Singing for Mrs Pettigrew

I have just finished reading Michael Morpurgo’s book Singing for Mrs Pettigrew. It is a lovely compilation of short stories and chapters about his life. Sometimes it is hard to tell which are stories and which autobiographical chapters.  He also gives a little bit of background into how he writes his stories.

I love Michael Morpurgo books because he is a master of the art of writing for children.  He says: I am a grower of stories. I farm them as surely as a farmer does his corn. I am a weaver of dreams: a teller of tales. I have, through my mother reading to me, through my own reading, through inspired teachers, through my great mentors, Robert Louis Stevenson, Ted Hughes and Sean Rafferty, through years of practice, discovered my way of doing it.

He certainly has. His books are so good that adults and children alike can enjoy them.  He can take a simple story and draw you into the event so completely that you are living it with the people. It feels like your life and theirs have become entwined.

The short story Singing for Mrs Pettigrew is a simple tale of the effect of building a nuclear power station on the village of Bradwell in Essex and the devastation it had on Mrs Pettigrew who was evicted from the railway carriage where she lived so that the power station could be built on that land.

Mr Morpurgo generates a great deal of sympathy for Mrs Pettigrew along with her supporters, the young Michael Morpurgo and his mother. You feel anger as one after another of the villagers who had initially opposed the building gradually come to support it and oppose Mrs Pettigrew. Finally you feel intense frustration that after building the nuclear reactors, they have all too quickly become redundant. Nevertheless the huge monstrosity will stand for centuries right by the sea, scarring the landscape because a nuclear power station can never be demolished.  The reactors have to be entombed in concrete for centuries till they are no longer radioactive.

What made the story all the more poignant for me is that I can recall the building of the Bradwell nuclear power station.  I went to a youth camp on the marshes nearby and remember being in awe of the enormous building and slightly frightened by the constant ticking noises it made.

Bramwell nuclear power station on the coast of Essex

I grew up in the era just after the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.  We had seen the devastation that the bomb had caused not just to the landscape but the effect of radioactivity on survivors. My mother took me see The War Game at our church hall. It is a short film about the immediate aftermath of a nuclear bomb.  It was a shocking experience for a teenager in those days, already traumatised by the newly released daleks from Dr Who.

Nuclear energy was frightening, unpredictable and what if the nuclear reactor blew up?  Not only would I be wiped out but half of Britain as well. These were my fears most of which were groundless but as more recent events in Chernobyl and Japan have shown – nuclear power can be dangerous.

So I found great empathy with Mrs Pettigrew who is the one small voice silenced and overthrown by the march of new ideas and developments which in turn prove not be as amazing and ground breaking as at first thought.

Time and again, Michael Morpurgo has the genius of being able to write about great events from the perspective of just one small individual or animal whether that is Mrs Pettigrew, Joey the horse from War Horse or Sofia caught up in a massacre at her village in Bosnia or Adolphus Tips the cat left behind in the evacuation of his village in the Second World War.

Michael Morpurgo has written over 100 books. Which one is your favourite? 

Nick North and the First World War

The second Nick North book tells Leone’s story and without giving too much away, it centres around the First World War.

Last year there were many events commemorating 100 years since the Great War started.  In addition a rush of television programmes both factual and fictional hit our screens showing life back in those days.

One of the most moving tributes was the more than 850,000  red, ceramic poppies planted around the Tower of London.  They represented one poppy for each British and Commonwealth soldier who died in the War. It took months to place all the poppies and after the Remembrance Day service in November, they were all taken down and anyone could purchase one. 

All of this stirred in me a deep interest to know more about my great uncle Charles who died in the War. I had never been that interested before but I dug into some of my family photos and letters and found a whole pack of letters that he had written to his brother Will, my grandfather.

My grandfather William Neville.
He always wore a bow tie, as did my father and my brother still does.
Three generations of bow tie wearers.

I carefully typed the letters out so that my brother and I could read them more easily. I also discovered that he had been injured in the Battle of the Somme and then died of septicaemia, all too common in those days before penicillin and antibiotics. I bought a Tower of London poppy in his honour.

All of this provided the background for Nick North: War Zone.  Leone is given a book of letters written by her great grandfather to his mother from the Front.  I used some of my great uncle Charles letters as the basis for the letters in Leone’s book. Gran also typed out the letters to help Nick and Leone read them.

In reading the book I hope you enjoy the story but also realise what an enormous effect it had on the lives of that generation.  So many young men were needlessly slaughtered and many more were left devastated by the experience.

One of my great uncle's letters. You can see how hard it is to read.
Below is what it actually says

My dear Will

I received 200 CWS cigarettes last night which I presume you sent and which I shall distribute to my platoon today some time and please accept many thanks for the same. It is yet only 3:30 a.m. just Monday in fact. Yesterday we had quite a calm day for Sunday really. Our parapet got hit with shells twice just about the time when people in England were thinking of going to Evening Service. That has all been made good during the night. We have only got one more night to stay in I think for tomorrow night we shall be relieved again. One day short this time because we did an extra day last time.

The last two evenings there has been some amusement watching the aeroplanes. On Saturday evening one of our people was having a jolly good game on his own. The Boches plugged 136 shells at that one plane and still he flew round. That does not seem to show a shortage of ammunition does it?

I had a letter from Arthur last night. He expects to be going home again about Wednesday so it has not been a very long job for him but I expect he will have told you all about it.

That is rather a bad accident at Kirkby Pit[1] Someone looks like being in trouble for the conductors must have been broken according to the paper.

