Meeting the Shaman in Siberia

On October 25, 2020October 23, 2020 By cherrygilchristIn Meditation and Self-Help, Myth and Landscape, Oracles5 Comments

In August, I featured posts about Russia, based on my travels and studies there. Here, we are back to Russia, but in a very different way. This story is from an unforgettable trip which I made to Siberia in 2004, travelling to the regions of Tuva and Khakassia. One of the most fascinating encounters that I had was with a traditional Siberian shaman, Herel. This is a shortened version of the article I originally wrote for ‘Quest: The Journal of the Theosophical Society in America’ (Winter 2017).

Evening ritual by Herel and his wife at our yurt camp near Kyzyl

The first beats of the shaman’s drum were resounding, starting slowly but quickly mounting in intensity. I was transported, in spirit at least, back to Siberia from my home in Devon. But then came the sudden roar of a helicopter overhead, completely obliterating the sound I was listening to on the recording. I clicked on the pause button, and peered out of the window. A large army helicopter was circling right above me, barely skimming the rooftops of the town. Its presence felt incongruous, and menacing. But was it? Had I perhaps inadvertently invoked a shamanic presence, as I played the recording of the ritual in my study? After all, it is said that shamans can fly.

This particular recording was of a ritual that took place in 2004, in the far-off province of Tuva, Siberia. It was a consultation I had there with Herel, a local shaman. In fact, this was the first time I had ever played back the recording. I couldn’t bring myself to do so earlier –it might have seemed artificial, and dilute the experience while the power of that occasion still burned bright in my mind. But now, twelve years later, the time was right, and I was ready to listen and reflect. When the helicopter finally departed, as quickly as it had come, I immersed myself again in the drum beats and chanting. I sensed that I was sliding into a different world, eerie and disorientating in one way, but a place where reflection and calmness were also possible. However, the visceral sound of helicopter remained imprinted on my senses, a reminder that this meeting with the shaman had been a powerful experience, and one that, perhaps, was not quite over yet.

The yurt camp where we stayed, which had its own ‘spirit of place’ shrine, as did most sites in the area, including mountains and rivers

My own spiritual path has led me deep into the heart of the Western hermetic tradition – in particular Tree of Life Kabbalah, alchemy, Tarot and astrology. At the time of my trip to Siberia, I was certainly interested in shamanism, but in a cautious, anthropologically-orientated way. I was wary of the contemporary enthusiasm for taking up shamanism. This provoked questions for me: is it possible to practice shamanism in a modern Western context? Does it require its own traditional culture, for authenticity and indeed safety? Many serious studies of shamanism emphasise what sacrifice is required from true shamans. Physical ordeals, renunciation of normal life and exhausting, risky encounters with the spirits, are part of the job description, in the efforts to help and heal others.

In a traditional context too, the shamanic path is not one that you can choose on a whim. Usually the shaman shows signs from childhood that this is his or her potential destiny. Having a parent or relative may pre-dispose one to be a shaman, but this is not guaranteed. Herel told me that although both he and his wife were shamans, only one out of their five children was possibly a shaman in the making. The signs were there at her birth, as the weather changed dramatically, from thunder and lightning to sunshine and then snow. The heavens were pointing a finger to her ability, which was now manifesting in later childhood through significant dreams, and encounters with spirits.

Pictured in Tuva at the purported Centre of Asia, looking very much the Englishwoman abroad!

I came to Siberia seeking answers to my questions about shamanism: can it be practised, or truly experienced by anyone not of that traditional culture? I had no doubts about its power, only whether it could survive in a modern world, without losing its identity as a genuine spiritual practice. By 2004, I had visited Russia nearly sixty times. I ran a Russian arts and crafts business; I had studied Russian traditional folk culture, learnt the language and mixed freely with people in cities and countryside. But I was keen to find an even older culture, to witness practices which go back thousands of years, and which may be the source from which much Russian folk tradition itself has evolved. Siberia has a living, truly ancient culture; the majority of its people are ethnically different from Russians, and its primary religions are shamanism, and Buddhism.

I travelled with writer friend Lyn Webster-Wilde, visiting the fabled lands of Tuva and Khakassia, along with the Sayani Mountains. Our trip was an organised journey of exploration with a small group of Russian travellers. We went in the warm summer months, when the forests were in full leaf and mountain pastures were studded with alpine flowers. We traversed landscapes that had remained largely untouched since the Bronze Age, including sweeping grasslands studded with standing stones and stone circles, like an airbrushed version of the Wiltshire plains. In Khakassia, we saw Bronze Age carvings and pictograms on rocks still relevant to the customs of local people today –of the magic elk, for instance, who they say leads souls to the underworld. Shrines set up to spirits of the land were abundant, and ancient ceremonies of purification and healing were still carried out at important ritual points in the landscape. This was the landscape of shamanism in southern Siberia, that as far its people are concerned, is still a spiritual, magical terrain.

A shrine on a sacred mountain, and a kind of temporary wigwam set up by shamans who visit this place regularly for gatherings. My companion, Lyn, investigates.

When we arrived in Kyzil, the capital of Tuva, we were put up at a nearby yurt camp, and then taken into the town itself. Here there is a monument that, allegedly, marks the Centre of Asia. It is also home to the shamans ‘clinic’. This is where approved and regulated shamans are allowed to practice. It might sound contrary to the spirit of shamanism, with its allegiance to nature, to fires and skies and a freedom of movement. However, Tuvan shamanism is in recovery after brutal suppression by the Soviet regime– many shamans throughout the whole of Siberia were murdered or dispossessed. In that era, some were even thrown out of aeroplanes with the cruel taunt: ‘You shamans say you can fly! Let’s see you do it, then.’ The tradition was severely depleted, but it was not lost, and is making a strong comeback. To a certain extent, though, it still has to work in co-operation with the authorities, hence the ‘clinic’ set-up. And these shamans certainly practice outdoors as well. They have special gatherings at sacred mountain sites, and as we shall see, our shaman Herel came to our yurt camp with his wife the following evening to perform a ceremony of blessing.

The entrance to the ‘clinic’ in Kyzyl. Note the figure of the eagle on the pile of stones. (Stones are often heaped up to form a cairn, with its own significance.)

The consultation
From listening to the recording, from my notes written at the time, and from the vivid recollections that I still carry, I now offer an account of the session with Herel, the Tuvan shaman.

So now our group sits in Herel’s consulting room, which is filled with feathers, ribbons, ropes, bones, plaques, a reindeer head, a horn and bells. They hang from his walls, a chaotic clutter of ritual paraphernalia, rather in the way that strips of cloth or leather hang from the traditional shamanic costume itself. He shows us some of the tools of his trade, and how they work. His is a hard calling, he admits. His own speciality is purification and divination, whereas his wife specialises in healing women’s ailments.

