Your Story Your Voice: Menston woman's mission to record family memories for generations

It is the kind of family story Becky, of Menston, between Leeds and Bradford, wishes she could hear her parents tell now. Her mother, Jill, and father, Brian Chippindale, died in their early 80s five and seven years ago respectively.

She wishes the family had recorded their memories, so that’s what she is now doing for others through her new business, Your Story Your Voice – capturing meaningful conversations between loved ones to have as a cherished audible keepsake.

Becky says: “I think one of the reasons why this works so well is because when you see your own family, you don’t often purposefully sit down to discuss the past. But when time is put aside and people have chance to really think back, they end up remembering all sorts.”

And speaking of her parents, Becky says that “to be able to hear their voices again, when they were both well and happy would be priceless”.

They married in March 1959 and Becky herself was born at Bradford Royal Infirmary in 1972 – where her mother was a theatre nurse – and raised in Bingley, going to the local grammar school.

“I failed my A levels and ended up doing a BTech in drama at Harrogate College, and I ended up in Tennessee by a major fluke,” she says.

That was when a representative from a university in Harrogate, Tennessee, came to visit the Yorkshire counterpart and three students were offered scholarships. Becky wasn’t one of them, but, when her friend declined the offer, she pleaded her case and spent two years living in the USA during her early 20s.

Later she worked in radio in London and Dublin before settling back in West Yorkshire in the early noughties, with husband Sam and daughters, Molly, 19, and Emma, 17.

She has also contributed columns to The Yorkshire Post and worked as a ghostwriter, helping to pen Georgina Hurst’s book Unbroken: The Woman who Walked Again in 2021 and Richie Barlow’s Richie Who Cares?: Lost Childhood and a Boy's Journey for Justice, released last year.

But going through her late parents’ belongings then sparked more yearning for those old family tales.

She says: “I was looking at them with my brother, Nigel, and my sister, Lu, and we were just like: ‘Do you remember when he used to tell us those bloody stories?’ He’d start with: ‘Now, stop me if I told you before’, you know, and go into a massive story, but they were always really naughty.

“At Sunday school, there was a girl who sat in front of him. She had a big, long, swishy ponytail. But he said she was really stuck up and she always used to turn round and stick her tongue out at him. And so one day he snuck some scissors in and chopped her ponytail off!”

As a 10-year-old in 1943, he was evacuated to Buckden because he lived in Horsforth, which was close to the Avro factory at Yeadon and Kirkstall Forge.

Meanwhile, plans to record her mother talking never materialised, particularly as Jill later had dementia.

“I didn’t want to record her when she couldn’t remember properly,” says Becky. “I wanted to hear her voice, but I didn’t want to remember her kind of not remembering.”

She launched Your Story Your Voice at the beginning of November having tried a session out with her Wilsden-based in-laws Ruth and Andrew – or “Grandrew”, to his grandchildren – after having first conducted one with another couple by request.

“I asked lots of questions that probably your own children wouldn't ask and really drilled down into really weird things like ‘Okay, so what was your routine specifically when you were at boarding school when you were seven?’ And then we got into details of what the rice pudding tasted like and what one of the teachers was like.”

The conversations with Becky are simple and relaxed. Over a pot of tea or something stronger, and with a small broadcast-quality microphone nearby, people are asked to share stories about their life: poignant moments, loves, losses and more.

Afterwards, she makes a few edits before sending customers a link to make sure they are happy with the results. Then after any more amendments that are needed, she puts the audio file onto a memory stick in a gift box.

Becky feels the sessions are better as audio instead of video because the interviewee doesn’t feel like they have to dress up for the occasion or feel self-conscious, and it also means people can listen to the recording anywhere.

She says: “The more I do, the more I'm like, this is just brilliant. All these stories just need keeping for generations. Because my daughters are now 17 and 19 and even they – standard teenagers, who I thought would be like ‘God, who wants to listen to something about being evacuated during the war?’ – are actually really saying: ‘I really want to listen to my granny and Grandrew’.”

Main packages, including an interview, edit and one memory stick in a gift box, cost £275. Gift vouchers are also available. Visit yourstoryyourvoice.co.uk