On her third birthday Libby Frobisher met her father for the first time and in this extract we learn just how difficult it can be to look back on the past with a clear focus, especially when trying to remember the years when we were small and the world was large and confusing…

…when it comes to unravelling my own memories, I get into a tangle. It’s the sort of mess you might find after a kitten has been playing with two balls of wool. If I could lay out those balls of wool, side by side, perhaps I would have a chance to see things clearly. Trouble is, the memories I think are real keep getting mixed up with the ones I’m given – the stories that Mum and Gran repeat – as if they remember a whole set of events that somehow passed me by.

[…]

Adam’s arrival that day brought more than just birthday surprises into the house. The teddy bear and jigsaw puzzle certainly won me over, as did the little black-and-white photo of himself that he pressed into my hand. But best of all was the laughter he brought into our kitchen. It was as though he had an invisible wall around him, protecting him from the disapproving looks from Mum, that she made no attempt to hide. Nothing was going to shift that smile from Adam’s face. And when he called me Primrose and picked me up from my chair and spun me around in his arms, I knew life would never be the same again.

An extract from Waiting for Sunshine – available in ebook and paperback.

In Waiting for Sunshine we are reminded that the choices we make can affect others for a lifetime, even if those choices are made with the best of intentions. Libby’s parents had contrasting views on what was important and differing outlooks regarding the importance of ‘freedom’.

I wrote Waiting for Sunshine soon after having watched the documentary film, Marianne & Leonard – Words of Love. The film focuses on the life of Leonard Cohen and his life-long relationship with Marianne Ihlen. Marianne was Cohen’s ‘muse’, inspiring many of his lyrics, not least, So Long, Marianne, written during the years they lived together on the Greek island of Hydra from 1960 to 1967, a time when Cohen also wrote poetry and novels. 

It wasn’t only Cohen who was drawn to the Greek islands during the sixties. The sun-drenched islands offered a freedom to many young people who were attracted by the chance to live a simple life, with money earned from occasional bar work often enough to pay for all their needs.

Forget airports and flights, this was a time when a trip on what became known as the ‘magic bus’ would take you from London down through Europe to mainland Greece for just a few pounds. Then you would have hopped on a ferry to the island of your choice, where you might have ended up sleeping on a beach until you found a friend who offered you a sofa or floor to kip on.

Even now, as Polly Samson explains, ‘there are no cars on Hydra, or even bicycles: the streets are too precipitous for wheels and mainly made up of narrow alleys and steps cut straight into the rock. Everything has to be carried up from the port on foot or by donkey. There are some truly ancient souls living on the island, who credit their good health to the 300 or 400 steps up to their doors.’

Credit: A Theatre for Dreamers by Polly Samson

With all that surrounds us now – cheap flights, wall to wall TV, phones, computers, social media and streaming – it’s hard to imagine how simple life must have been back then, with just the sun and sea to enjoy and the chance to be like Leonard, exploring creativity.

“We are so small between the stars, so large against the sky.”

from the lyrics of ‘stories of the street’ by leonard cohen (1967)

But choosing freedom and shedding responsibilities will have its downsides for the ones left behind and it’s those whose story we explore in Waiting for Sunshine.

My next post looks at events in 1960, the start of the decade that has held my fascination for so long, a year I explore in Storms of Change – the first book in the series of Mountfield Road Mysteries.

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