At the end of the talk, he asks if anyone would like to have a personal session with him. I alone say yes. I’ll pay the price he asks – higher for visitors than for locals, I’m sure, but he has to make a living, and I don’t begrudge it. Later, Ira our young guide tells me that from all the groups she has brought to this place, I am the only person who has ever opted for a private consultation. This surprises me, but she adds that Herel is the very best of the shamans she has encountered, and a man of compassion; some seem aggressive, and the quality, she implies, is variable.

Lyn and Ira stay. Ira needs to translate for me. I speak good Russian, but Herel’s accent is thick and guttural, as it is probably his second language. Lyn makes a recording, her earlier BBC training coming in handy.

Herel dons an eagle headdress and tells me to sit on a bear skin in the centre of the room. ‘Raise your hands,’ he says, as he passes burning juniper around my body. ‘While appealing to the spirits, I’ll ask them to take your worries and bad feelings out of you, and I’ll ask them to make your future road happy.’ He tells me to shut my eyes, and bids me not to be afraid. Let the tears come, he says. Tears often fall during an encounter with the spirits. And indeed they do. I am moved, and emotionally exposed during this session, though I am neither afraid nor unhappy. Herel dances around me, drumming and chanting, creating a kind of beehive of sound and movement around me. I feel that I am in a magical chamber, in a different dimension of space and reality.

The ritual is constantly changing. I have the impression that his chants and cries are a dialogue with the spirits, as they shift in tone and intensity. Phases of the session peak, and then fall away into silence. A new one is heralded by the blow of a conch shell, or jangling of bells. Suddenly, he thumps my shoulder with a bear paw – it’s a shock. Later, he pulls back my Tshirt and spits down the back my neck. Curiously, I don’t mind this a bit. He even uses a whip on me several times, but it is never painful. I write down later that this is ‘stimulating and pleasant’, rather like using a switch of birch leaves to beat your body in a Russian bath. At the end of each section, he blows away the psychic ‘debris’ and sends it out of the door. I am in a different time zone, and have no sense of how long the treatment lasts, although Lyn tells me later that it is about 15 minutes

He mentioned at the start of the session that I have an obstruction in my left shoulder. ‘You are worrying about something. I’ll take it out of you.’ Curiously, at this point I have had several years of problems with my right shoulder, and already recognise that is probably stress-related. I can see now that if one side of the body is numb with some emotional weight or obstruction, then it’s the other side that may take the strain and display the symptoms. After the session, Herel says that he has succeeded in asking the spirits to relieve me of this. Next year, he tells me, will be more normal, and that I will start to be happy again, after going through a little more personal suffering first.

We conclude with three measures of advice. He tells me that I may come again next year, if I wish. But if I don’t, I can connect to him at a distance; he is able to sense people he has treated, and can help if needs be. He gives me a ‘spirit bag’, a little bundle of cloth tied up with cord, and tells me that I should feed it three times a week with oil or melted butter. It is my talisman, to connect me to the power of the session, and I should take it with me if I am travelling or am away on business. He also advises me to contact the spirits of place where I live – the spirits of the hills, trees and streams. After this session, he says, I will be able to do this. That’s if I have such spirits in my homeland. (The aftermath, of how I endeavoured to put this into practice, is omitted here for reasons of length.)

The next day, Herel and his wife arrive at our yurt camp to conduct a ceremony to promote the well-being of everyone there. They come as the light begins to fade, preparing the space carefully, setting the fire and arranging little balls of dough to mark out the territory for the ritual. Once the fire is blazing, they don full costume and invite everyone to sit in a large circle. I am still bathed in my impressions from the day before, and the difference between the two occasions strikes me strongly. This one is open to all comers; it has resonance and power but not, to my mind, the concentrated force that I experienced in my session.

Herel’s wife, playing the traditional shamanic drum, wearing her cape of strips of cloth and what may be another eagle headdress

Herel and his wife are dealing with a big mix of people, from earnest Japanese tourists to young Australian surfers, since the camp is used by various travellers passing through the area. Some of them have never even heard of shamanism, and are nervous, or giggle loudly at this unfamiliar ritual. At one point, Herel passes around the backs of everyone in the circle, giving some of them a thump with his bear paw, though never as hard as he clouted me the day before. I wonder if they realise that they are actually being offered a precious nugget of healing, or blessing, or insight? I have a video of this ceremony though, and even viewing it ‘cold’, a long time later, it is compelling, and there is an unearthly quality to the chanting and singing of the shaman pair. I do not know exactly what the sounds mean, though it certainly sounds at times as though they are in conversation with spirits.

One study of shamanism mentions that Tuvan shamans simulate bird and animal calls to express particular emotions: that of a raven to curse an enemy, a cow to call up rain, a wolf or eagle to frighten people, a magpie to uncover a lie, a bull to demonstrate power, and a bear to convey rapture. (Shamanism: An Introduction, Margaret Stutley, Routledge, London 2003) The horse has special properties in many branches of Siberian shamanism; it is a creature that can fly the shaman to the spirit world. The bear, hare and eagle are also particularly important in Tuvan shamanism.

I suspect that the eagle is Herel’s own spirit guide, although – understandably – he refuses to tell us what kind of creature it is. During my individual session with him, I ‘saw’ an eagle.
My notes say: ‘Just the head, neck and shoulders were visible. It was quite clear and communicating with me – intelligent.’

The eagle cloud appearing after the ceremony

When the ceremony ends, the mood is peaceful. The daylight has not quite gone and unexpectedly, the sky brightens and I look up to see a cloud in the shape of an eagle just overhead. Am I imagining it? No, it is there when I look on the video later. Curiously enough, this video will give me a lot of trouble; I discover that the original mini-tapes are jammed, and only after various professional companies refuse to try and repair them do I find one local man who is prepared to have a go. Luckily, he succeeds in transferring the whole recording to DVD. As I said at the beginning. strange things do happen when shamanic forces are in action.

On a lighter note, after the evening’s ceremony is over, I pick up some of the balls of dough used by the shamans, and take them back as souvenirs to the yurt that Lyn and I are sharing. I hang them in a cloth bag from the end of my bed, for want of anywhere better to put them. That night, I sleep peacefully. Lyn, however, is awake for hours, disturbed by the sound of a mouse that has detected the presence of tasty titbits and is trying all kinds of ways to reach the prize. Scuttlings, rustlings and chewings ruin her night’s sleep. The next morning, when we relate this light-hearedly, to one of our fellow Russian travellers, he takes it very seriously. ‘No, that was not a mouse!’ he pronounces solemnly. ‘That was a rival shaman come to steal the power of our shaman.’ A little far-fetched, perhaps? But there again, if I am claiming that an army helicopter might be a shaman in disguise, perhaps my ideas are no stranger than his.

