Don’t believe a word!

Hello and thank you for inviting me to be a guest on your lovely blog! As well as writing books, I do research about what made-up people inside books  can tell us about not made-up people outside books. I thought you might like to know a bit more about me so….

Because I DIDN’T have an ‘accident’ on the piano stool in infant school, and kept up music lessons, I went to university, studied English literature and during the second year, formed a band called Lady Quake and the 3 Grrr-aces with three girls from Chemistry. During the summer vacation, we write songs called ‘A Whole New Level of Hidium’ and ‘Ambivalence Gets a Bad Rap’ (a shouty song based on my second year essay about mothering in fiction). I leave just before graduating and tour with a Bangles tribute band until one morning, confused by jet-lag and double espresso, I marry a man I meet in an airport lounge in Dubai. This marriage does not last and I flee with only my passport and £50 000 in bingo winnings – mine, not his. I retreat to a yurt on a rain swept hillside in somewhere cheap and write brave, gritty, songs about my life with cats. Just as my money is about to run out, Hidium, is covered by Beyonce, and the Lady Quakes are invited to reform and do Glastonbury. On the day of the show I fall off an organic drop toilet and break my wrist. Medicated beyond remaining vertical, my place is taken by the sister of the second Grrr-ace. She is younger than me with enviably swishy hair. I watch from the wings and weep as they are signed by Rich Records.

The Grr-aces give me a decent pay-off – I did write the songs and they bear me no ill will for abandoning them in Dubai all those years ago. I use the money to go back and finish my degree ending up as a teacher in a small school in Switzerland. The school has nimble goats,  rich students and a very good attendance record.  We also make excellent chocolate. All goes well until one of the parents recognises me as Lady Quake and has me fired for my troublesome views on pretty much everything. I take a cable car to Italy and open café. I call it ‘Bap’ll Do Nicely’ but very few people get the joke and my food is shunned.  One of the Grr-aces marries a royal and at a low ebb I am approached  for a tell-all biography of the band. Though tempted, I refuse and instead write a wedding song that becomes a hit and I decide to spend the rest of my life making up stories……