We are now busy with "Tales from a Sporting Life" by Percy Youd which Anne has just printed. We plan to take it to the binders on Saturday morning. "Polly takes the Scenic Route" by Gay Pyper is now with our proofreader, Dulcie Fawcett, who finished going through "The Hidden Triangle" by Valerie Thompson a couple of weeks ago. She is a jewel and formerly worked in the Queen's printing department at Windsor Castle, so we are very lucky to have found her (actually she found us, but it's a long story).
We are currently receiving the answers to our invitations to the launch of the Youd book, which will be launched at Castle Park Arts Centre in Frodsham on May 16. The centre is in the old stable block of a former mansion where Percy's uncle was head gardener in the late 1800s and where Percy used to go fishing illicitly as a little boy.
We will soon be doing our latest French mailing, offering the two above-mentioned books at a special rate. We are busy doing the things associated with that, and Anne is also doing the final revisions on a charming book by Victor Dilworth about his childhood on a farm in Shropshire during the 1920s. It has the working title of "A Farmer's Boy" but this will probably be changed as Victor says he has seen a TV programme with the same title and we don't want to tread on anyone's toes. Patricia Kelsall has done a lovely painting for the cover based on one of Victor's old photographs, showing him driving a horse-drawn hay cart in a stubble field when he was about ten years old.
6th April 2003
We arrived back from a month in St Paradis a couple of days ago. We had a mixed time, with various things going wrong. The major event we have to report is the death of our sheepdog/labrador cross, Sally, who is noted in our "People List" section as "The Matriarch". She had been fading for some time but was OK on the journey to France. Then she seemed to have a stroke and wouldn't eat. This was followed by hours of strong convulsions culminating in the rupture of something inside her at 10.30pm. We rang the local vet and took her to the surgery to be put to sleep. She was 16 and had been with us for 14 years. We had rescued her when she was two and she had already been abandoned three times. We will miss her. Her two nine-year-old "puppies", Ziggy and Goldie, were quite bemused after she died and stayed very close to us. Ziggy has now taken over the mantle of "boss dog".
Anne did a lot of work on various books while we were there, including a new one by Victor Dilworth about his childhood memories of life on a farm in Shropshire, which is lovely. Reading it is like watching a video through the eyes of a small child.
17th February 2003
After a fascinating period visiting the places where he lived and people who knew him the book about Percy Youd (born in Frodsham in the 1870s and a noted crack shot, athlete and character) is approaching completion. We are very grateful to all those people who have helped us with it and provided answers to the many questions his tale posed. We plan to launch it on Friday, May 16th, in The Castle Park Arts Centre, Frodsham, Cheshire at 7.30pm. Please send us an e-mail if you would like an invitation as numbers are limited.
Last Saturday Ken Bazley, his grandson and "Soul-caker", who did the initial work on transcribing the hand-written notebook was thrilled to discover that unknown to him his father was a member of the Helsby team as a boy so that the soul-caking tradition has been in the family continuously for more than a century!
15th February 2003
Woollyback heads for the big screen!
Alan Fleet's novel Woollyback, a father and son story set against the massive changes in Winsford during the 1960's, is now one step nearer to becoming a film. Alan was recently accepted by the Media School at Bournemouth University as one of only twelve people to turn their ideas into screenplays. The course in 'Adaptation for the Screen' is sponsored by the Film Council and is designed to produce commercial screenplays from new scriptwriters. The Media School and the Film Council both agreed that Woollyback had all the necessary ingredients to become a successful film. Alan started on the screenplay in January with a May deadline for the first draft.
25th January 2003
We have just returned from the launch of Jonathan Colchester's book, "A Life Worth Living", which was held at Crabwall Manor, Mollington, Chester and was attended by nearly 50 guests. Joni made a speech using a microphone, which was heard very clearly. This was followed by a speech by Professor Richard Edwards, who has been Jonathan's friend and physician for more than 20 years. He said that Jonathan lived a life which was fuller than that experienced by many able-bodied people with less lively and enquiring minds.
Copies of the book disappeared from the sales table at a satisfying rate, each one "signed" with a red stamp representing Joni's "mark" - an attractive intertwining of his initials "JAC". Profits from the books will go to the Muscular Dystrophy Campaign.
20th January 2003
We have spent a very happy weekend away in Kent and London, combining "business" with the "pleasure" of celebrating Anne's 55th birthday and our 34th wedding anniversary (both events a few days in advance). On Friday, as part of a visit to our son and his wife in Ashford, Kent, we went to see the Buntings at the "France Shop" in Canterbury and popped along the road to have a cup of coffee with Jan Bevan and her partner Mike, who have just come back to England after spending about nine months at La Clede, the setting of "Lilac and Roses".
We went to the "Vive la France" exhibition in London yesterday, Sunday, January 19, renewing old contacts and making some new ones. The stall-holders said that there were fewer people there on the Sunday than there were on the corresponding day last year. We were very interested to note that "France Magazine" and "Living France" are both owned by the Archant publishing group, which had completed the acquisition of "Living France" a few days previously.
Today, on the way back to Cheshire, we called in to see Victor Dilworth, author of a wonderful book of memories about his life on a Shropshire farm in the 1920s. He has written it through the eyes of a small child and reading the manuscript is like watching a vivid video of times past. The book has the working title of "A Farmer's Boy" and we will publish it later in the year. It was a delight to meet Victor and his son Christopher.
Interest in "A Love of Life - The Story of Sarah Hotter" has been such that we are going to have to do a re-print, only a month after its launch. We are very grateful to those of our "Francophile" readers who ordered copies in response to our recent mailing as profits are going to The Christie Hospital in Manchester.
We have collected from the binders the copies of "A Life Worth Living" by Jonathan Colchester, who suffers from Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy. The book will be launched on January 25th at Crabwall Manor, Mollington, Chester (by invitation only). He was visited by a reporter from the Chester Chronicle today and Granada Television have expressed an interest. Profits from this book are to go to the Muscular Dystrophy Campaign, the new name for the Muscular Dystrophy Society.