As is often the way, my initial questions about shamanism gave way to a different perspective on it. My trip to Siberia, rather than achieving solid answers, showed me that shamanism is a living tradition that cannot be completely pinned down. It is in essence a shape-shifter, and will ebb and flow, finding different forms in different cultures.

I have come to realise that such a development is more important than an anxiety about inappropriate use of shamanism in other cultures, or the blurring of boundaries and nomenclature in academic studies. As Tim Hodginkson, anthropologist and musician, and former student friend of mine at Cambridge, says in his excellent papers, (see link below and Related Reading, below) shamanism is itself improvisatory. It deals with the circumstances as they are; it responds to very particular configurations of place and time.

tim-hodgkinson-musicians-1 Download

And each of us may discover something different within its practice. Meeting the shaman gave me not just insight into the tradition itself, but a very specific outcome: it invigorated three of my major passions: the power of music and sound, the power of nature, and the world of ancestry.

The shaman’s shelter at the sacred mountain

Related Reading
Russian Magic: Living Folk Traditions in an Enchanted Landscape, Cherry Gilchrist, Quest 2009 and e-book edition Lume 2019
Siberian Shamanism: The Shanar Ritual of the Buryats – Virlana Tkacz with Sayan Zhambalov and Wanda Phipps
Shamanic Voices: The Shaman as Seer, Poet and Healer, Joan Halifax E.P. Dutton, New York 1978
Shamanism: An Introduction, Margaret Stutley, Routledge, London 2003
Shamanism in Siberia, V. Dioszegi & M. Hoppal (editors), Akademiai Kiado, Budapest 1978
The Shaman: Voyages of the Soul, Piers Vitebsky, Duncan Baird, London 1995
Transcultural Collisions: Music and Shamanism in Siberia, Tim Hodgkinson. Paper given in 2007 at SOAS, London; available on Tim Hodgkinson’s website.

Related books by Cherry Gilchrist

You may also be interested in ‘The Moon Meditation of Kuan Yin’

Venetia, the Woman who Named Pluto

On October 18, 2020October 17, 2020 By cherrygilchristIn Life Stories & Memoirs, Myth and Landscape2 Comments

Pluto, photographed on the 2015 ‘flyby reconnaissance’ mission

How it began…

To: Professor Herbert Hall Turner, Radcliffe Observatory, Oxford

94 Banbury Road, Oxford
March 14th 1930

Dear Professor,
This new planet! As my older brother suggested the names of Deimos and Phobos for the Martian moons, I was set wondering about a name for the big obscure new baby at breakfast today. It is of course most dim and dark and gloomy. Blest if my little granddaughter Venetia Burney didn’t up and suggest a name which seems to me to be thoroughly suitable, PLUTO. I hope it hasn’t been bagged for an asteroid. He was king of the murky and mysterious nether kingdom. You see Odin was a bright god and far from appropriate; but Pluto is good. Don’t trouble to reply.
I am, sincerely yours
F. Madan

A visit to Epsom
On a chilly, dark evening in November 2005, I drove to Epsom in Surrey, to the house of Venetia Phair, nee Burney. A small and stocky lady opened the door, and greeted me with a warm smile. I proffered a bunch of purple irises, which she accepted with pleased surprise. Now 87 years old, and still sharp and alert, she was once the 11-year old who had suggested the name ‘Pluto’ for the newly-discovered planet in 1930.

I had been researching for an MA essay, on the topic of how planets and other astronomical bodies acquire their names. If I could find Venetia – if she was still alive – it would be a wonderful opportunity to hear a ‘naming’ story at first hand. After some investigation, I managed to track her down, and wrote to ask if I might visit.

Venetia on my visit in 2005, with her ‘Pluto’ album

‘This new planet!’
The discovery of the planet Pluto was a major event, as the furthest-known planet from the sun. There had been two ‘new planets’ in the previous 150 years – first, Sir William Herschel had identified Uranus in 1781, after millennia in which only Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn were known as fellow-planets in our solar system. This was followed by the discovery of Neptune in 1846. And then Pluto’s existence, already predicted from astronomical observations, was finally confirmed by Clyde Tompbaugh, at the Lowell Observatory in Arizona in 1930. Although all three discoveries were not single Eureka! moments, but the consequence of long periods of observations and analysis, nevertheless the actual moment of confirmation was hugely exciting to the world at large. In the case of Pluto, the race was now on to choose a name.

Instead of a suggestion from an august astronomer, it was, in fact, a little girl living in Oxford who named Pluto. What follows is extracted from Venetia’s own account of how it happened, as told to me that November evening. [square brackets are for my comments]

Venetia came from a family with close ties to education and academia. Her father had been much older than her mother. He was only in his fifties, though, when he died of complications following an operation, which came as a great shock to the family. Venetia was only six at the time of his death, and a few years later, at the time of Pluto’s discovery, she and her mother were living with her grandparents in Oxford.

Letters from Venetia’s grandfather, F. Madan, to Professor Henry Herbert Turner. Madan’s brother had named the Martian moons Deimos and Phobos, so there was already a family precedent.

Interview with Venetia

CG I’d love to hear from you, in your own words, what you remember of eventful day of March 14th 1930?

VP Yes of course. What happened was that the news of the discovery came out in the Times that morning, and I was at breakfast with my mother and my grandfather. We speculated, I suppose, and then I said, right off the top of my head, ‘Why not call it Pluto?’ And they thought it was quite a good idea.

Pluto, Roman god of the underworld, also known as Hades in Greek mythology, with his three-headed dog Cerberus

Her grandfather’s letters – preserved by Venetia in a special Pluto album – give a little more detail:

‘When I came down to breakfast as usual at 8am I saw the announcement in the Times and the Daily Mail of the discovery of a new planet beyond Neptune. My daughter Mrs (Ethel) Burney and her daughter Venetia, aged 11, were the only others at breakfast, and I at once said “What will be its name?” I thought of Odin, but did not like it. In a minute or two Venetia said, “It might be called Pluto.” The idea seemed good at once. She had learnt about the old Greek and Latin mythologies, and also the relative distances of the planets, at school.’

VP Anyway, I heard no more of it till about three months later.

CG Had you forgotten about it by then?

VP Oh, I think so! My grandfather [Falconer Madan] was a retired librarian from the Bodleian, and when he retired he had his special bay in the library, with all his interests, which were largely family history and Lewis Carroll. But he was a terrific person, really interested in everything. And he used to walk down to the Bodleian in the mornings and come home about teatime.

Bigland, Percy; Falconer Madan (1851-1935); Bodleian Libraries

Well, on the way to the Bodleian this time, he dropped a note in addressed to Professor Herbert Hall Turner. [He was director of the Director of the Radcliffe Observatory at Oxford ] But Professor Turner didn’t actually get it until the next day because he was up in London at a meeting of the Royal Astronomical Society, trying to think of a name!

