eggs

1 large onion – finely chopped and cooked

4 oz bacon – cooked and in strips

2 tbsp tomato sauce

1/4 tsp mustard powder

6 small mushrooms

3 small tomatoes

Line the flan tin – I made my own pastry but you can use ready-made – and cover with the bacon and onion. Beat eggs; add cheese, mustard and tomato sauce and beat again. Pour into flan and arrange mushrooms and tomatoes on top. Bake at 190 C for 20 minutes.

Window dressing

I did say that I would post one of the photos that Emily Carey of the Journal took of me at my book signing back in May. After all, it’s not every day you get to sit in a bookshop window in the centre of Newcastle.  So here I am, along with some other Geordie paraphernalia!

Ashington remembered

One of the nicest things about having a book published – and I have probably written the very same thing on my ‘Bedpans & Bobby Socks’ blog – is receiving letters from people who have enjoyed it, strangers as well as friends. With ‘Bedpans’, we heard from some of the five nurses’ acquaintances from their 1950s US road trip days, which was pretty amazing considering the time that had elapsed. But this time – as it’s my own story – it’s probably even more special as I continue to hear from old schoolfriends and to relive memories from over 40 years ago. (Can it really be so long ….)

Some of these friendships have been rekindled thanks to the Facebook group, Ashington Remembered. This successful and hugely popular site, set up by Jeff Slaughter, has well over 5000 members and a tremendous sense of community, even though many of us left Ashington long ago. The uniqueness of the town’s past seems to act as a strong bond between those who lived there, even today, with the common profession of mining confined to the history books.

In this post I just want to say hello and thank you to that community for all the support they have given me, and a special hello to newfound friends Julie and Heather in Ashington, Karen in Bedlington, Isobel in Devon and Julie in Australia. It’s great to be back in touch!

Some of us are in this photo taken at the South junior school, aged 7 or 8. Can you spot me?