Page 50 - BR June 2024 with duck - converted

June 2024 June 2024
on the edge of a golf course, so golf was added to the 14 sports I already played.
The fun part was that, as my husband was a senior marketing person, we were
taken to a number of locations by helicopter. These trips included the Open Golf
tournament, Brands Hatch, Silverstone, the Henley Regatta and Leeds Castle, at
which time the helicopter picked us up from the golf course’s practice ground!
From Tarmac, I went to one of the best creative jobs I had ever had, as Editor and
Writer at a London design studio. After playing squash with the studio owner’s
wife, in the bar afterwards, her husband asked if I would start working at his
London studio. I felt that I had come home as, until then, I hadn’t worked in a
totally creative environment. I was the only writer working with five graphic
designers as well as having seven freelance writers reporting to me. It was
wonderful!

One of the major clients was Abbey National (AN, later re-branded as Abbey)
who asked me to be Editor and write articles for their magazine sent to 16-23-year-
olds. They had efficiently researched what their readers wanted, one of which was
travel articles: loving travel as I do, I was a very happy bunny! I organised this from
beginning to end, starting with flights. Among my destinations were Barcelona,
Maastricht and Utrecht as well as Southern Turkey. My photograph of Sagrada
Familia in Barcelona was put on the front page, which was great. I made sure that
a major part of travelling to these destinations was having a contact on site who,
in turn, was able to show me the safe places that this age group could frequent.
Another offshoot was that Maastricht was the first place to build a Center Parcs
holiday destination so that, when the first one opened in Nottinghamshire, I was
invited to the opening, and stayed in a lovely chalet. Back at the studio, the men
teased me that I did the first draft of my articles sitting around the pool! Well, yes, I
did! Subsequently AN asked me to be Editor of and write articles for magazines
sent to 10-15-year-olds and 3-9-year-olds. For the latter, I collaborated with the
main graphic designer in creating something I had always wanted to do –
cartoons! As, by then, I was a qualified swimming teacher and keen on
education, the first cartoon was about 3-9-year-olds learning to swim. Lots of fun!
One of the most challenging assignments I was asked to do was with pension
booklets. The government had said that they wanted company pension booklets
which were only, at that time, given to new employees, to be available to the
general public. The work turned out to be more testing than translating a foreign
language! I spent a great deal of time on the phone asking the company’s
accountants for clarification.

I then decided to get a teaching and literacy qualification and went on to teach
English to people with learning difficulties/disabilities, Creative Writing, Memoir
Writing, Family Learning and GCSE English to apprentices. The latter, initially, was
particularly challenging as I had never taught students who didn’t want to be
there! One example was a 16-year-old boy who, at the end of the first English
class, waited until everyone had left, then came to me and said, “I just want you
to know that I hate English!” to which I replied, “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that” and he
said “Oh, it’s all right, it’s not your fault!” He proceeded to come to every single

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