Click to watch the clip of Mum on Channel 4 ~

  "It was very nice to see you on Channel 4 last night. I see what you meant re. your mum's eccentricity, hard to believe she was a JP, never mind." Colin Salvage, by email

Funnily Enough excerpts in iBelieve ~ the Christian lifestyle magazine

~ More extracts from 'Funnily Enough' in this month's iBelieve magazine ~

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Parrots I have known ~

Today I have been writing about parrots. Parrots I have known. Parrots I have lived with. Parrots I've observed in the wild. I've even appeared in a movie with a parrot on my shoulder. And on television.  In front of the camera not once but twice!  Am I brave or what?

When I was little my grandmother kept two budgerigars. They were called Pippernella and Chrysanthemum. Pippanella was blue, Chrysanthemum was green and yellow. Everything about them entranced me. If we were good and very gentle we were allowed to take them out before bedtime. Since Granny was an invalid, stuck in the house all day long, the birds had become her very special friends. They were beautifully cared for. If one of them shed a tail feather it was kept in a glass vase on her desk.

My parents must have kept parrots, parakeets or macaws for most of their married lives. We were given two of them. They out-lived their original owners and were brought to our house. I've no idea why. It is amazing that they stayed. My mother couldn't bare the thought of them being cooped up in a cage so let them out as much as possible. They loved this but it caused endless dramas. Josey-Jo, my mother's Blue-fronted Amazon parrot would fly around the house only to lose sight of places to perch. If you weren't careful she'd land on the top of your head. It can give a girl quite a fright. Once she landed on the side of a frying pan, once she ended up in the dish-washer. Dad nearly turned it on with her inside. She did terrible damage too, nibbling away at the top of veneered corner cupboards or antique picture frames, dining room chairs and rather a good chest of drawers.

We thought that an aviary would be the answer. The result was an enormous parrot cage built outside the kitchen door. This is illustrated above. Please don't copy the design. It did not work well. For some reason it now houses guinea pigs.

Josey-Jo was eventually given quite a large cage in the dining room where she happily spent her days. She originally belonged to an old lady and had picked up her voice. When you arrived home she would say, 'Hellow' in a slightly cracked and rather smart inquiring manner, sounding exactly like an 87-year-old woman. Any stranger would ask if Granny was still at home. No burglar alarm could work better.

Henry, our scarlet macaw, had a perch rather than a cage. He was unable to fly but loved being allowed to sit in the willow tree or on a post in the garden where he could see everyone come and go. Sometimes he would climb down and alarm visitors by walking pigeon-toed across the lawn to greet them, bent forward so that his tail did not touch the grass. His long red tail feathers were kept in a jug too.

When I lived in Africa I often came across small Meyer's parrots in the wild. Apparently they are often considered 'parrotlets'. No matter. They gave us such joy. One sighting and one's spirits would soar. Apparently they are classified as 'trans-continental parrots', having the widest distribution of any parrot in Africa. You can find them from South Africa up to Ethiopia, flashing through the trees.

The filming? Ahh, you can read about filming with Captain Flint's parrot and appearing on Animal Magic on my other blog. The most bizarre experience - which I don't think anyone has ever written about - was when I went with Alastair Fothergill to watch the wildlife camera man Simon King filming great tits in Bristol. They were about to fledge from a bird box nailed to someone's shed in rather a grotty part of town. The only way of reaching the long back garden was through a basement flat belonging to an odd old couple who were living in an extreme state of squallor and filth, almost like tramps. They had a budgie. It seemed very happy and was singing away but obviously hadn't been cleaned out for years, so many years that a column of black and white flecked guano had formed on the base of the tiny cage, rising nearly five inches high towards the perch on which the little bird sang. I didn't know what to say. We walked on to relieve Simon. This was crucial. He hadn't been able to leave his camera position all day for fear of missing the moment when the little great tit chicks left the nest. As a result he was dying to go to the loo. I told him that he'd better let Alastair take over for a while or he'd end up like the budgie.

Questions for Book Clubs

1.  Is it important that Funnily Enough is a true story? Why?

2.  Whilst most readers say they laughed out loud whilst reading 'Funnily Enough' one reviewer thought it a sad story. Another said that it is not a funny book.  Is it sad?  Is it funny? Would the funny stories lack appeal without the reality that ME or Chronic Fatigue is a disease that needs to be taken serioulsy?  

3.  Do you think the story could be made into a stage play?

Or could be read on stage with music and sound effects?

4.  How would you alter the story to make it into a feature film? Would you make it into a romance, a thriller or both?

5. One Book Club thought that the Christian content would hinder sales and book reviews in mainstream newspapers and magazines. Do you agree?  If you were a publisher would you reduce or cut out the Christian sections?

6.  Do you want to know what Sophie did next?

Scotland's Knitters - as featured in 'Funnily Enough'

My time working in the fashion industry 

Occasionally I am asked if I ever did any modelling.  I have not, but there was a time when I worked in the knitwear business, apprenticed to my aunt, in truly medieval fashion. She was the primary British producer of hand-knitted cashmere which sold, wholesale, on streets paved with gold: London, Paris, New York, Tokyo.

