If you think the world’s a bad place, then it just got a whole lot worse with news this morning that Amazon’s new grocery delivery service is likely to put Ocado out of business.  I’m not sure life will be worth living without regular visits from Ivan in Onion with whom I’m secretly in love.  But if Amazon Prime can get The Ladies of the Lentils a ripe avocado, a box of Mini Magnums and a bottle of Prosecco in the time it takes them to whip up a little kefir grain salad, then Ivan in Onion should be very afraid.

Other breaking news this morning is that, thanks to Tim Peake, an estimated 1 million kids now want to be spacemen.    Add to this the impending army of Ivans in Onions and we’re looking at a potentially sizeable cosmic workforce orbiting the earth.  So that’ll be handy then.   But this is all speculation.  The other thing that’s hit my radar is a reality…..

Eyebrows. Yes – eyebrows.  There appears to be an eyebrow revolution going on.  Turns out I’m a bit behind the curve (ha ha) but eyebrows are now an absolute “thing.”  And an absolutely scary thing at that.  We’ve just done a casting with young female actors, all of whom were sporting brows that seem like they’re capable of leaping off the face at any second and starting a world war.     It’s the “Angry Birds” look.  And it’s all the rage.  These new brows from hell have the same effect on me as the “controlling bob.”      Controlling bobs always seem to be on the heads of rather quiet yet deeply tyrannical women.    Think about it for just one second.  Yeah.  See? And they scare me.

I had my hair cut recently for first time in a long while.  I prefer root canal work to hairdos.  For one thing you don’t have to talk to the dentist.  Well – you can’t.  For another you don’t have to look at yourself.  And you tend to be there because something hurts and the few hours of your life that you’re dedicating to the situation will stop it hurting.  Anyway, my new hairdresser, Damian, said as he flittered his fingers through my limp locks…. “So describe to me your daily hair routine, then.”  Gulp.    “Um…… Well…..I get up  …and…er… I brush it……sometimes.”  There was a sigh and then he said “Thought so.”  (The word “so” was an octave higher than the word “thought.”)  So he set to work.  For ever.  Added to this humiliation was the fact that when I got home my old man said “Oh.”  “OH?  What do you mean, OH?”  “It’s nice.”  “NICE?”  “Yes.  Kind of local.”  “LOCAL?!”  Dear God!  I’d spent seventy-four quid and three whole hours looking at myself in the mirror and chatting about package deals to Dubai, only to turn out looking frigging LOCAL!

So I realise that if I can’t even manage my barnet I’m never going to find the time for 21^st Century eyebrow maintenance.  But I did spend a few minutes googling it.  So for those of you who are still in brow denial, here’s the low down.  You can wax them, oil them, brush them, pencil them, gel them, pomade them (pomade them?) thread them, tattoo them or you can get rid of them altogether and paint great big fat new ones on with creosote.  I mean who the hell has the time?   Another discovery is that eyebrow art appears to have gone hand in hand with the trend to have every last wisp and whisker ripped off “down there.”  You can probably book in for a “full Brazilian with brow transplant” and kill two birds with one stone.  Waste not, want not.   If you want to go for gold, Damian might even join in and give you a local controlling bob while you’re at it.

But whatever, it’s clear that a naked nounou and a brow like a sculpted lavatory brush are the depilatory “must haves” of 2016.   Not for me.  I am in orbit, I tell you.   IN ORBIT.  And I’m not alone.  There’s me, a million kids and Ivan in Onion.

 

I once met Sian Williams, the TV Presenter – you know the one.  She used to do “BBC Breakfast” with Bill Turnbull but didn’t want to move to Salford and opted instead for the Sunday morning God slot.  She’s small and perfectly formed and impeccably well groomed and beautifully turned out.  The sort of woman you want to tread on.  Anyway – I met her in the loos at Television Centre during the interval of Strictly or Find Me A Nancy or Be a Friend of Dorothy – one of those shows.    She’d just had a baby. (Not in the loos, no.)    Well it turned out that bumping into someone “off the telly” activated my imbecile button, big time.  The sudden unexpected encounter turned me into cringingly over familiar idiot and I greeted her like a long lost cousin, gushing “ Sian! My God!  You look amazing! So trim.  No-one would know you’d just given birth. You’re wonder woman.  I mean your stitches can’t even have healed.” (I didn’t actually say that last bit but, boy, was I was thinking it.)      My “new best friend Sian” delivered a well-travelled smile and said “It’s all down to clever underwear.”

Every time I catch sight of her on the God Slot I think about her clever underwear which is kind of weird, I know. But recently I converted the thought into positive action.

I’ve never been an underwear aficionado.   My mother wasn’t what I’d call “lingerie savvy.”   She had a life.  So there was nothing in my childhood to make me feel that knickers were all that crucial.   Plus, I went to a Dickensian girls’ boarding school where our uniform inventory demanded that we had 12 pairs of knicker linings (big white flappy pants) and 2 pairs of grey flannel knickers (gargantuan affairs known as aircraft carriers.)   The knicker linings had to be worn under the aircraft carriers.  No, I don’t know why either.   You were required to lay them all out on your bed at the beginning of term and Matron would tally them.   This happened again at the end of term.   Oh yes – the pants were counted in and the pants were counted out.  After all, there’s no knowing how many knicker lining thieves there might be in a posh girls’ public school.

Three summer weddings are now looming and, as predicted, the optimistically anticipated weight loss has failed to show up.   I do, however, have frocks – but they are of the “huggy” variety.  “Huggy” is a bit of an experiment, inspired by having noticed how ladies of a larger carriage than mine seem to manage to pour themselves into “huggies” and carry it all off with a bit of a swagger.  So, feeling insecure but keen to see this idea through, and remembering my best friend Sian’s “clever underwear” I braved the M& S website where there’s a lingerie section called “SHAPERS” – aka “PANTS FOR FATTIES.”  (“Not just any pants for fatties, M&S pants for fatties.”)  Here you can choose from a plethora of architecturally designed fashion items.   First you have to put yourself through a questionnaire about your knicker habits and your favourite brands (way, way out of my depth already) and then what you have to do is to pick the shape you think you are and then the shape you want to be and M&S will magic you up the perfect piece of specially engineered apparatus to enable you to achieve your goal and then avail you of a ton of cash.   By a process of elimination I decided that my end result should be “hourglass.”  I still couldn’t really identify my start shape.  “Demijohn” was not an option.    I stuck in various statistics and measurements and other requisite snippets of information.  Which bits did I want to have sucked in/smoothed out?  Tummy? Thighs?  Buttocks?  EVERYTHING, of course.  BLOODY EVERYTHING!  But I was told on each occasion that there were no SHAPERS to match my requirements.   (None of this, you understand, is helping the old self esteem re the “huggy” thing.)

In desperation, I thought I should brave an actual shop so I traipsed into our local town to the one establishment that vaguely resembles a department store but still has a whiff of 1950’s haberdashery.  The lingerie section is run by a small team of post-menopausal suburban ladies, with glasses on chains, who presumably do it for pocket money to keep themselves in Clarins.  I was shunted towards a dark corner behind the winceyette nighties and chirruped at (they always chirrup, don’t they?) Then I was left to clatter through a hefty rail of hostile looking support garments.  I chose an all in one affair (given that I needed it to attend to BLOODY EVERYTHING) and I went for the most punishing looking choice – no holds barred, hard core, full drugs spandex. *   It was basically a white wet suit with lace  – to make you feel feminine.

Now let’s cut to the chase.  I got into it – eventually –  but virtually ruptured myself in doing so.  Having achieved it I realised I had got myself into an instrument of torture and that I needed to effect a speedy escape.   I also clocked that, it’s all very well wanting BLOODY EVERYTHING sucked in but EVERYTHING has to go somewhere.  In my case it all travelled upwards giving me three pairs of breasts.   It’s was a no, no.  Off it came.  Except it didn’t.    I couldn’t get out of it.  I was incarcerated in the corset of death on the verge of asphyxiation.    I took deep breaths and struggled to peel the lethal stretchy evil rubber off .  Upwards and downwards.  Gnnnnnnnnn.   Gnnneeeeeeeee.   It didn’t budge.   Aargh.   I was a prisoner in my own pants!  It was the most claustrophobic feeling I’ve ever had – well – apart from being in a burkah.

I’m familiar with burkah claustrophobia because I own a burkah.   I came by it in a rather unusual way.  A friend’s husband, back in around 2001, was off to Afghanistan, ostensibly to build bridges or some such.  This, we all knew, was a cover for a far more exotic activity, but we always went with his story.  Anyway, while cheerily wishing him a good bridge-building trip, I added “And bring me back a burkah.”  This wasn’t a serious request, it was a rather lame topical quip, as John Simpson had just disguised himself in one to get across a border.  However, when my friend, after a couple of weeks in Afghanistan, looked at his “to do” list ……..

1. Find Osama Bin Laden
2. “Deal with” Osama Bin Laden
3. Buy Mel a burkah

….and realised that the first two tasks had eluded him thus far, he thought he ought to address the more achievable number 3.  So he enlisted the help of the Leaders of the Northern Alliance, with whom he was hanging out, and set off for downtown Kabul to buy me a burkah.    Which he did.   And I put it on.  And I looked just like John Simpson.    It’s an obscenely stifling experience.  But when our house nearly burnt down one Christmas, the bedroom being the biggest casualty of the flames, the only surviving item of my clothing was my burkah.  Make of that what you will.

 

John Simpson in a burkah

The burkah was undoubtedly the most brutal piece of clothing I’d encountered prior to my brush with the evil buttock sucking miracle suit from hell.   Back in the changing room I began to feel a rising tide of panic.  Plus, I thought the entire shop would hear my efforts and I was sounding like Maria Sharapova.  Gnnnnaaaaa!   I tried to practise what little I know of mindfulness (almost nothing) and then had a brief rational moment where I figured that, if I stayed put for, say, three weeks,  I’d be thin enough to escape.  This only gave me momentary solace, however, and hysteria rose again.  Was one seriously going to have to put out an embarrassing call to one of the “ladies of the lingerie?” Would they have to carve me out of my vanity armour with a Black and Decker saw?  Possibly lubricated by perspiration, with one last yank, my Houdini moment had arrived and the lethal boa constrictor girdle finally set me free.

I emerged from the cubicle, as ashen as I was demoralised to be greeted by one of the ladies of the lingerie.

“Any good?” she chirruped.    (She lived.  But only just.)

After that resounding failure I’m faced with doing the “huggy” thing with no pants.  Well – certainly with no clever underwear.  Perhaps I’ll try the knicker linings and the aircraft carrier?  Or, maybe I abandon the huggies altogether and go straight for the burkah.

Probably best.

 

 

*Spandex is an anagram of “expands.”  But not enough, as it happens.

( A piece dedicated to my lovely niece, Joanna.  Here she is.  Lovely, see.)

There’s an awful lot of it about.  Wedding fever, that is.  I have three weddings to attend this summer.  Three!   That’ll be three frocks, then.  No doubling up.  Bite the bullet, I say, and avoid any whisperings.  You know the ones…..  “She’s wearing what she wore at Jack’s.  Poor cow.  Serves her right for not having a proper job.”    Nobody needs family pity, do they?   I’m not a fan of frocks.  I look like my Auntie Edna in most of them.  I was fond of my Auntie Edna but she was no fashion slave.  Plus she was ancient.  And I look ancient in a frock.  But for a wedding (or three) you kind of have to get a grip and face up to the fact that you’re going to have to wear one.    So the first step is, of course, to lose at least two stone.  Always the solution.  Easy.  Because, you surmise, if you can lose two stone then maybe – just maybe – there’ll be a frock out there somewhere that won’t make you look like a three piece suite on its way to the municipal dump.   But aside from the punitive diet, another challenge has been thrown into the mix.  One of the weddings, my niece’s, is in Italy.  In a lemon grove.  A LEMON GROVE!  Suck on that one, people!  How cool and chic is that?  Ok – so slightly complicated logistics re flights and cars and co-ordinating other family members and you do need a PhD in Applied Physics to navigate the website but hey!  It’s all good.  A few glasses of wine and a diazepam later and I’ve filled in the special dietary requirements and ticked all the requisite boxes re accommodation and length of stay  –  even if I had to be “chased” to do so. (The ignominy. The shame.)   I’ve got to say it’s a cracking excuse for a holiday and I’m so up for it.  Excited beyond words.  Tuscany!  A lemon grove!  I mean, for God’s sake!

(This is a random lemon grove. Not THE lemon grove.  Just for atmosphere.)

HOWEVER  –  and here’s the snagerette – there’s a dress code; a dress code that requires, and I quote….  “Italian Glamour with a hint of Burnt Sienna.”    Yeah.  If that isn’t throwing down the gauntlet, I don’t know what is.  Mighty challenge.   On both fronts, in fact.   Even though I know that this is a tongue-in-cheek addition to the marvellously “camp-and-yet-tasteful” wedding invite, I feel the need to comply.  It’s what you do at weddings.  So, ever on the look-out for really important displacement activities, I’ve had a bit of a “google about” and we are in Disasterville, girls.  I regret to have to report that burnt sienna is NOWHERE TO BE FOUND THIS SEASON!     I lie.  I found one Karen Millen frock (totally unsuitable even if the 2 stone target is met, which it won’t be.)  But I’ve amused myself endlessly since its discovery imagining the moment when everyone, but EVERYONE turns up in in the lemon grove wearing it.

 

(This is THE actual frock, I’m afraid.)

 

You’ve got to love a good wedding.  The razzamatazz, the romance, the boys with huge competitive camera lenses, the girls with huge competitive fascinators, the quirky little personalised mementos on the tables, not to mention the inevitable shouty drunken uncle and the occasional blood drawing punch up.    They’re bizarre events in a way, but all the more memorable for that – not least my own.

Thirty five years ago (child bride) my gorgeous niece (yes – she of the Italian burnt sienna glamour) was a bridesmaid for me.  I made her wear a little home-made hat with elastic under her chin.  So, fair dos, she’s now getting her sweet revenge with the whole burnt sienna thing.   Our bash was a homespun village affair in the days before weddings became full blown Andrew Lloyd Webber Musicals.  On the musical front, however, there was a slight contretemps over the “modern” tune to “Now Thank We All Our God” which I reluctantly agreed to as a nod to my husband’s non- conformist roots.  (I’ve got to tell you, it was ghastly then and it’s still ghastly now but the marriage has survived which proves that marriages can survive absolutely anything.)  We got hitched in the era pre Diana. That particular Royal Wedding marked a turning point in the whole wedding industry, turning it into the fastest way to get your house repossessed.  At ours, then, a nice lady in the village who grew gypsophila did the flowers; the man who owned the village garage put ribbons on his Ford Grenada and drove me to church; the reception was in the village hall and my mother did the food, made the cake, made my wedding dress, the bridesmaids’ dresses and her own dress.  She also catered for a load of relatives, camping in the garden of her cottage, looked after Great Aunt Min who’d settled in for the duration (very regular meals) and poured whisky down my dear old Dad who’d been struck with emphysema (well – he’d struck himself, to be frank, the Fleet Street 60-a-day man that he was.)  In spite of all this pressure, Mother sailed through the arrangements.  It was all seamless until, on the morning of the Big Day, she lost the iron.   “OH MY GOD! I’VE LOST THE IRON.  WHERE’S THE IRON? HAVE YOU HAD THE IRON?  NO OF COURSE I HAVEN’T THE IRON.  WELL WHERE IS IT?  I HAD IT!  I HAD IT A MOMENT AGO!  She found the iron.  In the fridge.  Moving swiftly on……

This year memories like that will be made in Italy and elsewhere too.   There’s my nephew’s bash on a farm near Glastonbury which will require an altogether different kind of “outfit” (I’m thinking Bo-Ho hemp with a hint of duck egg)  and a friend’s daughter is marrying in Ely Cathedral which means taking out a second mortgage on a hat the size of a small dictatorship.   Now if any of you can, in the next couple of months, give me some burnt sienna steers, I’d be truly grateful. A floaty scarf? A belt?  A brooch?  A hair scrunchy? Honestly, I’m prepared to construct a whole outfit around the smallest “hint” of bloody burnt sienna.

In the meantime, I’ll continue to scour the internet for the perfect frocks while munching exclusively on small quantities of rocket.   If I fail to lose the two stone, of course, then I’ll just have to wear the marquee and everyone can have lunch in me.

“The Secret Life of Four Year Olds” on Ch4 was a delightful, insightful documentary about how four years old tick.  As a content creator for pre-school television, I’ve long been wondering whether we’re getting it right in terms of what we’re required to dish up to our audience.  This programme raised that question once again for me.  And it’s one that is beginning to be asked increasingly by people far more important and influential than I am, because – well – times change and so does education theory.

 

So in this documentary we had four year olds red in tooth and claw.  There were several references to DEATH from the kids.  “Did you die then?” One asked matter of factly.  They pushed and shoved one another.  They burst into tears.  They squabbled.  They failed to negotiate. They were manipulative, competitive, inventive, idle, greedy, loving, shy and confident in equal measure.  Why?  Because they were real kids and this was real life.    They ran the gamut of emotions.   All perfectly normal.

 

Now we’re always encouraged to create content for pre-schoolers that “reflects their lives.”  It all has to be relatable.  Quite right. So even if characters are abstract creatures, or animals or adults – like Bob the Builder, they must be imbued with the same (allegedly) child-like qualities that a four year old (allegedly) recognises in themselves.       But, alongside this, we are restricted by some kind of ideology, that states that we can’t show conflict or any really raw emotion. So no drama then.  So no jeopardy.  So no real story.  It’s all tempered.  And we mustn’t have characters demonstrate “negative behaviours.”  This is, of course, an American saying but the ethos is not restricted to our chums across the pond.  We’re infected with it here in Europe too.     The idea that no child should ever be put under any stress; that no child should be made to do things that pressurise them in any way;   that children should “lead” their own learning; that the word “NO” is a dirty one – all this has been going on in schools for decades now.  All in all this philosophy promotes the notion that a child’s emotional boat should never EVER be rocked.  Kids who were educated in this environment back in the seventies and eighties are now parents.  So it’s self-perpetuating.   But it’s starting to be challenged by the education lobby themselves.  Dr Becky Parry, expert in Educational and Childhood Studies at the University of Leeds is not alone in challenging it.  There’s a definite move towards more emotional risk taking.  And that’s not to say that we go frightening the life out of them. It’s about authenticity.

 

I used to play it all by the book when working on pre-school scripts for TV.  For years I embraced the ideology which the Disney Channel still expounds quite openly.    In a nutshell, it’s this – “We are writing about the world as we want it to be, not about the world as it is.”  Well – you know where you are with it, don’t you?  I allowed myself to be convinced that this was a good thing for the young audience and, in fairness, it is quite possibly a good thing for the VERY young audience.  I was seduced by the ideology because it appeared to carry some “educational” weight.  But also, as a gun for hire writer, you have to do what you’re told or you’re fired.  And I was fired of course – once I began to question the theory.  But I’m not shy in putting my hand up to say that I’ve changed my view.

 

At the CMC a few years back there was a session on risk taking.  I went along thinking it would be about taking risks with story – i.e. writing more emotionally challenging content,  particularly for the 4 – 6 yr old TV audience.  It wasn’t.  It was about compliance.  So it was focussed on what we shouldn’t show on TV for fear of children copying   – kids climbing trees, kids poking their heads out of windows, kids playing in the park without a “carer” in shot etc.  One panel member, however, was there to expound the benefits of allowing kids to take more risks – more physical risks, that is.  Since then, this policy of not over protecting our children and allowing them to DO more has noticeably been taken up by schools and, therefore, by parents.    The same, perhaps, should now go for their emotional development.

 

If we’re genuinely going to reflect the lives of our audience, do we perhaps need to get a spot more veracity into our content?  How can you help a child process a fear if you never show that fear?  How are they ever going to be able to deal with the school bully if we’re not allowed to show them a school bully?  One of the first duties of “art” (to give it a grandiose title) is to help you process emotions in a safe place, a fantasy place. It’s educative.  The kids in the Ch 4 show were little parcels of anxiety.  That’s what a four year old is.  So are we  lying to them when we dish up a load of relentlessly positive Polyanna content with no conflict and no real emotion?

 

The old chestnut goes that kids watch TV unsupervised so it has to be very risk averse. However parents also need to be parents and take some responsibility.  And let’s just think about what four year old kids are REALLY watching?  They’re watching Frozen, How to Train Your Dragon, all the Disney movies, Paddington etc.  The level of drama and emotional risk in these films goes far beyond what they see on a pre-school TV channel.  And you’re not telling me that parents don’t just stick a DVD or a download on and push off to the kitchen for a glass of wine.  Of course they do!   Kids watch these films ON THEIR OWN.  And you know what?  It’s just fine.

 

So I’ve blamed ideology for this.  And I’ve pointed a finger at education.  But let’s just cut to the chase now. This is as much about Broadcasters not wanting to take risks for fear of parents turning over to the other channel. You can’t blame the broadcasters –  but let’s say it how it is because we’re actually all in this together.   And the other elephant in the room is the finance model.     More often than not, in order to fund your shows they have to conform to, what is essentially, a U.S. template – otherwise known as “global.”  And the more “global” the more sanitised.   When the BBC commissioned Grandpa in my Pocket we were lucky to be able to finance it all in the UK.  The BBC was prepared to take a risk with the content  – thank you – and we were, therefore, given the chance to break the rules.  And we did.  And it worked – possibly more by luck than judgement – but hey!   We had “bad” characters, we had jeopardy, we had people getting their comeuppance.  This is all rule breaking stuff.  We didn’t have to sell it anywhere in the world  – it would have been a very different show had that been the case.  But we ended up selling it to 106 territories.

 

Television is the slave to three things – ratings, education and finance models.  You can’t expect the broadcasters to be less risk averse until the parents have been re-educated into a different mind set by educationists.   But at least let’s start the conversation because emotional risk taking is vital to a child’s development.  We all want to connect with our audience, we have a real duty to do so and TV is a brilliant platform on which to do it.

 

Mother is now 89.  She lives down the road from us very independently. She still drives, paints, gardens, knits, and passes judgement on talent show contestants, on which subject she takes no prisoners and is generally right.   One of her finest critiques arose during the Andrew Lloyd Webber search for a “Nancy” some years back.   She sat, like the Queen, in the large winged chair in our sitting room with an implacable expression, while a woman of ample hip and bosom belted out “Son of a Preacher Man.”  When the agony was over, Mother declared that, aside from the ghastly shouty singing, this wannabe was far too comely to play the part of Nancy, adding “I’m not surprised that the only man who would ever reach her was the son of a pizza man!”

 

Now if Mother has her way, her latest hobby may well render us all the size of a pizza man’s lover, because this year she’s developed a big thing about jams and jellies.      So far she’s treated us to some excellent marmalade, mint jelly, damson and plum jam and even a spot of greengage.  Jam is very important here in the country.  We talk of little else.   And Mother’s jam and jelly thing has just made a bit of a dent in our Friday.   Here’s how….

 

In conversation recently with Robin the milkman, Mother touched on the subject of Seville oranges and the usual energised “conserve” related chit chat ensued.  Robin, it turned out, had a crab apple tree.  Well this news sent mother into paroxysms of delight.  Crab apple jelly!  The best!  Such a beautiful colour! Such a distinctive flavour!  And it’s one of the few preserves you can seldom buy in a shop.  Budgens, down the road, certainly don’t stock it.  Not surprisingly, the next day, a huge bag of crab apples was left on the doorstep with the milk.  Robin had been up the tree.

 

Well the success of the ensuing batch of crab apple jelly was stellar, so much so that it got Mother thinking quite a lot about crab apples.  Then one day she announced that she thought she would buy a tree of her very own.  Now she’s a bit of a dab hand on the old Ipad so she did some extensive research and, after several discussions with me, she hit on the tree she felt would be most suitable –Golden Hornet it is, and it promises to yield beautiful, golden crab apples – the best for jelly.  It was duly ordered.  And after months of anticipation, it arrived.  Yesterday.

 

I undid the large cardboard box to reveal a tiny twiggy thing with its roots wrapped in a plastic bag.  This is what’s known amongst horticulturalists as a “bare root tree.”  Now I’ve had some experience with one of these.  I killed it, in fact.  I fear I may have left it in the porch a day too long.    So I knew that this crab apple baby needed to get its feet in the ground as soon as possible if we were going to stand a hope in hell of getting jelly further down the line.  The instructions bore this out, clearly stating that should be planted immediately in a hole “X” inches deep with a large dollop of well-rotted manure.

 

Well it was Thursday evening and dark.   Martin, my old man, who was with me, was not about to go and dig a hole.  You can’t dig a decent hole in the dark.   He said he’d plant it on Saturday.   But, given our previous bare root catastrophe, I wasn’t sold on this.  Mother said she would phone Steve the Gardener and prey on his good nature.     Perhaps Steve and his mate Pete would be able to do it tomorrow? (Friday)     We thought there was a strong chance that they would because a) they are national treasures and b) they love Mother.  Martin looked relieved.  Understandably, coming from puritan stock, he has an aversion to do anything that isn’t “work” on a weekday.  He did, however, volunteer, should Mother fail to procure the services of Steve.  So if push had come to shove…. However we were still left with the problem of the well-rotted manure.   We had less than twelve hours to lay our hands on some decent shit.

 

We’ve been in the country now for over twenty years but are not yet quite fully accepted on account of a few old townie give-aways. The bright pink Hunters wellies, for instance, are considered far too “Fulham” by proper country people.  Proper country people wear old green boots or, if they’re super rich, they wear those boots everyone wears at Burghley <blank face.>  But pink Wellies – no.   Proper country people do not go a bundle on “camp.”  Speaking of camp, we have two yappy Lhasa Apsos – (or Lager Asbos, as they’re known here.) One has a diamante collar and one had a squeaky George Bush toy.  Both are allowed on the bed.  Proper country people have labs or spaniels, who do not play with toys, but with the real thing  – feathered or furred  –  and who stay downstairs or “live out.”  Our dyed in the wool towniness also means that we struggle slightly with the idea of blowing the brains out of small birds for fun, even though we’re happy to eat (but not pluck) them.  So yes – we are still urban hypocrites.  However, our good friends up this way seem to tolerate us.   So bless ‘em for that.  But they were none of them around today in our hour of need.  NONE OF THEM.  NOT ONE.

 

It was the manure that did it.     Early this morning, I rang my friend Jane Godfrey, who lives at Manor Farm and who has horses, to ask if Martin could nip down and help himself to some shit off her muck pile.  He has done this before so he knows the way.  Jane gave this plan her blessing but I could tell she was in a hurry.    I could also tell that Martin was in a hurry.  Shit shovelling hadn’t been a part of his Friday morning plan.   After a brief exchange of well-chosen but slightly arch words re the necessity of the crab apple tree to be given the best possible start in life and the fact that he only needed to get a couple of spades worth, not a whole sack, he set off, in his boots, in what one could call a “bit of a huff.”   Little did I know that the “bit of a huff” was about to escalate into a full blown sense of humour failure.  And, in fairness, an understandable one.

 

You see, we have a new car.  Well – new to us.  Relatively.   The old car was written off when stationery at a petrol pump.  Mother was in the passenger seat and the white van missed her by a whisker.   Somehow or other Martin managed to drive it home, with Mother in it and, when she entered my house her first words to me were “I think you should give your husband something stiff immediately.”   Mother was not shaken by the near death experience.   Months went by before we could be arsed to buy a new car and, on the advice of one Ivan Berg, a friend who doubles as a car aficionado, my old man sought out something that came as a bit of a surprise.   I was at my computer one morning when the conversation went like this:

I’ve found a car.  I’ve put down a deposit.
Oh good.

Well – aren’t you going to ask me what it is?

What is it?

It’s a jag.

<silence>

Well aren’t you going to ask me what colour it is?

What colour is it?

Gold.

Is this a returnable deposit, dear?

 

So we have a gold jag.  She has been named Gloria.  (N.B Proper country people don’t name their cars.)   The first night we had Gloria she screamed all night long.  Her sensors were too, er, sensitive. Then we discovered another quirk when it took us over six hours to drive to Salford because Gloria’s sat nav setting was on “DO NOT USE MAJOR ROADS.”  She’s high maintenance, is Gloria. But she has now been accepted into the community, although it did take the neighbours a while to recover from the all night screaming session.

 

So Martin sets off this morning in a huff, in his boots, in Gloria.   After about half an hour my phone rings.

Where are you?

I’m in the bloody field.

Have you got the shit?

No.  Not yet.

What’s the matter?
The car’s stuck in the mud.  I can’t get her out.

 

He’d tried everything.  He’d got straw from the stable and stuffed it under her wheel.  He’d dismantled half the barn to get at a wooden plank and used all his schoolboy knowledge of levers to try to dislodge her.  No good.    In view of the fact that Steve and Pete could turn up at Mother’s AT ANY SECOND, spades at the ready, the priority now was not to get Gloria out of the mud, but to get the shit to Mother.  So the plan was that he was going to have a dig about in the muck heap and run round to Mother’s with the bag of  manure, and I was going to ring round to see if we could find any friends to help with our little problem re Gloria.

 

Well Jane herself was not at home.    I then tried Gillian and Philip Gregory.  I wasn’t quite sure what Philip was going to do, short of die laughing, but maybe he’d come up with a plan.  No answer.  Then I tried Jane and Richard Marjason Stamp.  Nothing.  Then I tried Neil Farbon.  Neil would be perfect.  He has a four wheel drive and he is an absolute jam and jelly nut.  His jams and jellies have actually won prizes at the Gransden show. Neil was my man.  He would be “sympa” to the cause.  But Neil was out.   It occurred to us that they were probably all blowing the brains out of helpless birds in our hour of need.  And it turns out that they were.   Those who weren’t at pilates, that is.  We rock round here.

 

In the end it was Gerry Pomfret who saved the day.  You can’t go far in these parts without tripping over a Pomfret.  And Gerry’s the one who owns the local garage. He kindly sent a Land Rover and some burly men to Godfrey’s farm.  In the blink of an eye, Gloria was released.  She was then driven straight to the carwash.

 

So I have to apologise to anyone who was expecting to hear from us today with anything appertaining to business.  We have been too busy with the jam and jelly project.   And shit.   Happy Friday, people.

 

P.S Just had this e mail from Mother.

 

Friday afternoon,

All is quiet and peaceful here this afternoon.

Another tree is in the garden in spite of the slight problem.  I am keen to find another empty place where I could perhaps put another tree and cover the ugly fence.

I think we may have enough shit left over and the boys looked so enthusiastic when they arrived shouldering their spades and wearing their woolly hats.

What do you think?

I may come back to normal shortly and pop down to Budgens. Bit short on crisps.

XxxxxxxxxX

 

MIPCOM – A PRIVATE VIEW

      Le Palais Des Festivals, Cannes – a kind of NEC x 1000

It’s the day before I fly to Cannes for Mipcom. This is the annual TV Industry bash where everyone has brilliant meetings to tout their brilliant ideas to an array of jaded, hung-over distributers and broadcasters, who’ve seen more brilliant ideas than they’ve had stiff gins. They commission about 1 in 2,000 of them. If that.

But optimism prevails and you’re certain, as you stuff your pants and Ibuprofen into an Easyjet carry on sized bag, that your brilliant idea will be THE ONE. You’ve spent the preceding weeks buffing it up and bracing yourself to join the 15,000 other delegates who’ve spent the preceding weeks buffing up theirs. Once in Cannes, everyone has a brilliantly successful time. There are receptions, there are parties, there are dinners, there’s karaoke, there’s enough wine to flood a continent. And this year there’s even Simon Cowell.

For a woman who spends most of her life chained to her computer with a dog on her lap or harvesting dahlias or trying to do something interestingly gluten free with kale, you can imagine how at home one feels. And a mere 1,400 euros will get you into the six story Palais des Festivals to battle your way round a gazillion stands covered in garish posters on which everyone, but everyone, looks like Dora the Explorer. This year we had the added bonus of apocalyptic weather, the biblical rain rendering it impossible to actually hear anything anyone said during a meeting about your brilliant idea. But you still manage to lip read “Oh My God! I absolutely LOVE it!”

Chin up,  keep that grin going, girl.  You have an epic idea.  Some meetings are better than others, of course. There’s always the odd waste of time. One year we set up a meeting in the Gray D’Albion (posh hotel) bar with someone we’d never previously met. I was accosted by a mild mannered woman in the lobby who admired my glasses. I’d sent an email earlier to the person we’d intended to meet, describing my glasses, thereby using them as an easy form of identification. Good idea, eh? I dutifully went to the bar and bought beer for our prospective broadcaster. Then, after the essential preliminary chit chat (mostly about cheap spectacles in this instance) I started to talk about our new show. It turned out that this mild mannered woman was not in Kids’ content. She was in pornography. The mistake didn’t emerge immediately because I was pitching a show called The Ha Ha Hairies, which she clearly thought was well within her remit. Even when I spoke of the Hairy Fairies, the Flufferpufferpoop and Boris Boo Hoo’s Clatterbanger, she was still with me. But the mention of a pre-school curriculum and the importance of teaching kids right from wrong exposed me for what I was. An imposter. Meeting over. And I’d bought her beer. Do you know how much beer costs in the Gray D’Albion bar?

So, it’s the day before Mipcom and I’m tearing around writing notes for the house sitter and the garden waterer and the dog walker, and I’m taking photos of plates of dog food to demonstrate required quantities. (Recent tooth extraction in our elderly canine has necessitated a change in the feeding regime. Dog care now involves boiling up small quantities of rice and chicken, with a few peas. FFS.) But all is under control – passport, ticket, money, and we’ve booked an apartment in Cannes through Airbnb. This outfit was recommended by a host of seasoned Mip-goers as the latest “thing ya do.” Always ones to be up there with the zeitgeist, it’s what we did. And, what’s more, we did it early to ensure that we booked somewhere close to the centre. Smart, eh? I mean how many times have we read “five minutes walk to the Palais Des Festivals” when, in reality, it’s a ten mile hike or you have to hitch a lift home in the small hours with the garbage men. So this year we were absolutely on the case. However, here we are, about to leave, and we’ve failed to get anything out of the owners, whom we have had to contact via the Airbnb site, as to arrangements for key collection etc. I’m beginning to get a bit nervous particularly as we suddenly spot a recent review of the property in question saying that the owners had cancelled the booking on the day of arrival. This is the kind of news that knits your colon into a large strangulating scarf.  Just then an e mail pops into the inbox from Airbnb.  “We’re sorry to say that your apartment in Cannes has been cancelled. We are giving you an extra £110 to spend so you can go on the web site and choose an even nicer apartment!”

Cue meltown. CHOOSE AN EVEN NICER APARTMENT? IN CANNES? THE DAY BEFORE MIPCOM? ARE YOU INSANE! (I’m paraphrasing for a pre-watershed audience.) As luck would have it, our daughter is at home.  She has experience in war zones, working as she does in prime time light entertainment. Within minutes she’s gone on line and found an apartment (not through Airbnb, I hasten to say) for an extra £300. We’re pathetically grateful as it was either that or the Cannes bus shelter. Various chums, on hearing of our plight, e mail to say that their apartment has a spare bedroom. But we all know, don’t we, that when the French say “spare bedroom” they mean “small moth eaten futon on the balcony.” Bah!

So now we get to the Easyjet bit of the journey. Along with other hopeful, intrepid Mipcommers, we board the flight at Gatwick on time. This is heartening. We’ll be at the agents to get the key to the most expensive apartment in Cannes when we said we would. We taxi to the runway and then we “take a left.” It becomes clear that the Captain has had a change of heart. And then he speaks to us.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, I’m sorry to have to say that I’m making my way back to the stand as I’m not at all happy with our second engine.” Ok – so when you hear that kind of announcement the whole aircraft, as one, thinks “Fine! Back to the stand! The sooner we get back to the stand the better. We’re really cool about getting back to the stand.” Once back at the stand he has to call the Easyjet engineer to come and have a poke at the suspect engine. This takes about 45 minutes. (We’re assuming at this point that the Easyjet engineer is searching for string and sticky backed plastic.) I contact my long suffering daughter to get her to phone the apartment agent to say we’ll be late. She does. The apartment agent is beginning to think I’m a hysteric. I am. However, about an hour and a half later, our Captain announces that there had been no technical problem with the second engine – it was just a matter of a piece of missing paperwork from yesterday’s inspection. At this point the whole aircraft is less chilled. A dodgy engine is one thing – I mean you could potentially die, right? But an idiot engineer who hadn’t filled in the form properly? This is a crime punishable by death. Then we’re told that we’re in a queue to take off. Another half hour goes by. Then we have to change pilots because ours has “run out of hours.” Haven’t we all, luv? Hours, patience and, indeed, the will to live. Then we set off again towards the runway but grind to yet another halt. Gatwick has closed the airspace because of the bad weather.

It’s at this point – a good two and a half hours in with no offer of so much as a plastic cup of water from the Easyjet cabin crew – that a child sitting across the aisle from us loses the plot. Her Bo-Ho, French, vegetarian (possibly even vegan – there was no sign of any humour) parents can find nothing in their Bo-Ho, French, vegetarian rucksack to placate her. My colleague has an idea. He whips out the Ipad, clicks on an episode of “Grandpa in my Pocket” (no – it isn’t porn, it’s a little show we’ve made for Cbeebies) and passes it over. The effect is nothing short of magical. Small child goes from screaming hysterics to total bewitched silence in an instant. She remains glued to our show for the full 12 minute duration. Oh! How we glow with pride. I’d go as far as to say that a modicum of smugness sets in. On an aircraft full of industry pundits we have demonstrated the effect our little show can have on its audience and proved ourselves enormously popular with other passengers for silencing the screaming. What a great start to MIPCOM. When the episode ends we enthusiastically offer to put another one on but this is politely rejected by the Bo- Hos. They pass the tablet back to us with a polite but somewhat arch “Non, Merci.” It’s only then that the ugly truth dawns. This is a child who is NOT ALLOWED TO WATCH TELEVISION. C’est interdit! We have just corrupted her. Ruined her for life. And, more to the point, we realise that she could have been watching anything – The Ebola News, Nigel Farage on Panorama, Dora the Explorer. ABSOLUTELY BLOODY ANYTHING! Our balloon has burst.

When we finally arrive in Cannes, the agency with the key to the most expensive apartment in Cannes is locked up. Of course it is. Eventually we locate the agent by means of another borderline hysterical phone call. And so it begins. The week of upbeat, optimistic enthusiasm. The week of the jaw numbing, perpetual grin. We take solace in the fact that we’re not alone. This is how it is for everyone.

Finally, home you come, exhausted, exhilarated and poised for the next triumphant phase of your career. And the weeks go by and you hear no more from anyone; you get no replies from e mails or phone messages, and gradually you watch your brilliant idea quietly rot like a prize apple in a fruit bowl surrounded by bananas. So what do you do? You rationalise. You persuade yourself that the timing was wrong. Then you read in the trade press what actually DID get commissioned. Bananas, of course. Always bananas. Low hanging fruit. You wail, you rail, and you bemoan the loss of integrity, taste, vision, innovation. You weep, you bang your head on the desk; you gnaw off your own leg. And then what? Well then you do it all over again the next year.

I’ll leave you with the story of one occasion, (in a year when we’d had a big commission so were feeling pretty chipper), when our Accountant, having dutifully studied our annual accounts, pushed them across the desk to us and said quietly and without so much as a hint of irony “Why do you bother?” Well, we bother because it’s something to get up for in the morning. We bother because it’s a drug. We bother because in some perverse, stress provoking, self-harming way, we kind of love it.

Au revoir.

 

I’m pretty sure that’s Simon Cowell’s boat in the bay. Teeny tiny isn’t it?

Picture books or Apps? Room for both? In this musing I suggest that we should free the story app up to be its own thing, thereby maximising its potential. It’s not a book. Let’s throw away the part of it that still tries to be. Controversial? Probably..…….

A debate has begun about children’s story apps. It’s about time it began. It’s interesting and important. For those of you in the dark, Story Apps are digital picture books with interactive elements. The words appear on the tablet screen and are usually highlighted as the story is read aloud, but the user can swipe, tap, tip and do all manner of things that will make stuff happen and, in some instances (the best instances) will dictate the direction of the story. Clever, eh?

The dialogue was kicked off at The Bookseller’s recent kids’ conference where Nicolette Jones, a respected Sunday Times reviewer of children’s books, cast aspersions on the value of Story Apps for small children, claiming that they took the child’s imagination away from the story, interrupted the story and did nothing that a picture book couldn’t already do. Julia Donaldson, Queen of the picture book kingdom, weighed in, supporting this position, saying that she would not allow her books, which include The Gruffalo, made into E Books. (I think she’s confusing E Books with Story Apps. Story Apps are interactive, Ebooks or ibooks are just a digital version of the actual book with no interactivity. So not much harm in that, I don’t think, and an easy way to take your favourite picture books on holiday.)

The hostility towards the Story App genre (is it a genre?) at the Bookseller conference was countered in an excellent blog by Kate Wilson, Managing Director of the much respected Nosy Crow publishing house. Nosy Crow has gained a reputation for producing some innovative digital content for the younger end of the children’s market, including a lot of story apps. It’s pretty much universally acknowledged that they are the creative leaders in this field. The Nosy Crow apps are beautiful to look at and there’s a real sense that the editorial, rather than the technical expertise is leading the way. Often with this new medium the tail is wagging the dog.

At a recent Nosy Crow conference I asked the same question posed by Nicolette Jones. And Kate Wilson supplied a very clear answer and one with which, broadly speaking, I concur. She claims that the interactivity of the user should move the story on, not interrupt it. And this underpins the interactivity in the Nosy Crow Apps. It’s also the maxim we used for a recent Grandpa In My Pocket story app we recently did with CBeebies. The child isn’t encouraged to enter into some kind of random gaming scenario or “swipe and tap fest” mid-story. Rather, the activity that they’re called upon to do moves the narrative on.

But putting this into practice presents challenges. If you only allow the child to interact with the story when it’s time for the story to take another turn, you’ll probably find that there isn’t enough interaction. (Remember that we are now in a world where if a child sees a tablet, they expect it to DO something so they’ll be disappointed if there aren’t enough gimmicks and gizmos. ) But if you embed random activities within a screen then you’ll probably find that the child gets distracted by those and loses the thread of the story. We have to ask the question – does it matter? Is it just different?

I asked Stuart Dredge some time ago if he knew of any good academic research into this new form. He didn’t. Stuart has been reviewing apps since their inception, as far as I can tell. He is the Apps King and he knows everything. It’s probably still too early for any meaningful research and, when it does come, it’ll most likely be fragmented and contradictory, much like most of the research on the effect of children’s television. So we need to use our common sense and draw on our collective technical, editorial and production experience to move this interesting new beast to the next level.

I confess I started out some years ago with what would be perceived to be a very Luddite view of this digital storytelling malarkey. I came out in an indignant sweat, seeing kids randomly swiping and jabbing at screens in a frenzy of tippy tappying, to see what happened. It felt to me that we were producing a generation of youngsters with the concentration of a head louse on acid, unable to relax and process a story in the time honoured way, unable to give anything time or consideration. But, working on story apps over the past few years, I’ve moderated my view. I can now see enormous potential here – really exciting possibilities. If it’s done well, I think it can be really enriching. But, to be courageously frank, I don’t think anyone has quite cracked it yet. It’s trying to be all things to all men and hasn’t quite figured out its unique identity or purpose.

A few weeks ago I went to a conference day organised by Action for Children’s Arts. It was at The Globe Theatre. It was about children’s immersive theatre. This, I realised, is the low tech equivalent of the story app. The idea is that the audience becomes immersed in the theatre show – sometimes by becoming part of the story; sometimes dictating the story but there are always interactive elements, from the obvious call and response panto-type moments to more physical, tactile and even olfactory elements. As part of the day we were treated to a performance of “Muse of Fire” – billed as an immersive family show, devised and produced by the education department at The Globe. In my humble opinion I thought it was very weak. It was a promenade performance that took groups of the audience from one setting to the next where they would encounter an actor or two engaged in a little scene. The story was non- existent as far as any of us could tell. It was more a thematic experience. It was a kind of “happening” rather than a piece of storytelling or theatre as we know it. But the kids in the groups did engage. They did try to guess answers. They did seem to enjoy it. It has won audience awards. So let’s not judge too quickly. Clearly the children are getting something out of this. My contention is that they could get more. Similarly, I think they could get more from story apps. And as the technology steams relentlessly on, so the story app will undoubtedly evolve.

The Globe conference highlighted exactly the same issues that face us in the digital space. How much to you sacrifice the flow and the drama and emotion of the story by interspersing it with activity? We’re all struggling with this. But it may be because we all have an inherent need to cling to the concept of story. And there’s a reason for that and it’s because story is so fundamental to our very being. So when it gets mucked about with, it feels somehow unsatisfying. But perhaps we should allow the story app simply to be different?

The other thing that strikes me is that the aim of both immersive theatre and story apps is to make the child a participant in the story so that they suspend disbelief to the point at which they believe themselves to be at one with the world of the story. But, frankly, if, as an audience, you’re required to participate, rather than sit back and lose yourself imaginatively in the story, you’re much more aware of your own role in it. That self-awareness actually serves to distance you from the story, not immerse you in it.

The story app is making kids think, make decisions, be reactive, be proactive, make things happen. This is all good, no? But I would contest that in doing this they’re using a different bit of the brain to the bit that is activated when a picture book is simply read to them, where they don’t have to participate, they can just allow themselves to drift into that imaginative world and be part of it in that kind of way. So, in that respect, I can totally see where Nicolette is coming from. And the sensible answer is – there’s room for both.

