Having the Courage of your Convictions

I wish I had had the courage to follow mine but it's never too late if you want to follow yours and, of course, a creepy story for Halloween 🎃 🎃 🎃 👻👻👻

Hello and welcome.

If anyone had told me that I would be sitting behind a laptop (that’s right, I don’t even have a desktop computer), in my office with a filing cabinet full of writing assignments, short stories, and, most importantly, three signed contracts for three books, I would never have believed them. Why? Because things like that don’t happen to people like me.

I grew up on a Council estate in the 1950’s. I wouldn’t use the word tough but it certainly wasn’t all fun and games. I can remember once going to the dentist for a tooth extraction when I was probably about nine or ten and had to go alone because my Mum was working. In fact, I don’t think I even told her about the dental appointment because she and Dad always seemed to be busy working and I was brought up to just get on with it. Which I did.

Looking back it was tough, especially when I see some nine and ten year old girls today who have wardrobes full of the latest fashionable fancy new clothes, their nails and hair done by professionals, and wouldn’t know what it was like to have to milk a herd of cows before going to school or do a pile of ironing before facing a long walk, followed by a bus journey to school and back again, only to have to go back to the milking parlour or help around the house again on my return before starting my homework. I could never have imagined in my wildest dreams having all of those beautiful, new things because money was so tight that I wore hand-me-down clothes and even my older brother’s cast-offs. New shoes were a luxury and were my birthday gift. That was it. New school shoes for my birthday. Perhaps that’s why I don’t have high expectations of anything, let alone myself.