June; writers ‘under the influence’
June; writers ‘under the influence’
Who or what influences have driven your life; that was the theme for the writers’ group meeting in June. One might have expected parents and teachers to dominate. Gill recalled her father, also a teacher, and ‘a truly Christian Gentleman’, whose values and passions she had inherited, and who had explained biblical phrases like ‘abhorred not the virgin’s womb’ to her. Tim remembered his grandmother, with twinkling eyes and the scent of Lavender who sang to him at bath-time; a memory seemingly inseparable from that of his beloved Gower Peninsular. Tessa had been inspired by the story of Thérèse of Lisieux: ‘a saint of little things’. Reading the young saint’s part autobiographical Story of a Soul with its ‘mature spirituality’, made her seek to become a nun at 15, like her. (She had been dissuaded.) Penny’s influence was in stark contrast: hospitalised at the tender age of six, on her own in a private room with appendicitis made her fearful of being away from home for some years afterwards. Paula straying off piste this month, told us of strange, ancient marks and symbols – called apotropaic – sometimes found carved near doors, windows or fireplaces to ward off witches and evil spirits (see picture of hexfoils or daisywheel marks). Philippa referenced Sigmund Freud. His theories had made her parents inordinately interested in her dreams and encouraged her to become a story-teller. Delving into the unconscious had made her fascinated with getting inside somebody else’s mind and hence into an actor. John’s influence had been the Briggs-Myers bi-polar personality dimensions, developed by mother-daughter partnership of Katharine Briggs and Isabel Myers. He had discovered these theories at a difficult time in his life and they had given him insight into his personal problems and pain. Finally Mollie Webb, who joined the group this month, told of the influence of failing her 11+, and the interesting thing was that, in the 1950s both the secondary school she attended, and the support she had had in finding work after leaving school were so good that you really couldn’t call it a ‘failure’ at all. Her memories, including the 1951 Festival of Britain, spurred the conversation.