CG So they were debating it up there?

VP Oh, they were, yes. And anyway, the next day, my grandmother and grandfather told him they would pay for a telegram to the Lowell Observatory in America.

The telegram sent by Prof. Turner to the Lowell Observatory, Arizona

VP Professor Turner thought it was a good idea, and sent a telegram on our behalf. Of course, it was entirely the decision of Lowell Observatory what it was called. But there were some very fortunate things about the suggestion. I rather believe the name Pluto had been used for a comet which had failed to reappear when it should have. And they also liked the fact that Pl in Pluto tied in with P L for Percival Lowell [who had founded the Observatory specifically with the hope of discovering this planet]. So, the Observatory accepted the idea, and eventually said that as far as they knew, I was the first person to have suggested it.

CG Do you remember what prompted you to say Pluto?

VP Absolutely no idea! I suppose, knowing the names of the planets, and knowing a certain amount of mythology. We had in particular one rather good practical astronomy lesson [at school], which was to stand outside the university parks, and in the parks there is a wrought iron gate and it had a circle in it, which was roughly of a size that you could pretend was the sun, and we then took little bits of clay with us, and moulded them into shape, made them the appropriate size in relation to each other, and planted them out at the right relative distance for all the planets, at the right places. And by the time we got to Neptune we were at the other side of the parks, about a mile and a quarter away! So I do know roughly the relative size of the planets, even now.

CG There have been some stories going round that there was some connection with the Walt Disney dog Pluto. When I looked up that on the Disney site it said the dog was named after the planet, not the other way round. Is that correct, do you think?

VP That is correct. Fortunately, yes. As far as the naming goes, though, most accounts are pretty idiotic. There’s a book called something like Brilliant Kids who made their Contribution to Science, and I am bracketed with people like Louis Braille, and the article is pure invention from start to finish.

CG Really?

VP Yes – they had the thesis that ‘you too might get to something if you work really hard.’ So I am portrayed as spending two or three days in the library…

CG Ah! So they didn’t want it to be a flash of intuition or inspiration?

VP Oh no, no! And then they said that I ‘went and told my father’, who’d been dead for five years! People tended to call me Plutonia after that!

CG Were you a bit of a local celebrity?

VP Hardly, I don’t think! My school enjoyed basking in it. And my grandfather handed me a five pound note, which was undreamed of wealth. He also gave the school a five pound note with which they bought a wind-up gramophone, and we had music appreciation lessons after that. But after Patrick Moore’s article, [he had written about Venetia in ‘The Naming of Pluto’, in the journal Sky & Telescope, Nov. 1984] the thing has slowly snowballed. The Americans got interested, and ever since, I’ve had interesting repercussions. There’s a school in Memphis, a private girls’ school, and one of their parents tracked me down. And I’ve got sixty-one letters from eight and nine year olds! Which were really great fun – they wanted to know my favourite colour, and did I like pets, and that sort of thing.

CG Are you still getting correspondence coming in now? Apart from people like me!

VP A certain amount. Have you been to the Leicester Space Centre? Because the chap who set it up was so interested in my having named Pluto, and tried to track me down. If he’d read the whole of Patrick Moore’s article, which he said he knew, he’d have found out that my [married] name was Phair and that I was living in Surrey. As it was, he started out from scratch, and he rang everybody he could find in the district of the name of Burney. There weren’t very many. And he then got into the local Oxford Mail. They had a big headline: ‘Venetia – Where are You?’

The auditorium of the Sir Patrick Moore Planetarium, at the Leicester Space Centre

Anyway, eventually he traced me, and after the Planetarium was opened, I was invited to see it, and it really was a royal visit. I know now just what it’s like to be the Queen! I was introduced to every single person of the staff, and photographed, and I had to sign autographs. And when it actually came to seeing the Planetarium show, all doors were shut so that nobody could come in, and they ushered us in at the back to choose our seats. Then they let everybody else in. And of course he had to announce that I was there –

CG And everyone turns and looks!

VP Yes. I had to stand up and wave. And finally, I was taken to the part devoted to Pluto, to see a life-size photograph of me, the usual photograph at the age of 11, on the wall, with various supporting photographs, and a description.

CG It’s also like being a pop star for a day.

VP Yes, it was quite shattering. And we returned with whole carrier bags full of souvenirs. It was quite fun.

Venetia’s contribution is picked up by Punch magazine

CG Going back to the time of naming Pluto, I read that one or two other astronomers who had also put in the suggestion of Pluto were a bit annoyed to be pipped to the post by a young girl. Did you hear anything about that yourself?

VP Well, I heard that two Cambridge undergraduates had suggested it the day after. And there was a little bit in Punch – ‘Cambridge young ladies must look to their laurels’.

CG The name of a planet is a really significant thing and affects our sense of the whole mythology of the planets. So some people say that the name of the planet which is chosen is actually the one acceptable to us at the time. [I have an interest in what might be called the Zeitgeist, the spirit of the moment.] Do you think in any way you were a spokesperson for a name that was ready to pop out?

VP I’m sure the name was ready to pop out. I could also say that I was very, very lucky. Being in the right place at the right time was what it came to, with the right relations. But I didn’t feel particularly a spokesperson. The name was just an idle suggestion. But the interest in it has gone up steadily.

CG I’d love to know just a little bit about your life since then. You were a teacher? Is that right?

VP Well, I started by training – it took me two goes to get into Cambridge. I went up to Newnham in 1938. I read Economics, actually, and then I took articles to become a chartered accountant, which I did during the war, in London. I passed the exams after three years, all quite fun because for the intermediate exam we were somewhere in the City, and we were going down under our desks at intervals [presumably because of air raid warnings]. I gave that up when I got married at the very end of 1947, and we came to live in Epsom. My husband taught at Epsom College, and when our son was at prep school, I got a chance of teaching at a small private school. History –swatted up the day before! I mean, I knew some history of course. I’d done my entrance exam in history to get into Newnham. Anyway, I did that until the school packed up, and then I saw a part-time job for an Economics teacher at Wallington Grammar School. Fortunately, economics hadn’t changed very much since I came down! So I did that until I retired in 1983, when I was 65.

CG Did you have a continuing interest in astronomy?

VP Well, only in the way that it is incredibly interesting to think of these enormous distances, and so on. And to go out and recognise a few constellations, that sort of thing. But the idea of learning spherical trigonometry or whatever…

CG One thing too many!

VP One thing too many, yes.

At the end of our talk, Venetia told me that although she’d been interviewed by journalists on many occasions, no one had ever brought her flowers before. We subsequently exchanged Christmas cards, and I was very sad when I heard a few years that she had died, in April 2009.