The epicentre of Aunt Hermione’s knitting enterprise was situated in the stables of her rambling Georgian house above the council estates of Loch Lomond, designated an area of high unemployment at the time.  My apprenticeship was organised by the head of our family, Granny, who paid for my train fare. Whilst not exactly sleeping under the counter, I worked for the experience alone. Aged thirty.

I was first enslaved when Val the head seamstress went ‘off sick with depression’. Before leaving she explained how the business was managed.

‘Nothing’s actually made here. Hand-knitted garments arrive in the post from outworkers and wool for the next order is sent back with a cheque for the labour.’

Not too complicated. I started to help by weighing balls of cashmere for various consignments, seeing the activity as the dawning of a dazzling new career in the fashion industry. It was more difficult than I expected. Gloves for Polo Lauren had seven different colours in the pattern. Small amounts of valuable yarn had to be calculated and compiled. Incredibly complicated.

The cashmere jerseys that came in were stunning. I was amazed as they got bundled up, shoved in the washing machine and later hung up to dry on a pulley above the Aga in Hermione’s kitchen. Her dining room was full of cardboard boxes. Piles of garments in different colours and sizes covered the table, waiting for despatch.

My aunt was to be found in her office busy making designer-ish sketches whilst waiting for Bloomingdales on the phone and forecasting her fluctuating turnover.

‘The drawings are simply to impress the Regent Street buyers,’ she said. ‘I won’t use them for anything else. There is absolutely nothing artistic about the design of separates,’ she went on. ‘I just ask what will sell. If they say Fandango is the colour for next year, Fandango it will be.’

‘What are these buyers like?’

‘Oh, hysterical.  I love them all. They don’t love me though. They just want to know I’ll deliver.’  I was then instructed to sew labels on a pile of pale pink polo-necks so she could get an order off to Japan before Christmas.

I assumed that taking over the production would stretch my talents but found it just entailed dealing with a series of chatty knitters. They rang up non-stop. ‘Knitters in a twist,’ my teenage cousin called, wafting by.

‘Don’t let them talk for long,’ hissed Hermione.

‘Doo-n’t let your wee aunt leave me with noth-thing too doo over Christmas, noo.’

I was urged not to let them bully me. ‘They’ve no reticence, these ladies. They seem genetically pre-programmed to knit and get anxious if they don’t have any work. They are addicted to it. In fact they can quite persecute you for more.’

I learnt that there was a knack to keeping phone calls short. ‘You say: “OK – very gud. Bye.” as fast as you can and slam the phone down.’ I would never have dared to be so abrupt when I worked for the BBC.  People might have been offended and made a fuss about paying their licence fee.

Hermione said that the buyers could cut you short too. ‘Oh, when I was in New York I spent all day plucking up the courage to ring one designer. I eventually managed to speak to her and was busy explaining how each garment is an original, carefully knitted by hand, in the traditional Scottish way, when the woman leant back in her chair and said, “I don’t care if they’re knitted by monkeys, I don’t want ’em.”’

‘How upsetting.’

‘Didn’t matter. The people at Hermes liked them.’

My uncle went on to explain that a lot of the outworkers are looking after infirm relatives and cope with the frustration and endless, blaring television by knitting.

‘It can become an expensive hobby unless you’re commissioned. Their fee - ‘knitting money’- gets put in a jar to pay for treats and holidays.’ Hermione’s marketing spiel described this as ‘sustaining a traditional craft’.

     
Despite the banter in the workroom I was to learn how truely wonderful the knitters were. It was not just their skill that was highly valued. When we only had three days to get samples together for Yves St Laurent in Paris, the local ladies rose to the challenge and pulled out the stops. They never missed a deadline.

‘They are incredibly speedy and can easily complete a complicated cable pattern in a week,’ my aunt insisted. ‘There are over three hundred of them. The thought of them all knitting into the night is really quite terrifying. Actually one of them never sleeps; hasn’t been upstairs for twenty years.’ I didn’t believe her. ‘It’s quite true. She just lies on her sofa and snoozes for a couple of hours. There is a huge Alsatian dog so everything comes back hairy, but she’s a frightfully good knitter.’

Hermione seemed to have had all sorts of adventures with the knitters’ husbands...

‘I sat on one. He was lying in the gloom under a blanket on the sofa and I simply didn’t realise he was there. I went to visit another knitter and walked straight into the bathroom by mistake. There was a man in the bath. A big fat one.

'Another lady was unexpectedly late with her knitting. When I rang up she said, “Well my husband’s just died. I haven’t buried him yet, so I’ll do that and then get the cardi finished, OK?”’

The knitting orders kept me absorbed and I loved the feel of the cashmere, but the work had clear limits. The challenge was Hermione’s. It was her name on the label. The zenith of my internship was reached when I learnt how to wind wool electronically. Granny rang to see if I was being useful, earning my keep. When I told her a ball had just flown off the winder and hit me on the nose I found her surprisingly sympathetic.

‘Oh yes, I remember. All those wretched little balls of wool.  When are you going to South Africa?’

Sophie Neville in Hermione Spencer Cashmere

     

After 25 years Hermione sailed away from knitwear design, but I still have one treasured cashmere jersey. Hand-knitted in Scotland by a dedicated expert.