Isn’t it odd how snippets of song lyrics lurk in our memories decades after we learned them? I may not be able to remember where I parked my car at Yate Shopping Centre, but I’m still word perfect on songs I learned at primary school.
So, when my author friend Stefania Hartley told me about Ride Like a Gaucho, Tetbury young farmer Sophia Ashe’s memoir of her gap year in Argentina, I was transported not to South America, but to my Year 3 classroom in a Terrapin hut of Days Lane Primary School, Sidcup, and our weekly Singing Together lesson. In my head I immediately started singing:
“See the gaucho, ride the pampas, Ride the pampas, green and wide…”
Sophia Ashe’s book taught me so much more about gauchos!
Singing Together was a weekly BBC radio programme for schools, broadcast nationwide from 1939 until 2004. In the days before audio streaming and BBC Sounds, all the schools taking part had to tune in to the live broadcast. We sang along with the show’s hosts and their backing choir, and sometimes we played our recorders too.
There was something very exciting about knowing we were singing the same songs at the same time as thousands of children all over the country.
Each term we learned a mix of folk songs from around the world, set down in printed booklets, which the schools had to buy. The songs ranged from lilting melodies to rousing calypsos to nonsense songs. We thought it great fun, not realising the many educational benefits we were absorbing in the process: learning to read music, improving our literacy skills, working as a team, and building our awareness of other cultures. Gaucho! Pampas! Such exotic words!
Singing Together was also very levelling. We weren’t marked or judged on their performance, and the subject didn’t feature in our school report. We simply enjoyed ourselves.
In those days we sat in neat rows at old-fashioned single wooden desks with lift-up lids. For Singing Together, we had to move our desks together in pairs, because there were only enough booklets for one between two. At the end of term, we were allowed to buy the booklets for sixpence each, on a first-come, first-served basis. Throughout primary school, I went to my grandma’s for school dinners. I remember cadging sixpence off her at the end of each term and running back to school as soon as we’d finished eating to secure my copy. The songs we learned are still very special to me.
It’s unfortunate that few of the live radio programmes were recorded, and almost all have been lost. Whether or not you remember taking part in Singing Together, you might enjoy listening to a wonderful radio documentary by Jarvis Cocker, which you can catch on BBC Sounds here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04stc6c
I bet you can’t listen without joining in at some point! If the programme makes you hanker after a grown-up equivalent of Singing Together, try joining your local choir (Hawkesbury Choir, in my case) – it ticks all the same boxes for me!
Singing with my village choir is a source of great joy and camaraderie to me now. We’re pictured here outside Great Badminton church, after singing there during the Badminton Horse Trials. I’m in the front row on the left. (Choir photos by Sir Ian Macfadyen)
This article first appeared in the May 2024 edition of the Hawkesbury Parish News
In my column for the April issue of the Hawkesbury Parish News, I take issue with a local problem that’s also been making national news.
When I tell city-dwelling friends that our village is surrounded by single-track roads, they often react as if that’s idyllic, but confess to a fear of driving on narrow country lanes. They’d be even more frightened if they saw how peppered are lanes are with potholes.
‘It’s beginning to sound a lot like Christmas,’ as Bing Crosby didn’t sing in one of the most iconic secular songs of the festive season.
These days, the two things that excite me most about Christmas are seeing all the fairy lights appearing in the darkness and hearing Christmas music. I’m always relatively late putting up Christmas decorations in my house, rushing to get our tree into the front window minutes before the lights are turned on at The Plain (our village green). But I’m always early with the festive music.
13 years ago, I gave up my full-time day job to focus on my writing. Now I earn my living from writing and writing-related activities such as public speaking and teaching. This post is to encourage anyone who has often thought they’d like to write a book that it’s never too late to start – and how to go about it.
Do you often think, “I could write a book, if only I had the time”? The long, cold dark nights of November make spending leisure time outdoors or away from home less appealing. So why not take the opportunity to start getting that book out of your head and down on paper?
When my author friend Lucienne Boyce read the original manuscript for my first collection of short stories, Quick Change, she gently pointed out that she thought it odd I’d mentioned recycling bins in four of the 20 stories. I changed one bin into a bonfire, which made for a much better story. However, my column for the September 2023 issue of the Hawkesbury Parish News reveals that recycling is still very much in my thoughts…
Recently I spotted an advertisement seeking volunteers for a council study of household recycling habits. When it popped up on my computer, it reminded me of a market research programme I took part in as a child. My best friend’s mum corralled a dozen of my classmates into the local church hall to taste-test various brightly coloured drinks. We went home clutching clanking carrier bags filled with glass bottles of lurid liquids, and instructions to report back on which flavour ran out first.
