My First Blog

One of the characters in my third book in the trilogy of The Window Makers, Woman of Glass, says, ‘I’m aging and look back with fondness, while mystified by the present and fearing the future.’

While that’s not exactly how I feel, it’s that very journey of life that gives me, as a baby-boomer a lot to look back on and imagine for the future. Change has been massive. It’s the contrast we see on looking back and comparing it with the present and future that, I think is so interesting.

I was born just after WW2 in Sheffield. One of my earliest memories is being on the top of a double decker bus or tram, and seeing a tall, blackened, roofless wall with an empty window space in it. It was in the city centre where my father used to take me on Saturday mornings to the market and Woolworths. I was a child growing up amongst ruins. I saw the city revive as I grew, then change again and again.

Now I live in Greater Manchester; I’ve swapped a steel town for a cotton town.  However, I still feel the industrial backgrounds within me, even though active evidence of industry in both cities has largely gone. When I was very young, talk of the war was common, yet I was not taught anything about it at school. And I can still join in the songs of the war era, word perfect, because at parties and car journeys, they were always sung as my parents and aunts and uncles recalled their own war-time younger lives.

I trained as a nurse in Sheffield, where I saw the results of working in factories. It was in the vibrant 60’s when miniskirts, were the rage but we nurses in contrast had to wear our skirt hems much lower, with ‘blue haze’ stockings and laced-up flat, black shoes. (And that was progressive in comparison with some training schools!) No glamorous frilly caps for us, starched collars or fitted dresses, just plain blue shapeless dresses and simple caps but yes, we held on to the glorious starched apron, the fob watch and coloured belt which donated our year of training.

My training expanded into proper jobs in hospitals but also for fourteen years, in my spare time, I was a reserve Queen Alexandra’s Royal Army Nursing Corps nurse in the Territorial Army. That had a huge impact on my life, thought and interests.

I left nursing to study the history of art, specialising in Christian art and stained glass. I ended my career by combining it all and looking at the impact of art and spirituality on health care. 

My Window Makers trilogy is not based on my industrial past, rather my interest in history of the medieval period plus that of art, medicine and the church. However, I think I’ve subconsciously recalled something of those manufacturing days – perhaps the work ethic of the time and the make-do attitude of post war austerity but also the memory of soot and sulphur that poured from Sheffield chimneys making windows dull with grit and grime. What a joy it was in later years with cleaner air when stained glass windows sparkled with colour and light – and inspired me to write novels.

For more on my books, please visit my Books page.