Life begins at 60

Nine years ago, when I turned 60, I made a list of all the things I wanted to do before time got the better of me. The list included, amongst other things, painting; writing a book and learning to ice skate. I reluctantly decided to give ice-skating a miss; falling over at my age suddenly didn’t seem such a good idea!

But I taught myself canal art and for over six years ran a successful craft stall called Shabby Pots. This venture brought the run away to the circus child out in me. We found ourselves selling our wares in the most extraordinary of places; such as Oxford Prison; along the Banbury Canal; Young Farmers Shows and even a Bowling Club.

Sometimes we took our caravan if we were staying overnight. I will never forget waking up one morning in what felt like a deserted fairground.  I went for a walk before everyone was up. I passed a monolithic funfair standing eerily silent. Vintage lorries and fast food vans stood lifeless and show rings empty, waiting for bums to take up their seats on the bales of hay scattered round the perimeter.

Before I retired, I taught myself to build websites. The first of these, Footsteps to Oxford, attracted contributions from writers and artists across the globe. My website was pre-blogging (turn of the century!) and for many years proved original and highly successful but the advances in technology meant FTO eventually became outdated.

But one door closes and another opens.

For most of my life I have written short stories and poems but have never embarked on a full length book. This was all about to change.

In casually researching my family history (Irish ancestry is notoriously difficult to track down) I came across an entry that I believe may belong to my great-grandfather from County Mayo in Ireland. What I read made the hairs on my neck stand up and spawned the plot for a story that was destined to become the first in a trilogy chronicling the fortunes of the, now, fictitious Fitzgerald Family from the tiny village of Gouladoo on the South West Coast of Ireland, at the time of the Great Famine in 1845.

If you read Áine- Out of Ireland – and I sincerely hope you do, you might like to know that in creating such characters as Breandán Fitzgerald and his cousin, Jeremiah, I have drawn on inspiration from researching my ancestors.

The sequel, Time Breaks the Threaded Dance takes the naïve Mary Fitzgerald over to Brooklyn in America where her highly ambitious but insecure husband Edward, endeavours to make a name for himself – he succeeds but not quite in the manner he had in mind!

I have just started on the third and final book in the trilogy but this is proving the hardest as I really don’t want to say goodbye to my characters. They are as real to me now as my own children (one of whom lives in Brisbane).

But as I said, one door closes and another opens.

Maybe, before I turn 70 next year, I will have a go at ice skating after all – but only if they let me hold on to one of those plastic reindeer they give to the toddlers!