Gervase Phinn: Stories of everyday people

Nicola's account is a wonderfully nostalgic and funny, wise and warm-hearted and beautifully crafted. It reminds us how important it is to follow our dreams amid the chaos of life's diversions. When her husband ran off with another woman and left her with three children, she took to the road in a brightly painted gipsy wagon with a horse called Doris and moved to a cottage by the sea.

There, with a menagerie of delinquent chickens, an amorous guinea pig, a stray cat and wilful donkey, she threw herself into the chaos, frustration and hilarity of being a single parent. It is such a life-affirming, optimistic account of a single-minded woman, funny and sad by turns, who was determined to keep on laughing in the face of everything life threw at her.

As a judge, I learnt very forcibly that there are many fine writers whose stories deserve to be told. Here is a part of an unpublished account by Margaret Gomersall who lived in that part of Sheffield which suffered the greatest at the time of the Blitz of 1940 and 1941. She had vivid memories of when the Luftwaffe bombed the steelworks. Her street had been largely demolished and her house and all her possessions with it. She was able to describe accurately the scene of destruction, the terrible loss of life and the panic but there were moments of rare humour. For example, in a hurried effort to get dressed and into the air-raid shelter, she had put both legs through one opening in her bloomers and fell helplessly on the floor, incapacitated, until her calls for help attracted a neighbour who came to her rescue.

"I couldn't go in the shelter without my bloomers on," she told her rescuer. "What would people think?"

"I should think those in the shelter have enough to think about, Doris," said the neighbour, "without being interested or bothered whether you're wearing your knickers or not."

Another neighbour arrived at the air raid shelter to discover she had forgotten something. Hurrying back home she was stopped by the ARP warden: "And where are you going, Maggie? Don't you know there's an air raid on?"

"I've left my teeth in the kitchen table." The warden replied: "Get back in the shelter, Germans are dropping bombs not sandwiches."

The Government is helping to fund a campaign called Booksbite, organised through the Booktrust. This excellent initiative aims to encourage an interest in the written word. Would-be writers can go on-line and access a range of resources to help them write their life stories. As the Bookbite On-Line Writer-in-Residence I have received some sad, funny, thoughtful, fascinating accounts. Sadly, few will end up on bookshop shelves but Nicola Hodgkinson's dream of becoming a published author turned into a reality so she offers hope to those who aspire to see their work in print.

See www.bookbite.og.uk

YP MAG 15/5/10