About five years ago while sorting through a stack of old, official paperwork, I found a piece of paper on which my dad had written his mother’s maiden name: Agnes Hughes. That doesn’t sound so strange, until you realise that Dad was an orphan. He’d been raised in various Barnardo’s homes from the age of … More Regarding Agnes….I did it!
A few years ago, finding a scrap of paper on which my father had written his mother’s maiden name, I resolved to find out what had happened to my father’s parents. Evenings would now be spent on genealogy sites searching online records. I requested copies of birth, marriage and death certificates from the GRO, military … More Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks
Each August, Hubby and I spend a long weekend at Edinburgh Fringe festival. A few years ago we saw comedian Simon Evans at Assembly George Square. His stand-up show, the Work of the Devil, began with a rant about identity politics before neatly segueing into a personal revelation: a DNA test had shown him to … More Unsettled Ground by Clare Fuller
During my school years I was lucky enough to be taught by some brilliant English teachers, the kind who fostered a love of language and literature. There was Mr L in Year 5 who made a game out of memorising Tennyson’s The Lady of Shalott (“From either side the river lie / Long fields of … More The Moor’s Last Sigh by Salman Rushdie
I remember seeing the film Some Like It Hot on TV when I was seven or eight. It was a Sunday afternoon and I was sprawled on the rug in front of the fire reading a book. I don’t remember much about the film apart from Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon dressed as women, and … More Mr Wilder & Me by Jonathan Coe
The Hillsborough tragedy was the biggest sporting disaster in British history. At the start of the 1989 FA cup semi-final between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest, police opened an exit gate into already-full ‘pens’ at the Leppings Lane end, which resulted in a fatal crush. Hubby’s brother, then 18, was at the match, though thankfully he … More Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell
I was only three or four, I think, when I learned adults could not necessarily be relied upon to keep their promises. At that time my mother’s youngest sister and her husband were the only members of the family to own a car. They visited every Sunday and I’d perch on the window ledge, waiting … More The Promise by Damon Galgut
Hubby recently confessed to an affair with a younger woman, who became pregnant. That was nine years ago and the child, a boy called Luca, is now eight. Hubby still visits the woman, Emily, and rents a flat for her, though he swears he doesn’t love her and maintains contact only because of Luca. I … More The Sacred and Profane Love Machine by Iris Murdoch
My father was a Barnardo’s boy. In 1926, aged seven, he was put into the Liverpool Home for Destitute Children and Orphans because his war-widow mother, Agnes, was too poor to keep him. I’d grown up knowing he was brought up in an “orphanage” but took it as read that both his parents were dead. … More Twopence to Cross the Mersey by Helen Forrester
My Uncle Bobbie died just over a year ago. I’ve spent some time recently sorting through his old 78” records. He had a lovely singing voice in his day and for many years was a compere and singer at his local parish club. Unsurprisingly his old records reflect the music he most liked to sing: … More The Accidental by Ali Smith
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