A painting of Irises by my husband, artist Robert Lee-Wade, similar to the bunch I offered to Venetia, which sealed our brief friendship

A space mission to Pluto was launched in 2006, and conducted a 6 month reconnaissance flyby in 2015. From the data and photos collected, much more information has come to light about the planet. I believe Venetia was invited to attend the launch, but at her advanced age it wasn’t a practical proposition.

A simple student guide to Pluto can be found on the NASA website here, and mentions Venetia in the account of its discovery.

But is Pluto still a planet?
Pluto’s status has been kicked around like a football over the last fifteen years or so, and is officially demoted to dwarf planet status. But some call it a ‘small planet’. In 2014: ‘The decision did not sit well with the public. Some amateur stargazers and some astronomers thought it rather arbitrary. As the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics put it in a press release, “a dwarf fruit tree is still a small fruit tree, and a dwarf hamster is still a small hamster.”’

The Pluto flyby reconnaissance, which took place over six months in 2015, after being launched in 2006

And recently, this Center held a debate and let the audience vote. ‘The result: “Pluto IS a planet.”’ . However, it seems the argument is still unresolved, with NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine coming out strongly in favour of Pluto’s planethood. For astrologers, Pluto is most definitely a planet with its own symbolic meaning in our solar system, so I shall continue to credit Pluto with this status.

The Christmas card I received from Venetia. The large, well-proportioned but cosy family home, set against the vastness of the sky, seems to encapsulate her Oxford childhood home, and her place in the history of astronomy.

Related books by Cherry Gilchrist

Golden Quinces

On October 11, 2020October 10, 2020 By cherrygilchristIn Interludes, Treasures8 Comments

This year’s crop of quinces from our garden

Our quinces are now picked, and the quince cooking season begins! You’ll find a recipe section at the end of this blog, and just to keep things current, I’m adding in an extra recipe which I tried for the first time yesterday – a beef and quince tagine.

I’ve had a love affair with the quince for the last fifteen years, ever since I began to pick the fruit from a neglected tree as I’ll describe shortly. I couldn’t let them go to waste! I knew nothing about quinces – where they came from, and what you could do with them – so I decided to find out.

The start of our quince harvest this year

Although it’s not common to see this golden fruit on sale very often, it was once highly prized. In the Middle Ages, quince trees were only planted by wealthy folk, and the dishes cooked with their fruit ranged from preserves and sweetmeats to savoury stews, where the quince provides a delicious sweet/sour background for the meat. Sometimes bowls of quinces were left out simply so that their delicate perfume could fragrance the air. We usually keep them in an old cherry-picker’s basket until I’m ready to cook them, and they do indeed have a lovely scent. Not many people in the UK cook quinces today, but there has been something of a revival in recent years, and I’ve collected various ‘quince supplements’ from magazines and newspapers.

Quinces originated in Mesopotamia, and it was the ancient Greeks who began to cultivate them, calling them ‘kydonia malon’, meaning ‘apple of Kydonia’. This corresponds to modern day Khania in Crete. Who knew that Quince means Khania? Historians also think that many early references to ‘apples’, such as Aphrodite’s ‘apple of love’, and the golden apples of the Hesperides, may in fact mean quinces. They were also used in the Middle East, then migrated to Europe, perhaps during the time of the Crusades.

My visit to a Cretan cave – the landscape in which it’s thought quince trees originated

You can’t eat a quince raw, but you can turn it into wonderful dishes – quince ‘cheese’, often known as membrillo, jelly, cakes and stews. I first started to experiment with quince recipes when I had an allotment in Bath; further down the plot was a neglected quince tree, on a strip of land which no one laid claim to. I watched these knobbly, pear-shaped fruit through the summer, and waited patiently until they’d started to ripen in mid-autumn. You need to hold back until they turn a deep yellow, but then pounce before they start to discolour. Friends visiting our garden as the quinces begin to ripen ask what those ‘furry pears’ are! Quinces have a thick down on them as the fruit grows, which is eventually shed when they reach picking stage.

When we moved to Gloucestershire, and I missed this quince bounty, we planted a dwarf Serbian quince tree in our rather exposed, terraced garden. It did well. Later still, when we moved to Exeter, I gained permission to go quince scrumping in an old medieval courtyard right in the city centre, by St Nicholas Mint. Here, in a walled garden, a beautiful quince has been planted, and every year those on the ‘quince interested list’ would be summoned to share the harvest. One year I only just managed to climb back on the bus home, laden with several carrier bags which weighed at least as much as a full suitcase.

Our quince tree in bloom – it has a very delicate scent

And now, in Topsham, we have our second Serbian dwarf quince tree, the only variety of dwarf quince tree I’ve come across – essential if you haven’t the space for a big tree, as they can grow to the size of a tall pear tree. It’s four years since we planted it, and is doing very well. It gave about 25 quinces last year, which is enough to make all my favourite recipes, and over 40 this year.

If you can grow, beg or buy quinces – and some greengrocers and farm shops do stock them now – here follow some of my favourite recipes. Notes in brackets are usually my comments on the original instructions.

Some home-made Mebrillo or quince paste – perhaps not quite so perfectly cut as those you buy in a delicatessen, but just as delicious!

Membrillo is the best known quince recipe, and the resulting firm paste is sold in delicatessens at a very expensive price, and sometimes served with cheese plates at gourmet restaurants. The term ‘cheese’ means a fruit paste, and isn’t related to milk cheese. This recipe has been known in various forms since the medieval period.

Quince Cheese (also known as Membrillo or Quince Paste)
1 ¾ kg quinces – (you can make this with any weight, provided matched with the same weight for sugar)
300 ml water
granulated sugar
caster sugar.

Wash the quinces, but don’t peel or core them. Cut them into quarters and put them into a saucepan with water. Simmer until soft, then put them through a sieve. (Warning! This is hard work but needs to be done, to get the hard pieces out. A food processor won’t do the job.)

Weigh the pulp and put into a large pan with an equal weight of granulated sugar. Stir over a low heat until the sugar dissolves. Continue cooking, stirring continuously, until the mixture becomes so thick it is leaving the sides of the pan. (You may need to add more water – take care that it doesn’t burn.)

Turn into shallow tins lined with greaseproof paper. Leave to dry in a warm place, e.g. in airing cupboard, for 3 -4 days, or in an oven on its lowest setting for 12 hrs. (I found 3 hrs worked perfectly well.) This will make the paste easier to handle and also improve the texture, giving it a slight chewiness.

Cut into pieces, the size of a square of chocolate, and roll in caster sugar. (It’s not strictly necessary to add more sugar at this point.) Pack in airtight box with greaseproof paper between each layer. (from It’s Raining Plums, Xanthe Clay). You can freeze this successfully – I’m currently finishing off last year’s just before making a new batch. And it also makes a very good Christmas present!

Hugh’s sticky quince and ginger cake, with the left-over glaze setting nicely in a jar

Sticky quince and ginger cake
Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall
This makes a pretty, moist cake studded with poached quince and stem ginger. Save any leftover poaching syrup – it will solidify into a jelly and is delicious spread on toast, (slightly hot in flavour because of the ginger). Makes one 23cm cake.

150g butter, softened, plus a little more for greasing
2 large-ish quinces (about 600g)
160g caster or vanilla sugar
160g runny honey
1 small thumb fresh ginger, peeled and finely diced
Juice of ½ lemon
250g plain flour
2 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp baking powder
Good pinch of salt
180g caster or vanilla sugar
3 eggs, plus 1 egg yolk
100g creme fraiche
1 tsp vanilla extract
3 balls stem ginger in syrup, drained and chopped
For the topping
3 tbsp syrup from the ginger jar
3 tbsp quince poaching liquid
2 tbsp granulated sugar
Heat the oven to 170C/325F/gas mark 3. Grease a 23cm x 5cm round, spring-form cake tin, line the base and sides with baking parchment, and butter the parchment.

Peel, quarter and core the quinces. Cut each quarter into 1cm slices. Put the quince into a large saucepan with 600ml water, the sugar, honey, ginger and lemon juice. Bring to a boil and simmer, stirring occasionally, until the quince is very tender and has turned a deep, rosy amber colour – about an hour and a half. (NB – in my experience, it’s often much quicker – even as little as 10 mns! I recommend not cutting the quince too small or you may end up with mush – usable, but not quite as nice as chunks. The quince may not always turn red either but that’s nothing to worry about.) Drain, reserving the liquor. Leave the quince to cool, and in a small pan reduce the liquor until thick and syrupy.

Sift the flour, ground ginger, baking powder and salt into a bowl. In a separate bowl, beat together the butter and sugar until pale and fluffy. Add the eggs and yolk one at a time, beating well after each addition. Mix in a few tablespoons of the flour, the creme fraiche and vanilla, fold in the rest of the flour, then the poached quince and chopped ginger. Spoon into the prepared tin and smooth the top with a spatula. Bake for about an hour and a quarter (check after an hour – if the cake is browning too quickly, cover with foil), until a toothpick inserted into the middle comes out clean.

While the cake is cooking, whisk together the ginger syrup and poaching syrup to make a glaze. As soon as the cake comes out of the oven, pierce the top a few times with a skewer and brush on the glaze, letting it trickle into the holes. Sprinkle over the sugar and leave to cool in the tin for 20 minutes. Remove from the tin and leave on a wire rack to cool completely.
Notes: Freezes very well. And you get half a small jar of jelly out of it – just save the left over liquid and let it set. It has an intense and sweet flavour.

Lamb Shanks and Quince Tagine
½ tsp cumin seeds
½ tsp coriander seeds
100gm unsalted butter
4 Lamb shanks
1 tsp ground ginger
½ tsp cayenne pepper
3 garlic cloves, crushed
2 large onions, roughly chopped
400ml lamb stock
½ cinnamon stick
4 tbsp clear honey
20g fresh coriander leaves, coarsely chopped
1 quince, peeled, quartered and cored
1 lemon, juice & 2 strips of rind
½ tsp saffron, dissolved in 2 tbsp boiling water

Grind the cumin and coriander together. Heat 75gm butter in a large casserole and brown the lamb on all sides. Remove the meat and set aside. Add all the spices (except the saffron), and the garlic and onions; cook for 2 minutes. Season and add the stock. Add 2tbsp honey and about a third of the coriander. Bring to the boil, return the lamb to the casserole, then turn down to a simmer. Cover and cook over a low heat for 1 ½ hrs until meltingly tender.

Meanwhile, put the quince in a small saucepan and cover with water. Add the lemon rind, juice and the remaining honey. Bring to the boil, then simmer for 15-20 mns until tender.

When the lamb is cooked, remove the shanks and cinnamon stick and keep warm. Add about 4tbsp of the quince poaching liquid, the saffron and its water. Bring to the boil and reduce to a thickish sauce. Taste and season.

Slice the quince and heat the remaining butter in a frying pan. Sauté the quince slices until golden. Return the lamb to the casserole and heat everything through. Gently stir in the remaining coriander and add the quince. Serve immediately with couscous or bread.

Picked, and weighed – these quinces came from the ‘Old Mint’ garden in Exeter

Quince Stew
Fry 2 large oinions.

Add 2lb shoulder of lamb, beef or veal, cut into 1 inch cubes, brown the meat. Add 1 ½ tsp ground cinnamon, ¼ tsp grated nutmeg, salt and pepper to taste. Cover with water and simmer for 1 hr. Then add 2 ripe quinces, peeled, cored & cut into similar chunks, plus 4 oz soaked yellow split peas. Simmer for 15 mns, then add 4 tbsp lemon juice and 1 – 2 tbsp of sugar. Simer a further 15 mns or until ready.

(Found on a forum, said to be from Claudia Roden’s Book of Jewish Food. I’ve used lamb shoulder, and I soaked the split peas for 2hrs, and parboiled them too to be on the safe side.)

Some of last year’s crop in my cherry-picker’s basket. They change from green to yellow quickly, so it’s important not to miss the moment.

An old Turkish recipe that dates back to the Ottoman Empire, from Gamze Mutfakta, on Food52.

Quince, prunes or dried apricots were commonly used in lamb and beef stews. Quince is an ancient fruit that grows across Turkey. It’s not an easy fruit to eat when raw. It also has an extremely tough flesh, which is difficult to cut up and swallow. But If you leave a quince on a sunny windowsill it will slowly release its delicate fragrances of vanilla, citrus, and apple all over your house. And if you cook it, those scents blossom into a magnificent perfume in your dishes whether its a stew or a dessert. The fruit turns its colour from yellow white to a light rose when its cooked. Such a magical fruit. (I agree!)

Serves 6-8

Ingredients
2kg Quality beef chuck or rump, cut into 6cm pieces
3 quinces
4 medium onions
4 cloves garlic
1/2 cup sultanas
2 tbs tomato puree
3-4 green peppers (a mix of red, yellow, green and orange is fine)
1-2 red peppers
3 tbs olive oil
1.5 glass red wine
1 cinnamon stick
1 teaspoon allspice
1 teaspoon turmeric
2 bay leaf
Salt&pepper
Water

Directions: Peel and chop the onions, then peel and slice the garlic. Peel, core and slice the quinces in cubes. Put them in a bowl of cold water with lemon juice.

Heat 3 tablespoons of oil over a medium heat in a large saucepan and sauté the onion and garlic until soft. Remove with a slotted spoon and set aside, then add the beef and sauté for 5 minutes until all sides are seared add sultanas and the quince & stir for 5 minutes. Return the onions and garlic .Deglaze with red wine.

