The Mystery of Joan
I met her just once, the poet and children’s writer Joan Millington. This was at the Book Fair held at Northwich Memorial Hall on Saturday 26th November 1988.
She sat across a table from me as I leafed through books from the piles before her – a lady in her late-60s, slight of build and quietly dressed with a sweet smile behind spectacles. Joan was easy to talk to and the bustle of the fair seemed to fade away as we chatted.
Recently, trawling old files, I came across my note of our conversation hand-written on printer paper with sprocket holes down either side. After a few minutes of internet research I discovered that Joan, who lived in the Cheshire village of Comberbach, had died on 6th October 2010, aged 90. I then spent a frustrating hour or two surfing in vain for anything on her life and work.
It was incredible. I knew from snippets in the local press years ago that Joan had been writing most of her life and by 1995 had produced around 900 poems and over a thousand children’s stories with at least four books of her own out – One Hundred Poems, Children’s Tales of Enchantment, Fantasy Tales for Children and Pudsey Pussycat – as well as work in magazines and anthologies. How was it possible she’d left virtually no trace online?
With green fields and pockets of woodland all around, Comberbach is a charming village close to Marbury Park on the north side of Northwich. A large buzzard swept low as I approached the village on the second Tuesday of April wishing to absorb something of the atmosphere of Joan’s home environment. I parked by the Victorian red brick Chapel (still with an Easter cross of daffodils outside), strolled up to Robin’s Green, where Joan lived with her tailless tabby cat Polly, then bought a chocolate bar at the whitewashed, cottagey Post Office and Store, where she used to post her stories and poems.
The morning was pleasant but with masses of low puffy cloud that would later bring rain and hail. There was blossom everywhere, doves calling and the intermittent cry of a pheasant. A local gent I spoke to remembered Joan well. She wasn’t seen around much except when walking up to the Post Office, a little old lady in headscarf and coat, carrying a bag. She was very modest and it was hard to credit she was such a prolific writer. She went to America to collect an award, he said. And she wrote two poems for the millennium celebrations in the village.
Turning to the note of my conversation with Joan in 1988, I find I asked her that perennial question put to writers – where do you get your ideas?
“I find ideas everywhere,” she said. “My mind is always teeming with ideas. Often I notice mistakes people make when speaking on radio – not real mistakes but ambiguous choices of words. And these will set me thinking.”
Joan went on to say she didn’t plot her stories in detail; she’d just let them grow in the telling. Sometimes on a Sunday afternoon she’d write two stories, one after the other.
“Don’t you feel creatively drained after the first?” I asked.
“No, not at all.”
She wrote straight out, without rewriting or revision. “I do it the way I want to do it,” she said, “and if others don’t like it, that’s their hard luck!”
Joan told me she’d written two full-length adult novels, but these were unpublished.
I commented on how many children’s writers also wrote poetry. Perhaps this arose from a particular sensitivity to the music of language?”
“Perhaps so, though I don’t think about it whilst writing,” she said.
I’m glad I met Joan Millington that time, nearly a quarter century ago. I remember the twinkle behind her dark-rimmed specs. I had the impression that in her own quiet way, here was a woman of spirit and determination, a talented writer with a strong sense of direction. Why she isn’t more widely remembered today is a bit of a mystery. I should like to know more…
-oOo-
© Copyright Paul Beech 2012
Bereavement
Sadly, my father died yesterday afternoon, