Despite the little niggles with her publisher, 1978 was mostly a great year for Mum. Cloughfold was selling well in the shops – and magazine editors were starting to ring up and ask her to write stories for them.
One in particular used to ring up in the middle of Tuesday afternoon when the magazine was almost ready to go to the printers. All that was missing was the short story, which usually had to fit into the space that was left after all the adverts had gone in. Quite often she would give Mum a title for the story and describe the illustration to her.
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Then, instead of saying she wanted a story of 1000 words or maybe 1500 words, depending on how much space there was, she would say she wanted a story of 55 lines with 30 characters a line
Mum found this a bit confusing at first, but she soon learnt to set the margins on the typewriter just 30 spaces apart and count the number of lines as she went along. Soon she was able to write one of these stories in just over an hour – which was just as well as she always had to get them finished and into that night’s post so that they’d be in London by the morning.
Meanwhile she was pushing on with her third novel, which now had the working title, The Bradleys of Brookroyd. As I told you in Post 110, it wasn’t what she wanted to write, but every time she got a bit stuck with it, she reminded herself that the publisher had told her that he wanted it to make a lot of money and that soon got her writing again.
And, as she got a bit more famous – and copies of The Romany arrived in the shops – she started to be interviewed on more local newspapers and radio stations. She even managed to get herself on Yorkshire Television.
That was a nerve-racking experience, however, as the interview wasn’t just with Mum – as she’d expected – but also included another author (who Mum had never heard of!) in the studio with her, plus the explorer Colonel John Blashford-Snell who was in another studio altogether.
It was the wrong mix of people and it went out live, with no hint beforehand of the sort of questions that were going to be asked – unlike radio where the interviewer always runs through the questions before the recording.
Friends and family who watched it were kind enough to say that Mum did very well, but Mum wasn’t so sure at the time and didn’t rush to do it again.
She also got invited to social events at local writers’ circles, including one dinner in a posh hotel in Bradford where the main speaker – who was a very famous author at the time – was much the worse for drink when he arrived and carried on getting drunker and drunker throughout the meal until he could hardly stand up, let make a speech!
Another invitation was to a social event and quiz night at the Morley branch of the Association of Yorkshire Bookmen. This was held in the children’s department of Morley library, a place of pure magic where Mum had practically lived when she was a child, reading one book after the other, gaining story-telling skills as well as knowledge from them.
And some of that knowledge, plus more that she’d learned from books over the years, came in useful that night as she managed to come first in all but one of the quizzes and walked away with five of the six prizes.
Still dreaming big from the publisher’s suggestion that The Bradleys of Brookroyd would sell in America and make her lots of money, she began to make plans for the holiday of a lifetime with her boyfriend who was then working in Saudi Arabia.
He was getting leave in January and, at the invitation of a work-colleague who came from there, planned to spend the time in Sri Lanka. Mum was invited to join him and spent a lot of time poring over maps and guide books, deciding where to go and how to get there.
She booked the flights and bought new clothes and, on the Tuesday before Christmas, she picked up the tickets and paid the insurance.
That evening she was going out to a Christmas dinner with a coach-load of friends from Morley and, as she started to get ready in the late afternoon, she was so happy she could have flown to Sri Lanka without a plane.
Then suddenly the phone rang. Looking at the time, Mum thought it might be the magazine editor wanting a story writing and in the post that night and almost didn’t answer it as she knew she couldn’t do it. But then she thought it might be to do with the arrangements for going out that night and so she picked up the receiver.
She was wrong on both counts, however. The voice on the other end of the line belonged to a complete stranger and what he was about to tell her would change her life completely…
I’ll tell you what it was in my next blog. Meanwhile, take care and stay safe, and I’ll talk to you again soon.
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05/11/2020
Wilf the bear-faced blogger 