MUSINGS FROM THE BOWER 7

I was browsing in a hobbies shop recently, and noticed a whole aisle given over to ‘Scrapbooking’. There were masses of accessories, from the books themselves through to decals, buttons, decorative papers and all kinds of miniature stick-on accessories. I could see that the making of scrapbooks was now an in-thing.
During the 1980s/90s when my children were small, we filled scrapbooks too, but unlike today’s arty creations, ours were designed to record our holidays. Sometimes we made additional scrapbooks to fill with memorabilia relating to the places of interest we had visited over the year; zoos, exhibitions, stately homes and other days out. The first scrapbook I made was when we were on holiday in Cornwall. My son was one year old, and I wanted to create a memory as I knew he would never recall this holiday. My son and daughter can’t really remember much about their early holidays, so the scrapbooks have proved fascinating. For the first few years, I wrote the diary while the children contributed their finds to the album. Later, they were old enough to write the words themselves.

We bought a postcard from each of the various places we visited, and kept admission tickets, meal receipts, sugar sachets, car park tickets, paper napkins – even the occasional ice-lolly stick or chocolate wrapper. Yes, I know it’s junk, but it’s also treasure! Free leaflets and fliers were a boon, and feathers, a small piece of seaweed, tiny shells, and some daises or thrift from the cliff all contributed to the scrapbooks. The children were always on the lookout for interesting holiday bits and pieces, and they made holiday drawings too.

By now, you’re probably thinking that it can’t be much of a holiday if you have to work on a scrapbook every day, but in fact the work is minimal. All you need to pop into your luggage is a notebook, a supply of small plastic bags and an old bus timetable or similar book which won’t matter if it becomes soiled. Each evening jot down in your notebook where you went, what you did, and most importantly, the prices you paid for admission, boat trips, bus rides or other things. Then put the day’s treasures into plastic bags together with a slip of paper with the date. Press the seaweed and flowers in the bus-timetable (you were wondering about that, weren't you?). It doesn't take long, honest. When you arrive home, stick your notes and treasures into a scrapbook and label everything up. The children will enjoy helping to create this snippet of social history and it prolongs the fun of the holiday. Older children get fun out of these books too – when I suggested that we needn’t bother any more, now that they were older, my son and daughter greeted the suggestion with shocked protests even though they were well into their teens.

Not only are these holiday scrapbooks wonderful to look back on in years to come, they can resolve arguments (was that mine we visited in Cornwall or Wales, and what was the name of that little tea room in Devon?) Unfortunately, they can also cause great anguish when you notice how admission prices have tripled over the years!
　

Musings From the Bower 6

Musings from the Bower

Sue Brewer

　
The other day someone asked me how I began my writing career. It wasn’t an easy question to answer. The very first thing that I ever had published – and was paid for – was a letter in a magazine entitled Fur and Feather. I was about 13 at the time, and would like to say that this was the kick-start to my career. I would like to say that – but of course, it wasn’t. At 13 I didn’t really know what I wanted to do when I left school. And though I loved writing, thanks to Michael Guinery, an enthusiastic teacher in my primary school in Welwyn Garden City, I didn’t see it as a career. I ended up working in a ‘special’ library (one attached to a research institution) before moving on to a college library.

It was much, much later before the writing really took off. I had become interested in breeding various types of amphibians, and submitted an article to the Aquarist magazine. Soon, I was writing regularly for them on many topics. At the same time, I decided to dabble in the fiction world, never thinking I would get a story published as it is such a cut-throat market. By a fluke, my story was included in a Woman’s Realm supplement – and suddenly, I was writing short stories for them, and other magazines as well. The thing that helped my writing more than any other, was my word processor! At first I had bashed away on an old typewriter, but the processor gave me freedom to correct and to alter my work without having to retype everything each time I made an error.

By the 1990s I also had a weekly column in a local newspaper and was writing features for various collectables, doll and teddy bear magazines, as well as writing stories and also producing ‘blurbs’ for a bookseller. I decided I would like to try my hand at writing something for children and was given the opportunity to produce a short book in verse dealing with phonetics, for a children’s reading scheme. Then my Mother asked for help – she had written an autobiography dealing with her childhood spent in a children’s home, and so we decided to publish it ourselves, knowing the market might be limited. This proved so successful that a few years later, I took the same route with my first doll book. The book was about the famous Tiny Tears doll, but was full of so much detail and general geekiness that I knew no publisher would take it on. I was amazed at how successful the book proved to be, outselling all my expectations.

Then, by a stroke of fortune, I was offered the chance to write books for a publisher on many subjects including dolls, comics, toys, autographs and games. Along the way I’ve edited a few magazines, written for others and published a magazine of my own, Doll Showcase, which has now been running for eight years. Recently, I released a selection of my short stories, first published in Woman's Realm, on Kindle under the title ‘Twisty Ends and Tangly Tales’. I’ve also written a couple of novels which I’m still plucking up courage to send to a publisher. Maybe one day, I will!