WORDWATCHERS
Pam
Pheasant
I
was born in my grandparents’ house in South-East London in January 1943
towards the end of World War II. My
father was somewhere in Egypt and didn’t enter my life until I was two
and a half. An only
child until I was four, I was brought up in the protective care of the
older generation – grandparents, great aunts and uncles and their
friends.
At
five I was entrusted to the sheltered environment of a small private
school until at seven I could be launched into the more robust and
competitive world of James Allen’s Girls’ School, a minor public
school in Dulwich. My world
was split into two, the haven of home and the frightening, demanding
reality of school. I walked
from one to the other through the hostile slum streets that surrounded my
home, a target for mockery in a smart navy blue uniform topped by an over
large
and shapeless velour hat. Despite
the best efforts of the staff at JAGS, I failed to conform to their
aspiration of academic excellence. I
wasted my time dreaming of the impossible, a horse of my own.
Reports continually stated: “Pamela could do better, if only she
tried.” In consequence, with six scraped “O” levels, I found
myself shunted off to secretarial college.
In
1959 I went into publishing and after two years became Secretary to the
General Manager. At twenty, I
was the only one of the “dragons” on the fourth floor under the age of
thirty-five. My sojourn
with the gently old-fashioned publishing house of George Newnes came to an
abrupt end when the door of my
office crashed open one morning. A
burly, black-coated figure and two sturdy henchmen filled the doorway.
The Company, already taken over first by Odhams and then by IPC,
had been sold to Pergamon and Robert Maxwell had come personally to claim
his prize. Soon I was
ensconced in a linen cupboard on the attic floor of Pergamon’s Fitzroy
Square offices.
I didn’t stay long with Pergamon. Jobs were easy to come by in the sixties, so after seven years in publishing, I tried a wide variety. I also achieved my dream of a horse of my own and took up painting. I married Peter and started a family. To keep the horse in hay, I went to work at a Riding School, teaching and working in the yard, taking my young daughter and later my son with me. For a while, I ran a village playgroup, but financial necessity sent me back to full-time employment as Committee Secretary for a professional Institute when Sarah was twelve and Jonathan eight.
The
latter job led to an invitation to research and write a history of the
Eighteenth Century mansion that houses the Institute's headquarters. The Grotto house is situated on the banks of The Thames
between Pangbourne and Streatley in an area of outstanding natural beauty.
Research into its history took almost three years, exposed a number
of misconceptions and brought to life characters such as Lady Fane for
whom the house was built as a place of retreat.
Lady Fane’s ghost haunts the house and it is always useful to
have someone to blame
when the computers go down. The
history of the Grotto House was published in September
2003.
As
a founder member of Wordwatchers, I was encouraged by the group to write
my first novel. Angel
Hill.
Angel Hill is a typically peaceful Berkshire Village inhabited
mainly by commuters and retired people with a sprinkling of eccentric
characters. The story relates
what happens to this unexceptional village community when a child
disappears and the village suddenly becomes the focus of media attention.
Three further novels have followed –The House at Bridgend,
Getting A Life and Thirty Days. I am now focusing on getting published. Examples of my work are included in the Showcase section of
this site, including "A Night To Remember", with which I was a runner up in the 2003
Woman and Home Short Story Competition.
My
life revolves round my family, my job, a Shetland pony, seven dogs, a cat
called
Kasper and a cockatiel. I
take part in dog agility with Meg and Justin, who were both rescued
through DogsTrust. As well as
writing, I enjoy reading, painting in pastels and collect brass lady
bells.
To contact Pam e-mail:
