Write What You Know!

When I was sixteen, I was challenged to write an essay following a school trip on the recently completed Inter City train line up to the newly opened Coventry Cathedral,. I stunned everyone including my English teacher and myself, by winning the competition and since then I have found it easy to write about places and people that I have experienced. On my arrival in Mohales Hoek Lesotho, I found that the local newspaper entitled "The Foothill Times" had fallen by the wayside, so appointing myself editor in chief, typist, roneo operator, stapler and distributing manager, I proceeded to put together several issues. However, despite the enthusiasm of some readers which resulted in them purchasing a life time subscription, the paper didn't stay the course. Poems recording various births, marriages, anniversaries and extraordinary occurrences in the little town were all written and I understand that some people still hold copies. I came across the minute books of the Social Club and from that rich source of material, I began to write a book entitled "On Which The Sun Has Set". The book covered the twenty three years that I spent in the tiny European community which on a good day could number between twenty and thirty people. During the 1970's in the absence of TV, tar roads and telephones, we made our own entertainment, and on the whole we had a fairly hilarious time of it. There were days when we dodged bullets from the latest political upheavals or disappeared over the nearest mountain on either horseback, motor bike or aeroplane in some madcap race. We flew from trading station to trading station landing the tiny Tripacer aircraft on strips of land that defied all the known rules of aeronautics occasionally accompanied by a pig, two dogs, two children and cases of frozen chickens. We spent our weekends trout fishing in the mountain rivers, playing crazy games of Beery Golf, challenging each others sporting abilities in the Annual Pentathlon and generally keeping ourselves active and occupied. Once my two children had grown up and left school, I left Lesotho and settled on a derelict farm across the border in South Africa. It was here that my next book was written . "Lambs Love and Laughter" told the story of how my second husband and I had wrested the farm back from its declining overgrown state, how we turned the farmhouse that had been used as a sheep shed, back into a home, and how we learned the hard way about coping with veldt fires, drought, cattle sickness and the strange animals that came into our lives. This book was serialised by the Country Life Magazine in South Africa before going on to be re-written and enlarged. On leaving Africa, we finally found our way to America where I began to write a series entitled "From Midhurst to Miami". Readers of an English newspaper seemed to enjoy finding out about life in America through the eyes of two recent arrivals and the articles can be seen on my website www.fagalde.co.uk. I write for pleasure ( who these days apart from JK Rowling writes for gain?) and am working on two more books.