Kate Wilson rightly claims that Apps are another country where we must do things differently and that publishers should go where the kids are. And the kids are on line. Agreed. She also points out that if we can introduce a reading experience into the space that the kids are occupying, it has to be a good thing. I take slight issue with the whole reading experience argument because I think that it is this very thing that’s holding the story apps back from having their own real identity and being able to fly.

The fact is that the Story App is a totally different beast from the picture book. It isn’t a book. I would contest that, as the tech improves, the story app is going to move closer to an interactive little film than to a book. So here’s the controversial idea. What if we throw away the notion that this is some kind of variant on a book. It’s called a STORY App. The clue is in the word “story.” It’s not a BOOK app. Let’s lose all the words from the screen. Let’s stop seeing it as a reading aid. The app should be an exciting, energised, dramatic experience; an interactive drama or comedy in which a kid can participate and make things happen. An app needs to be something that a book can’t be. The story should be told by the best storytellers and actors, properly paced with great sound, music and bags of atmosphere. The child is far more likely to get engrossed in a story if it feels real, dramatic, exciting. For my money the highlighted words on the screen hamper the experience. They take the eye and they hold back the pace of proper storytelling. Bespoke digital reading aids can be produced in a far more effective way with proper language scaffolding appropriate to the age of the child. So I say let’s experiment with not trying to shoehorn reading into an app.

When Audio Books first emerged I was working in Audio Publishing. There was a good deal of sniffiness about the fact that kids weren’t reading the words. Horror! How were they ever going to learn to read if we just gave them content aurally without them having to make any effort Shocking! The fact is that it was simply another way of children accessing STORY – and a perfectly valid one. The world came round to the idea that it was just fine. Parents stopped stressing when they realised that this didn’t mean the end of reading. I suspect that this “reading experience” bit of the current app world came about because we were inherently wary that parents might be better disposed towards this latest screen based activity if it had some kind of tangible educational value. We get that in television all the time. Please the parents. Make them SEE the “learn.”

But here’s the thing. The “learn” is the STORY. Forget the reading. Story is the single most important educative tool for pre-schoolers. They find story in everything. Let the story app be about story not about reading. Let it not try to be all things to all men. I would love to find a way to use the technology that’s increasingly available to deliver the best possible dramatic storytelling in which the child can play a part. And to let the part that the child plays affect the story.

Forget the reading aid. Forget the book. Let the story LIVE in a way in which only an app can make it live. Let an app be an app. It IS another country. Allow it to break free. Give it its independence!

Well here we are then. Doing the blogging thing. I’m guessing that these pages will be a kaleidoscope of assorted thoughts, anecdotes, rants and reminiscences, spanning a multitude of topics from “The Joy to be had from a Tromboncino Courgette” to “How to Remove a tick without leaving the head in.” And some things about Children’s Media too, no doubt, which is where I spend most of my time. Still not quite sure how I ended up here but this was the route taken…..

I began life in Idi Amin’s office in Kampala which wasn’t his office at the time – it was a delivery room in Nakasero Hospital – but the building was later commandeered by Amin when he seized control of Uganda. My Father ran a newspaper – The Uganda Argus. Jobs didn’t come more high risk than that in post Colonial Africa. He survived a kidnapping and a number of witch doctors’ curses and was regularly hauled over the coals by Amin himself. Mother taught in a Primary School. She taught everything but especially music because she’d been a professional singer back in the UK prior to the start of the African adventure. But she was best known for her remarkable musical productions at the National Theatre of Uganda in Kampala – a plethora of pantomimes and Gilbert and Sullivan operettas. Yup – G & S in the jungle in 1965. Mighty weird. She was not permitted to raise the Union Jack (it was a Jack then, not a flag) at the end of HMS Pinafore but, other than that, they were pretty much as D’Oyly Carte would have had them. It felt perfectly normal at the time. Mother was the first person to sing the Uganda National Anthem on Independence Day, 9th October 1962, live on Radio Uganda – a glamorous white lady warbling in the new era. I was there in the studio and spent the next ten years or so sitting in the theatre watching her directing shows, or, if I was really lucky, being in them myself. (My balletic goose, in Mother Goose, was a bit of a tour de force, it has to be said, and may well warrant a post of its own at some point.) On the same day my father, (having sent a photographer to the rehearsal to get the shot of the Uganda flag being raised), hired a load of vans and shipped the Independence Day newspapers with the flag on the front cover out to all the villages to arrive the minute Independence was declared. He died in 1992. He was a good man in Africa.

I was shipped off to boarding school in the UK at the age of ten and a half. That’s what you did. My guardians were my Aunt Edna and Uncle Charles and they lived next door to my father’s mother, an ancient little butterball with a bun, a Brummie accent and a will of steel. Uncle Charles ran a Newsagents shop in Southgate, North London. He was round and jolly and could have been Mr Whoops (See Grandpa in my Pocket.) I saw them about twice a term for exeats (a posh way of say “weekends out”) or half term when I stayed next door with “Gran.” Otherwise their chore was to take me to and from Heathrow. School was a penitentiary but I seemed to quite like it. The friends that I made mostly came from money which meant that I got to do things that often involved smoked salmon and champagne. Daughters of racing drivers, actors, multi-millionaire builders and future Prime Ministers were among my peers. The school, under the leadership of one Enid M Essame – an inspirational woman who played a big part in ones’ formative years – turned out a bunch of fairly spirited and wholesome women. The ones with academic leanings did Latin, the more practically inclined did domestic science. The ultimate goal was the same – independence. We were told always to have our own bank account and our own car. Then we could fend for ourselves and get away if necessary. Fast.

So there were three bits to my life. The volatile Africa bit, the posh school bit and the suburban semi bit where I’d watch Coronation Street with my old Gran, suck lemon sherberts and listen to her stories of the Black Country where she’d worked in the Crooked House Pub as a barmaid.

University – Hull, it was. A Drama and Russian joint degree. Both departments were well thought of which was just as well because it slightly made up for being in Hull. I did the Russian largely to please my father who would probably have liked me to end up in the Foreign Office. Despite desperate attempts by Russian tutors to lure me back to my verbs of motion, it was the Drama Department that got most of my attention. I remember sitting in a Drama practical class with a paper bag on my head in my first term doing some experimental mask work. It was election day. I’d just voted for the first time. And here I was in a bag.

So all that happened before I started work. The work bit can be gleaned from my biog. I married Martin Franks, a TV Director, in 1980 (NB child bride) and we have two daughters both of whom are involved in the entertainment industry so nobody has a proper job. But, in the words of the old Goethe chestnut that my Headmistress would regularly trot out – “What you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.”
So I’ve begun this blog.