Wishing you a very

Letters to and from my Granny

One of the main characters in 'Funnily Enough', indeed in my life, was Granny Joy. She rang us up every single day, two or three times. This could be maddening as she had nothing to say, but sometimes she had us shrieking with laughter.

First there was the break-in scenario when she woke up to find a young man in her bedroom.
'I don't think you are meant to be here,' she said and threw a massive pot of cold cream at him.

Then she had an admirer.
'Oh, Granny! That's jolly.'
'He's past being jolly.'

Joy Dodson

Granny had been a great beauty, married in Arusha a few days before her 21st Birthday to Doddy Dodson, an officer in the Lancashire Fusiliers, seconded to the King's African Rifles in Tanganyika who had met her father on the ship out to Dar es Salaam.

Lt Col H.M. Dodson

I guessed that she married to escape from her own parents.
'Where you in love with Guga when you married him.'
'No, but it was a very good marriage,' she assured me. He was a sweet man.

Mrs Maxtone Mailer riding with Joy at Bulwa in Tanzania

Granny understood why I wanted to fly to Africa for my health. She had loved it out there. Her father gave her no money but he did buy her a horse, a roan called Strawberry, which enabled her to ride off and visit the neighbours. She made a bit of money painting watercolours, mainly landscapes, which capture the unspoiled beauty of northern Tanzania.

Joy in Tanganyika in the early 1930s

She despaired of her father's addiction to Big Game hunting but did join him on a bird shoot. She was quite proud of this duck. Her nephew told me that they did need to shoot for the pot. There where no shops.

Granny was a great letter writer. Here is the one she sent me about her intruder.

It saddens me to think that she missed going to my parents' for Christmas because she was worried about leaving her house. And she didn't like putting the empty milk bottles outside the front door.

I loved her letters and wrote back, sending postcards as often as I could, two or three times a week in the end. When my aunt and I finally went to clear her room at the nursing home that was Dalmock Castle I found she had kept everyone. It was like looking through my whole life in reverse.

I wish that I had kept her love letters. She was still receiving them aged 86. And they were scorchers.

Very Happy New Year from Sophie

Very Happy New Year to you!

A life transformed ~

This is the inspirational story of July Letsebe, 'Stepping Forward' Programme Director at the Waterberg Welfare Society, a charity that addresses the pandemic HIV/AIDS in a corner of rural South Africa.

Please visit my charity page for detailed information and links.

Alastair Fothergill's new DisneyNature movie about chimpanzees

The official trailer for DisneyNature's 'Chimpanzee' ~ a wildlife documentary

Coming out nationwide in the UK on Friday 3rd May

The latest DisneyNature feature-length epic movie Chimpanzee from wildlife writer/director Alastair Fothergill (one of my friends who appears in the book 'Funnily Enough') opened to great reviews in the United States this year, and is due to reach our cinema screens in the United Kingdom in spring 2013.

It is narrated by comedy actor and producer Tim Allen, the voice of 'Buzz Lightyear' in Toy Story, and star of the hit U.S. TV sitcom Home Improvement.

For the Cineworld website, please click here

How to get a Free Kindle app ~

'Ride the Wings of Morning' is the story of my travels in Southern Africa, available as a paperback or on Kindle - where many of the illustrations are in full colour.

click on either

Amazon.co.uk  ~  Amazon.com ~ Amazon.de ~ Amazon.fr ~ Amazon.it ~ Amazon.es

‘But I don’t have a Kindle!’

Don’t worry. You can easily add a free Kindle reading app to your PC, laptop, Android or Apple device and see the illustrations in colour:

‘How?’

If you are in the UK

Click here:

If you live in Africa, you want to download the Kindle app direct from Amazon.com

Click here:

And choose which device you want to download the app to.

All the Kindle reading apps are free.

The sequel to Funnily Enough is out on Kindle and in paperback ~

Ride the Wings of Morning ~

Illustrated hardcover and paperbacks are now available from Lulu.com

....a gorgeous book. To me it is not about travel but about life. I really enjoyed it. Twice.

Some parts, I have read three times!

~ A review by Peter Bell ~

Ride the Wings of Morning (lovely title) is a terrific sequel to Sophie's marvellous Funnily Enough; further following her life of extraordinary exploits and adventures, now in southern Africa. Some horrific, most delightful, but all fascinating and very amusingly told by way of correspondence to and from her more conventional sisters. Her parents and many friends from Africa also feature as do a veritable profusion of Sophie's joyful and individual style of sketches, drawings and paintings that have become even more assured as time progressed. Many are brilliant! (Especially her splendid cartoons!)

Sophie has a wonderful knack of inclusion of her readers in all her writing. She is very observant, particularly of the absurd, the ridiculous and comic juxtapositions as well as the mundane and it shows in the great warmth, engaging honesty and infectious humour in her writing. The reader is privileged that she shares this somewhat maverick part of her life in which she gives so much of herself. Again! I was ever more captivated by this book but in a slightly different way to Funnily Enough. A truly fascinating read from much obviously painstaking work.

Only a full read of this marvellous 542-page book can do it the justice it deserves that no review of mine can hope to achieve. Unplug the phone, shut out the English 'summer' and indulge yourself with Sophie in the warmth of her true life in a world so far apart from your own!

She is a uniquely talented and individual person and this extraordinary work is to be deeply savoured and enjoyed. Tops on any scale of hugs and highly recommended by me as one of many here. The printed editions are to keep for ever.

Thank you so much, Sophie. Thanks also to Perry, Tamsin, and 'Mum and Dad'. I really look forward with great enthusiasm to the promised next instalment. Quite lovely!

Also available to order: ISBN-13: 978-1475244472