Add the tomato purée, peppers (cut into chunks or broad strips), cinnamon, bay leaf, allspice, turmeric and enough water to cover (+1 cm)

Season and stir well, bring to the boil then simmer for at least 45 min -1 hour.

Serve with Pilav or mashed potatoes.

Cherry’s notes: Delicious! I made about a third of this quantity, and scaled down the ingredients proportionately, although I still kept to three quinces. Two would have been better, as they need to balance out the meat. I also added 2 or 3 tbsps of runny honey to counteract the tartness – this gave a good sweet-sour flavour. I didn’t have allspice so I used 2 star anise instead, which worked very well. Judging by other similar recipes, the spices can easily be adjusted according to taste or availability.

You may also be interested in ‘Alchemy and Cooking’ And, in that context, these related books:

Writing for Jackie magazine

On October 4, 2020October 3, 2020 By cherrygilchristIn Life Stories & Memoirs4 Comments

Three little maids from school are we,
Pert as a schoolgirl well can be,
Filled to the brim with girlish glee,
Three little maids from school!
Everything is a source of fun,
Nobody’s safe, for we care for none!
Life is a joke that’s just begun –
Three little M-a-i-d-s – from school!
(From ‘The Mikado’ by Gilbert & Sullivan)

This is the second of my ‘Writer’s Life’ posts, where I revisit the days of writing for Jackie magazine, in company with my old friends Helen Leadbeater and Mary Cutler. We began contributing to Jackie while we were at school together, and all three of us have continued to write professionally. Recently, we’ve been comparing notes about how it all started.

Reunited at my wedding to Robert Lee-Wade in 2009

My story
I knew from the age of about four that I would be a writer. That might sound strange, but it was a simple, matter-of-fact kind of knowing, although I soon embroidered it by imagining myself as a popular children’s author, famous for my exciting adventure stories. In the end, my real genre turned out to be what I call ‘creative non-fiction’. I like to write about subjects that I’ve experienced and researched, and to share these with others, with a strong leaning towards ‘wisdom traditions’ and social history. The list is varied, from Russian folklore to life stories, Tarot and alchemy. I still occasionally dream of unlocking a brilliant novel from deep within, but I also know that it’s highly unlikely to happen. Perhaps a writer needs an impossible ambition as a kind of motivation, to keep writing in the genre she does best.

We had excellent English teaching at my secondary school in Birmingham. Our Miss Flint was a real-life Jean Brodie without the sex scenes, though her prim exterior belied a passionate heart. ‘A dramatic tragedy,’ she told us, ‘should leave you exhilarated and wanting to dance out of the theatre’. We didn’t practice ‘creative writing’ as such, although I do still have an epic poem I wrote at the age of 12 about ‘The Minator/His roar’. Instead, we learnt how to construct essays and arguments, to understand poetic rhythm and metaphor, and to put words together in concise and meaningful conjunction. Our year at school produced other writers as well, notably Lindsey Davies of the ‘Falco’ Roman detective series.

Cover from the time we were writing for Jackie – did one of us have a piece in this issue, I wonder?

Jackie on the horizon
Although our formal education was high-minded, we wallowed in popular culture; we read teenage magazines, watched ‘Thank Your Lucky Stars’, tuned into Radio Luxembourg and in our mid-teens swooned over the Beatles and the Rolling Stones (see ‘Mick Jagger and the Cigarette Butt’) And then it occurred to us that we could be participants, not just consumers.

My diary entry for Oct 16th 1966 reads:
‘Helen and I have decided to prostitute our art form and try to write for teenage magazines to earn some money. I’ve knocked off one crummy story, which I’m going to send up to Jackie. With a nom de plume, of course!’

‘Jackie’ was published from 1964-1993 by D. C. Thomson & Co, based in Dundee, who describe themselves as ‘Family Publishers since 1905’. Their vast range of magazines and newspapers has included ‘The People’s Friend’ and ‘The Beano’. They have had a strongly Protestant Christian stance, and certainly in the Jackie era this fed through into their editorial policy – good clean fun, and nothing ‘below the waist’.

The London offfice of D.C.Thompson – the real work was done in their HQ in Dundee. The ‘Protestant Truth Society’ bookshop next door is probably linked to the company’s strong association with a Protestant ethos.

I was living at Helen’s house during term-time, after my parents moved to Shropshire, so we had plenty of time to cook up our schemes. Helen has a great talent for story-writing, and although my first offering of a ‘crummy story’ wasn’t published, hers was snapped up in an instant by the delighted editor. It began: Raphael was an actor. Not a very good one, though I used to tell him he was marvellous. I think he just liked dressing up. We met because he hurled a sword at my feet in Regent Street, then we had a drink, and he upset everyone by saying: ‘Hamlet died in this shirt once.’

Helen’s first published story for Jackie; luckily, her mother Noel Leadbeater preserved a copy! (See a separate post about Noel and her war work)

I kept trying, and managed to get a few chat pieces and (I think) one story published in Jackie, and the cheques started rolling in.

Then Mary joined us: ‘So after you two got your feet in the door, I had a go, and my first story The Boy at the Bus Stop was accepted.’ (I’ll round off this piece with her tale of how that came about.)

Two more Jackie covers from the 60s – on the left is the very first edition, from Jan 11th, 1964

A meeting with Mr Small, aka Mr Big
The editor, Gordon Small, was not only delighted, but excited – he saw possibilities for brightening up his fiction team. He came down from Dundee to Birmingham to meet Helen and Mary for tea in the Grand Hotel on Colmore Row. They came after school, and arrived in their uniforms. He was astounded. ‘We clearly weren’t at all what was he was expecting – maybe not his idea of a Jackie reader,’ Mary recalls. (And perhaps the same was true the other way round. ‘He wasn’t small at all,’ says Helen.)

But after all, no laws were being broken, so he suggested they might try writing a serial together as a picture strip story, different to the narrative stories they’d produced so far. These Jackie strip stories were illustrated by a team of Spanish artists, who enjoyed creating characters with pouting lips and flowing hair.

‘They were sent the scripts and the drawn artwork would be back several weeks later’, writes Anne Rendall, a former member of the editorial team. Everything had to be done by post, and there were also language issues. ‘One script called for a one-armed bandit, i.e. gaming machine, to be drawn and when the storyboard came back we had a gangster minus a limb…’ ( ‘A Little Bit of Romance’ in Jackie: 50 Years)

A Jackie picture strip story of the time

For Mary and Helen, the process didn’t quite go as expected, as Mary relates: ‘We talked a bit about the serial and then spend a hilarious evening in Helen’s bedroom thinking one up about two girls – basically me and Helen- and their various adventures. I remember us being very partisan about our own characters- it was a lot of fun. Clearly he [the editor] didn’t think so, and told Helen so, but he did want to see her again.’