I didn’t much like any of the drinks, preferring Treetop orange squash, but the parties were fun, and the free samples made me feel special. My fond memories of the process were enough to make me volunteer for the recycling research.
The survey required me to keep a diary of everything I recycled over three days, snapping photographs on my phone. I thought I was good at avoiding waste, buying as much fresh, loose food as possible, but my diary was a wake-up call. So much packaging!
One of my classier items for recycling – the wrapper from a National Trust tea towel, a lovely gift from my Auntie Thelma
Have you ever been on a diet that required you to write down everything you ate or drank?
Have you tried to save money by recording every item of expenditure?
In both cases, it can be easier to abstain than to add to your list.
If we had to make a note of everything we recycled every day, I reckon we’d soon find ways to reduce and re-use instead – so much better for the environment.
I’m astonished to recall that when I first moved to the village in 1991 there was no recycling service. We just chucked everything in the black bin – a bigger one than we have now, emptied weekly rather than fortnightly, and thanks to our throwaway culture, it was often full.
A century ago, there would have been no council refuse collection of any kind, but nor was there much need, as there was much less waste. People bought food loose or wrapped in paper and carried it home in wicker shopping baskets. They returned empty jars and bottles for deposits. Old tins provided useful storage – no Tupperware in those days. Rag rugs gave new purpose to worn-out clothes.
Anthologies, like rag rugs, are much greater than the sum of the parts (I am very proud of having made this rag rug too!)
Everything else the householder had to dispose of on his property, burning it in the hearth or garden bonfires, or burying it in the garden. Even now, bits of old china, glass and metal buried decades ago frequently rise to the surface in my flowerbeds.
As a crime writer, I can’t help wondering what lies beneath my lawn…
This sign lay abandoned in my back garden when I moved in, the legacy of when my cottage used to ve the village post office.
Not all rubbish could be burned or buried. Rag-and-bone men used to collect cumbersome items and sell them on as scrap. Even as late as the Sixties, a rag-and-bone man occasionally drove a van or a horse and cart slowly down our street in suburban London, calling “any old lumber?” A popular sitcom during my childhood was Steptoe and Son, revolving around a scrapyard. Could Yate’s Sort-It Centre make a great setting for a modern comedy series? I like to think so.
I’m pleased to say I found taking part in the council’s recycling research just as interesting as the squash parties of my childhood.
I’m just glad that this time I didn’t have to taste-test samples.
THIS WEEK’S NEWS
DRIVEN TO MURDER (Sophie Sayers #9)
A placeholder image is now up on Amazon – cover reveal to follow soon!
On Monday I submitted the manuscript for my ninth Sophie Sayers cosy mystery, Driven to Murder, to my editor at Boldwood Books, and this morning I was delighted to receive an enthusiastic email with her proposed (very light) edits.
“What a tonic!” she said, going on to describe it as “a rich experience for returning fans” as well as “accessible to new readers”.
Now it’s down to me to make a few minor revisions in line with her comments, and then it goes to a copy editor, then a proofreader. Meanwhile, she will brief the cover designer, and I can’t wait to see what the designer comes up with!
The official launch date is 28th January 2024, but if you’d like to kept up to date by my publisher about progress, and any special offers on my other Boldwood Books, you might like to sign up for their Debbie Young mailing list here.
GUEST POST AT IHEARTMURDER BOOK BLOG
Karen Louise Hollis’s second novel is now out
Karen Louise Hollis, author of Starting Again at Silver Sands Bay, kindly invited me to be a guest on her book blog, interviewing me about my books and my writing life.
COUNTDOWN TO NEXT HULF TALK (Saturday 30th September)
In the meantime, just down the A46 from Stroud, I’m gearing up for the next book talk in the Hawkesbury Upton Literature Festival series of events in my home village.
This time, the theme is “Research and Inspiration: The Stories Behind the Stories“, and eight authors of novels across different genres will be in conversation about where they get their ideas, how they undertake their research, and how they weave facts seamlessly into fiction to create compelling, convincing stories.
Come and join me and Ali Bacon, Jean Burnett, Heather Child, Mari Howard, Justin Newland, and HJ Reed, from 2pm until 5pm in the Bethesda Chapel, Park Street, Hawkesbury Upton GL9 1BA. The ticket price of £5 includes tea and cake, plus a £2 discount voucher to spend on the book of your choice by one of the guest authors.
There just 50 seats in our venue, a light and airy Victorian chapel, so book now to be sure of a place, using this Eventbrite link.
For more information about Hawkesbury Upton Literature Festival, visit www.hulitfest.com.
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