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The Weird and Wonderful Life of Geraldine Murfin-Shaw
"Laying down a good past is like laying down a good wine."
For a part of my life I worked for Social Services, Keighley branch, where I was Personal Assistant to the Director of Social Services, one Mrs Joan McKeever. This woman was so fearsome that we christened her 'Glenda Jackson McKeever'. Glenda was at that time portraying the equally daunting Elizabeth I on tv, and the stentorian roars that issued from her were very much akin to the dragonlike volume with which the tiny McKeever greeted my regularly late arrival at Hillworth Lodge, a former workhouse, former care home, and now our prison where we performed the daily grind.
One of my colleagues at Hillworth Lodge, a somewhat embittered woman, was fond of commenting that when we found ourselves, in later years, side by side in a Care Home, she would be paying for the privilege while I would be getting it free. That is a choice that she made by depriving herself of creature comforts in order to buy a house - sporting cardigans with holes in the elbows, and eating pies from the local shop, rather than cook herself a good meal. I preferred to spend my time laying down a good past, in order that, when we sat side by side in those chairs in the Care Home, I could savour it in my mind like a good wine. The only problem being, of course, that no one would believe me! I once wrote a short play reflecting daily life in a b&b establishment where I had the good fortune to help out for a while. I organised a reading of it at a writers' group I briefly belonged to and the comment was "it was totally unbelievable". When I asked why, the answer was, you might meet one such character in a lifetime, to meet more than one would be stretching credibility, and to meet them all under one roof was a total impossibility. Yet I did, it was, and every word was rendered verbatim, with a few tweaks for artistic licence, as you would expect.
"Beware of what you wish for, it may come true," goes the Chinese proverb, and in my case it has. When I was sixteen, I walked around dressed entirely in black, with whited-out lips, as was the Beatnik fashion, and my constant refrain? - I want an interesting life. And it has been.
And now, go and enjoy the rest of the site!
For a part of my life I worked for Social Services, Keighley branch, where I was Personal Assistant to the Director of Social Services, one Mrs Joan McKeever. This woman was so fearsome that we christened her 'Glenda Jackson McKeever'. Glenda was at that time portraying the equally daunting Elizabeth I on tv, and the stentorian roars that issued from her were very much akin to the dragonlike volume with which the tiny McKeever greeted my regularly late arrival at Hillworth Lodge, a former workhouse, former care home, and now our prison where we performed the daily grind.
One of my colleagues at Hillworth Lodge, a somewhat embittered woman, was fond of commenting that when we found ourselves, in later years, side by side in a Care Home, she would be paying for the privilege while I would be getting it free. That is a choice that she made by depriving herself of creature comforts in order to buy a house - sporting cardigans with holes in the elbows, and eating pies from the local shop, rather than cook herself a good meal. I preferred to spend my time laying down a good past, in order that, when we sat side by side in those chairs in the Care Home, I could savour it in my mind like a good wine. The only problem being, of course, that no one would believe me! I once wrote a short play reflecting daily life in a b&b establishment where I had the good fortune to help out for a while. I organised a reading of it at a writers' group I briefly belonged to and the comment was "it was totally unbelievable". When I asked why, the answer was, you might meet one such character in a lifetime, to meet more than one would be stretching credibility, and to meet them all under one roof was a total impossibility. Yet I did, it was, and every word was rendered verbatim, with a few tweaks for artistic licence, as you would expect.
"Beware of what you wish for, it may come true," goes the Chinese proverb, and in my case it has. When I was sixteen, I walked around dressed entirely in black, with whited-out lips, as was the Beatnik fashion, and my constant refrain? - I want an interesting life. And it has been.
And now, go and enjoy the rest of the site!