Helen confirms this: ‘He did offer me a job on Jackie, but it was in Dundee and I had a university place waiting at Kent. I think if it had been in London I might have been tempted.’

Mary continued working for Jackie into university days (as did I): ‘But I did go on writing stories,’ she says. ‘Three or maybe four – I remember I bought my winter coat for Cambridge with the last cheque. I’m fairly sure that was for twelve guineas. It didn’t start off as that much, but I’m sure about the guineas – a bit eighteenth century even then. I haven’t got copies of any of the stories, I’m afraid. The disadvantage of always living in small places with no storage space, is that anything I want to keep usually ends up in damp sheds or garages.’

A Fall from Grace
My writing was on a different tack. I wrote some opinion pieces – one on how hard it was to find shoes when you have big feet, I recall – and then I was offered a regular slot doing ‘On the Spot’ interviews. The desk editor sent me a question, and the idea was that I would stop young passers-by and ask them their opinions. The one which sticks clearly in my mind was, ‘What nationality of boys or girls do you fancy the most?’ (or words to that effect) And with a heterosexual slant, of course. Well, I tried. I went out onto shopping streets and halted promising-looking teenage girls (mostly) and boys (sometimes) and not one of them had anything interesting to say. Maybe I was a rubbish interviewer back then. In this particular case, I happened to know a couple of very handsome boys from Mauritius, living as art students in Birmingham, and I thought they would do nicely, so I invented a quote from an imaginary girl about how gorgeous Mauritians were.

Temptation had crept in, and gradually I began to compose all my pieces this way. I knew I could write far livelier and more fascinating answers than I was likely to gather on the street. I kept on with the column in my first year at university, and was coming to rely on the cheques, when disaster struck. I got a letter from the very pleasant female desk editor. I was rumbled.

‘You don’t mind, I don’t mind, but I’m afraid the editor minds,’ she said.

What had happened was that the magazine had begun to ask for names and partial addresses for each interviewee. Some young and hopeful readers had tried to write to the person quoted, presumably looking for a date or pen pal. And their letters had been returned, undelivered. I was sacked. I was also ashamed, as I’m not a duplicitous person by nature. Oh well!

As I was then – something of a hippy student, embracing the maxi-coat culture, hair as long as I could grow it.

With hindsight, perhaps they had a bit of a cheek to get rid of me, as the agony aunts of the famous ‘Cathy and Claire’ problem page didn’t really exist either. Former editor and contributor Gayle Anderson reveals: ‘I was an agony aunt. Well, I was two agony aunts: Cathy and Claire for Jackie magazine. Yes, the shock news is that they weren’t real and they were one person. The letters were initially sent to a Fleet Street office, mainly to give the illusion of a hip, cool London base. Then they made their way in overnight lorries to the magazine’s actual home in Dundee.’ OK, but she and the team were sincere. And so was I – more or less.

And then…
However, I’m proud when I tell people that I used to write for Jackie. At about the same time, author Jacqueline Wilson began her career as a staff writer for D. C. Thomson, and Sue Arnold was a fellow contributor, so the three of us were in good company. I did go on to write articles and even a story or two for other magazines, including Good Housekeeping, and I’m glad to be an occasional contributor nowadays to a variety of magazines, on topics drawn mostly from subjects covered in my books. I’m not primarily a journalist, though, so a toe or three in the water is enough for me.

Helen Leadbeater (left) and Mary Cutler (right) went on to excel in their chosen fields of writing. Both worked as regular scriptwriters for the Archers – Mary was recently honoured for completing 40 years as an Archers writer, and she has also dramatized her friend Lindsey Davies’s Falco novels for radio. In this link, Lindsey says: ‘My feelings about these adaptations are that Mary does the best possible job.’

Helen has also written for the television drama ‘Crossroads’, and more recently the acclaimed ‘Pargetter Triptych’, with actor Graham Seed, as the ghost of Nigel from the Archers. (Whose fall to his death from the roof of Lower Loxley, her friend Mary was responsible for writing.) Listen to them here, enticed by the following description:
Nine and a half years after the deadly fall from his roof, in three lockdown soliloquies, Graham Seed wonders whether the ghost of Nigel Pargetter may be unquiet in his Borsetshire rest. Nigel revisits the places he was familiar with in life, remembers the people he knew, and worries at the questions that keep him there – what really happened that night on the roof? Was the fall an accident? Or could it possibly have been something more sinister?
Voiced by ‘Nigel’ himself, back from the grave; in the guise of actor Graham Seed. Written by Helen Leadbeater, former writer of ‘The Archers,’ who knows ‘Nigel’ so well as she helped create his character alongside the then editor William Smethurst in the 1980s.

To finish with, here is Mary’s account of her first Jackie story, written especially for this blog:

The Boy at the Bus Stop
This was my first story for Jackie. The heroine was a plain, but clever and interesting girl, who against all the odds gets her man – a basic romantic trope since Jane Eyre. It was completely autobiographical. When I was in the Sixth form I had a hospital appointment which meant I varied my usual route to school. That’s when I saw the eponymous boy standing at a different bus stop I could tell from his uniform that he went to our brother school next door. He had big brown eyes and looked a bit like Paul McCartney. I was smitten. That was odd, because John Lennon was my preferred Beatle. I picked him out the first time I was shown a cover of ‘Please, Please me’.

‘I like that one.’
‘Oh Mary, you can’t like that one, my school friends chorused. He’s married!’

Anyway, I digress. Naturally, after that I varied my route to school so I could gaze from afar at my beloved. In the true tradition of romance that was as far as it got – although he did smile at me once. And then, tragedy – I heard on the school grapevine, which had supplied me with his name, too- that he was going out with a girl from another nearby girls’ school and apparently she was everything a teenage boy could desire. I had no chance.

Besides, ‘You can’t like him, Mary. He’s got a girl friend.’

Still, he gave me the inspiration for the first piece of writing I ever got published – and paid for- so not all bad.

About twenty years later I got friendly with one of the other Mums at my daughter’s nursery. We both worked for the BBC in different capacities and it turned out she was a native Brummie, too and had attended the girls school near to mine… You can see it coming, can’t you? I confessed my illicit passion for her boyfriend. She was highly amused, particularly at the idea that she had been some kind of teen goddess. ‘If only you could have seen me’, she said.

We became very good friends and I was invited to her to her fortieth birthday party. And guess who was sitting across the table from me? At last I gazed into those big brown eyes. Just for a couple of heart beats I was transported back that bus stop. But alas, dear Reader, this has no Jackie fairy tale ending. I enjoyed talking to him- he was very sweet. But he really wasn’t very interesting.

Helen trying out one of our old gym slips at a school reunion in 2017. The current students had kindly created what they called ‘a museum’ for us to explore, full of old memorabilia!

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Month: October 2020