Search results for ""Author Sue Reid Sexton""

This book is not just funny (or sad) stories of campervan trips in Scotland; it is not just 'Zen and the art of campervan maintenance' (with stories of sweetness and light that will entertain or make you cry); and it is not just nature writing (with observations of wildlife in the western Scottish Highlands). But if you enjoy reading about how books are written and about recovery stories from relationship breakdowns, and if you like reading about women travelling alone and all the things that can go wrong (and right), about strategies for facing fear, dealing with creepy crawlies and noises in the night, and about surviving all that life throws at you (especially when you are over a certain age), then you will probably enjoy this book. Writing on the Road is by Sue Reid Sexton, who, while writing two novels (Mavis's Shoe and Rue End Street) over the past six years, needed to escape from her hectic household to create some space to write them. As the mother of two and a step-mum of four, Sue realised her only real option was to get into her campervan and have it function as a mobile office. Whether she camped by a beach overlooking the Atlantic in the Kintyre peninsula with buzzards, golden eagles, deer, seals, surfers, other campervanners and dead fish for company, or in the hills around Glasgow, or on Skye, Morvern, the Cowal peninsula or even in southern France, her main aim was to switch off her phone, get out her laptop and write. Sue has made countless journeys in campervans in the last few years and thanks to her practice of taking notes as she travels, we, too, can enjoy her campervan experiences. In Writing on the Road Sue also writes about the many and varied practical difficulties of campervan life that she has had to overcome. They include locking herself out of the campervan at night miles from home; coping with local byelaws and negative attitudes to campervans and to women travelling solo; driving a hundred miles with a window open before she could empty a cracked toilet; and finding out the wrong (and the right) way to buy a campervan. We hope this book will inspire anyone looking for encouragement in the expressive arts to get creative and persuade any would-be campervanners to get out there and enjoy the campervan life.

Read more less

Set in Greenock, Helensburgh and Clydebank, this sequel to Mavis's Shoe is a wartime family story. Lenny Gillespie sets off in search of her father in Greenock, west of Scotland, which is the No 1 Port for the UK for the movement of troops. Lenny is threatened once again with trouble when all she seeks is her family to be united. It is September 1943, more than two years since Lenny's world was devastated by the Clydebank Blitz and she and her family are safe in the beautiful green hut community of Carbeth, Scotland. But as the tides of war turn and Italy joins the Allies to fight the Nazis, the fists of war and fear are set to grab Lenny once more. Adversity threatens each moment, and Lenny is about to lose her closest ally. Told the family must move back to Clydebank with its smoke and factories and now overcrowded, teeming dwellings, Lenny refuses to give up her rural sanctuary. When her mother Peggy returns to Clydebank for a job, leaving Lenny to become a little mother to her siblings, Lenny lies about her age to look for work locally. But this new turn is bewildering. Exhausted, Lenny seizes on news of her father, convinced that if only she can discover the truth about where he is, if only she can find him, she can make their family complete again. But no-one will meet her eye.Desperate, and in need of a happy ending, Lenny sets out, but all is not as she hopes - Her steps take her the length of the great Clyde estuary, and into new dangers in the vast, dark, threatening and adult war-time ports of Helensburgh and Greenock...Enjoy this new book, the sequel to Mavis's Shoe , a harrowing account of the bombing of Clydebank in March 1941.

Read more less

A strong novel about the trauma of the Clydebank Blitz during the Second World War told through the eyes of a nine-year-old girl, Lenny Gillespie. Lenny survives the bombing, but in the chaos of that night she cannot find her mum and her wee sister, Mavis. Told in an urgent, true-grit voice, the story describes the devastation of the blitz as seen through Lenny's eyes. During her desperate search for her mum and sister, Lenny finds a shoe she thinks belongs to Mavis and it becomes her talisman in the days that follow. Lenny is forced to flee over the hills to the hut community of Carbeth in the company of a scary neighbour, Mr Tait, her old school teacher, Miss Weatherbeaten, and little Rosie, a girl who is oddly like Mavis. With Mr Tait's help she finds her mother but still no Mavis. It is left to Lenny herself to return to the terrifying scenes of devastation and search amongst the rubble for her wee sister, a desperate act that ultimately leads to the arrival of Mavis at Carbeth and a joyful reunion. Written by Glasgow writer, Sue Reid Sexton, who has worked with war veterans and as a counsellor specialising in trauma, this book is extensively researched and covers what went on in Clydebank, Glasgow and Carbeth during this harrowing time in Scotland's history. The book includes additional notes and pictures on the Clydebank Blitz and the Carbeth huts, which provided shelter for some of those who escaped from the ruins of the Clydebank Blitz. The novel contains some disturbing scenes. A sample from the novel: Most of the tenement building over the road had gone, and what was left was burning. I'd never seen flames the size of these, leaping and gobbling everything up. This made no sense to me. I searched my memory for something I could compare this to but there was nothing, just like there was almost nothing left of this building, only a hole where something indestructible had been ...Behind me, behind the houses, beyond, there were flames bigger even than the flames over the road, reaching right into the sky, so much flame it was like there wasn't room for it all down below. It lit up the whole sky and all the buildings. There was nothing hidden. The Gerries had found us and we were laid bare naked, and I had lost Mavis. Some facts and figures: The Clydebank Blitz took place on the nights of the 13th and 14th March 1941. The Luftwaffe chose to target the shipbuilding town of Clydebank in Scotland during those nights because of the full moon. During the bombing raids most of Clydebank was destroyed, suffering the worst destruction and loss of civilian life in all of Scotland. While there is still some discrepancy over the number of casualties, we know more than 500 people died, over 600 people were seriously injured, and hundreds were injured by the blast debris. Only 7 houses remained undamaged out of 12,000; 4,000 houses were completely destroyed, and 4,500 seriously damaged; over 35,000 people were made homeless; 439 bombers dropped over 1,000 bombs; only two enemy aircraft were shot down by the RAF; the Singer factory was destroyed but the landmark Singer tower survived. It was the use of bombs on parachutes, known at the time as landmines and designed to maim and kill at ground level, which made the attack so devastating.

Read more less