You don’t want any tea before you get up do you? We have got some mashed – we always have some between 2 & 3 a.m. in the trenches and six a.m. in billets before going out for a run.

It has every appearance of being a very hot day again today.  These last two days have been very warm indeed. Quite hot enough for a bathing parade but there is no stream running through the trenches.  

The night before last there was some sporting German fellow with a cornet straight in front of their line who shouted “If you want fun I’ll play you a tune”. He struck up several old English melodies and it sung out very well in the darkness. They yell like fun occasionally.

Now I think I will finish and take my periscope along to see if I can get a shot. Then I’ll try to get a wash and shave to wake up and keep the bugs away if possible.

Best love to all

Yrs Chas

---

[1] Looks like reference to I Bentinick Colliery when 10 people died when cages collided in the shaft 

One of Leone's letters also mentioned the airplane flying around and a German playing tunes for the English soldiers.

Just for you

This blog is for those young people who may have found my previous blogs a bit dull, too adult and frankly not for them.  After all the Nick North series is for 10 – 13 year olds and so is this blog.

Who loves reading great children’s stories?

I love both reading and writing children’s literature. Always have. Always will. It’s my thing.

Do you have a book in you?

There’s a saying that goes ‘there’s a book in everyone,’ which means everyone has got a good story in them that they could write about. However bringing up four children and teaching did not give me much time to write anything. When I retired, apart from catching up on some sleep and travelling to South Africa, the first thing I wanted to do was write a children’s novel. Nick North: Blood Quest is the result.

It took a long time from my first not very good efforts to the version available in Kindle and soon coming out in paperback. Very exciting.  Writing, like everything else that is worth doing, takes a lot of time and effort and there is loads to learn. I am definitely still learning. 

Second Nick North coming soon

The second book in the Nick North series is now written and being edited and redrafted or in other words: improved.

The first Nick North book Blood Quest is about Nick and his family.  The second Nick North book (the title is a secret) is about Leone and her family though Nick is very much the star of the book.

Part of the book is set in the First World War which is very topical at the moment as it all happened 100 years ago.

I’ll tell you why I wrote about the First World War another time. 

My favourite books

When I was a child, I loved reading The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and all the other Narnia books. Much later, I discovered the John White Chronicles of Anthropos books.  Sadly they are hard to come by now but what great stories they are. All of them tell of ordinary children caught up in extraordinary events and being heroes, saving the day. They also all meet, amongst many others a special person. In Narnia it is the lion Aslan and in Anthropos it is Gaal. 

Aslan from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

Gaal from The Archives of Anthropos series of books

These provided the inspiration for my Nick North books and his meeting with the Shepherd.

Have you a favourite book or character?

Generations

I am convinced our awareness of generations enlarges as we get older. When we are young the only generations we are interested in are our parents, siblings and maybe our grandparents. As we age we have our own children and grandchildren and I have found that I have developed a sandwich filling mentality. By this I mean that I feel like the ham or jam in a sandwich by which those before me are one slice of bread and those younger are the other.

When younger I had little interest in previous generations but as I have got older I have pored over the family tree wondering about those who lived before my time. I have developed a sense of progression, not just of the people but of the lives they lived. Many of my forebears were what would have been sniffily called ‘trade’.  They were glaziers, miners, milkmen. Then my grandfather broke the mould and made the transition from the rank and file to management and then senior management. His was a lifestyle undreamed of by those who went before and as a result my father and aunts were educated and became professional people. 

My generation benefitted financially as well as educationally from this. We enjoyed the benefits of the inheritance bequeathed to us; our own home, private education and travel. In my day we grew up knowing if we worked hard in all areas of life we too would one day have the lifestyle of our parents. Now our children have all been educated to degree level and in turn have not just good jobs but careers and a lifestyle that matches or even exceeds their parents.

However it is not just the material and education that are bequeathed from generation to generation. Looks, talents and abilities are also passed on. In addition and of great personal interest to me is the  spiritual inheritance that can be handed down.  The Bible has much to say about passing on to our children their spiritual inheritance.  When God made covenants with Noah, Abraham, Moses, the Israelites and David it was not just for their generation but for the generations to come.

Throughout the Bible God exhorts the Israelites to pass on to their children what they have learned. These are the commands, decrees and laws the Lord your God directed me to teach you to observe in the land that you are crossing the Jordan to possess, so that you, your children and their children after them may fear the Lord your God as long as you live by keeping all his decrees and commands that I give you, and so that you may enjoy long life Deuteronomy 6: 1 – 2

God promises to show love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments. Deuteronomy 5: 10

I also became aware as I grew in my Christian faith that as well as the good and Godly aspects of inheritance, we can also be passed on generational sickness and problems. There is no doubt that divorce seems to run in families, as well as things such as rejection, debt, addiction or abuse. It is this aspect that I have been exploring in the Nick North series of books.

Nick has no idea who his father is but in fulfilling the quest that the Shepherd offers him, he discovers that in generations past a curse spoken over his family has caused generations to suffer all manner of ills. He deals with both the past and the present ending the cycle of broken relationships and abuse.

In the second book the Shepherd and Nick help Leone break the cycle of guilt and anger that has plagued her family since a tragic incident in the First World War.

As I have become aware of my own previous generations, I have become increasingly thankful for the Godly inheritance that I have inherited and even more thankful to God for the fact that he can set us free from the negative inheritances we may have been bequeathed.