About
About me and my book
My published writing career began in 2005 when I wrote a booklet for and about a local charity, Swindon Scrapstore.
This and an early chapter of 'Travels' were read by my friend Viv Cripps who at the time was publishing beautiful little hardbacks, Millrace Books (still available). She commissioned my Brompton book but wound up the company before I could finish. It's a slow business as I have to keep going on holiday to get enough material!
The book gradually grew and during lockdown in 2020 I applied myself and finished it. Then began the Hunt for a Publisher. On the advice of my very good friend and highly successful novelist, Nicola Pryce, I bought the Writers’ Yearbook and started at A. I was still on C when I had an enthusiastic response from Cranthorpe Millner, so it really hadn’t taken very long. By April last year a contract was signed and I was wondering what I had let myself in for. Social media for one: at my age, I was hoping to live out the rest of my life without using it but then someone had the idea of writing a book…
Although this will be my first published book, I am no stranger to writing in that I produced countless essays and dissertations for my BA in Geography, MA in European Studies and PhD - the last remains unpublished because unfinished but its subject matter,
Anglo-French Politics, was good preparation for my book, especially the research trips during which I was able to test which wines give me the best night’s sleep (rosé).
Before all that academic stuff I was a professional singer
The book gradually grew and during lockdown in 2020 I applied myself and finished it. Then began the Hunt for a Publisher. On the advice of my very good friend and highly successful novelist, Nicola Pryce, I bought the Writers’ Yearbook and started at A. I was still on C when I had an enthusiastic response from Cranthorpe Millner, so it really hadn’t taken very long. By April last year a contract was signed and I was wondering what I had let myself in for. Social media for one: at my age, I was hoping to live out the rest of my life without using it but then someone had the idea of writing a book…
Although this will be my first published book, I am no stranger to writing in that I produced countless essays and dissertations for my BA in Geography, MA in European Studies and PhD - the last remains unpublished because unfinished but its subject matter,
Anglo-French Politics, was good preparation for my book, especially the research trips during which I was able to test which wines give me the best night’s sleep (rosé).
Before all that academic stuff I was a professional singer
photo: Robert Carpenter Turner
(the classical sort) and before that I was a nurse. I was brought up in the Lake District, lived for some time in beautiful Malawi and now live in a Wiltshire marsh, spending much of my time playing viola in local orchestras.
So obviously I like the damp stuff and when I get rained on in our cycling trips I think it’s normal and am thankful that I have webbed feet.
So here it is, a book chronicling nearly 30 years of Bromptoning in France, the foldability of this bicycle enabling us to transport it by train (GWR, Eurostar, TGV) to whichever part of France we are aiming to explore. We carry it on smaller trains and on buses, and taxis and even cars present no problem, should we need to hitch a lift.
By the way: on my Home page I refer to the ‘vélo pliable’: the French are often more logical than we are, so they call this sort of bicycle a ‘foldable’ rather than, as we do, a folding, which does suggest it folds as you ride along, when you don’t want it to. Hang on, that can happen…see page 12 of my book. I was in no position to take a photograph at the time!
So obviously I like the damp stuff and when I get rained on in our cycling trips I think it’s normal and am thankful that I have webbed feet.
Hotel balcony, Tarascon, Provence
I write diaries of all our trips, usually at a drinks stop with my husband singing out the places we’ve gone through on the map (well, not ‘singing’ if I can prevent it). The diaries get longer as we age because the stops do. Here I’m writing in Tarascon - it must have been before breakfast rather than at the end of the day when we’d more likely be out on the town hunting for refreshment, liquid and solid.So here it is, a book chronicling nearly 30 years of Bromptoning in France, the foldability of this bicycle enabling us to transport it by train (GWR, Eurostar, TGV) to whichever part of France we are aiming to explore. We carry it on smaller trains and on buses, and taxis and even cars present no problem, should we need to hitch a lift.
By the way: on my Home page I refer to the ‘vélo pliable’: the French are often more logical than we are, so they call this sort of bicycle a ‘foldable’ rather than, as we do, a folding, which does suggest it folds as you ride along, when you don’t want it to. Hang on, that can happen…see page 12 of my book. I was in no position to take a photograph at the time!