Although Mum was still heavily in debt to the bank of Granny and Grandpa at the start of 1987, things were gradually improving for her. The college was very good at finding her other little jobs, such as invigilating exams and enrolling people for night-school classes, all of which brought her extra money.
Her two Genealogy for Beginners classes also went quite well and were repeated for a second term – though she found that quite a few people thought she’d be able to conjure up their family history for them out of thin air, when they themselves didn’t know anything about it.
The Writing for Publication class was less successful, however, mainly because the person who’d been engaged to teach the Creative Writing class gave up after the second lesson and the two classes were merged. This meant that poor Mum ended up trying to teach two very different aspects of writing to a class of at least 30 people. She did her best, but it just didn’t work and she decided not to do a second term of it, even though the pay was good.
Meanwhile, away from her library job at the college, Public Lending Right was still bringing in a nice amount from her first three novels…
And her children’s information book, History As Evidence: The Vikings, which had been published in the summer of 1986, was beginning to get good sales and good reviews, both in the UK and the USA.
Although the book itself didn’t bring in any more money for Mum, it started to build her a good reputation as a non-fiction author. Editors from other publishing houses began to take notice as this was a time when the national curriculum for teaching history in schools was undergoing many changes and new books were needed for schools and for libraries.
The main topics for junior school pupils were going to be the Ancient Egyptians, the Ancient Greeks and the Romans, followed by the Vikings and then the Tudors, and so these were the topics publishers were concentrating on.
To be honest, Mum hadn’t really taken much notice of this. She’d thought that writing History As Evidence: The Vikings was a one-off and she’d just be writing fiction in future. Then out of the blue she got a phone-call from an editor at MacMillan Publishers, asking if she’d like to write a book on the Vikings for them, as part of their Young Researcher series.
Mum said yes and a few days later she received more details of what they wanted, together with a contract to sign which said they would pay her £1500 for the job.
Mum knew that, even after tax, that would pay off one-third of her debt, but she still needed quite a lot more to pay the rest of it and so she kept looking for more jobs, but with no success.
The brightest event of that summer was graduating from the Open University and having her degree conferred on her at Leeds Town Hall…
…followed by a brief holiday in Exeter…
…from where she went on to a mining history conference at the Camborne School of Mines in Camborne in Cornwall…
And it was her interest in mining history that brought the second job Mum’s way, as one of her mining history friends who lived in London wanted someone to put a huge database together for him, based on some 18th century poll books in the reference section of Victoria library which recorded where people lived and how they voted in various elections.
This job would start in January 1988 and involve Mum going to live in London (where she could stay rent-free at her friend’s house in Kennington). It would also pay enough to get her completely out of debt and with a bit left over.
She went down to London in early October to find out more about the job – and at the same time she had a meeting with another non-fiction editor who wanted her to do some work for him. Everything seemed perfect and Mum was all ready to hand in her notice at the college.
But, before she could, disaster struck again. On October 19th, which became known as Black Monday, £50 billion was wiped off the value of companies on the London Stock Exchange.
On paper, Mum’s friend lost an awful lot of money and, though he knew he’d get it back eventually, her job for him had to be postponed – as did the work for the editor she’d met in London earlier in the month.
Luckily Young Researcher: The Vikings was still going ahead, but Mum was back to looking for more work yet again. I’ll tell you more about that in my next post, however. Meanwhile, take care, stay safe – and I’ll talk to you again soon!
Follow my next blog: 139. MY MUM THE STORY-TELLER – PART THIRTY-THREE
08/04/2021
Wilf the bear-faced blogger 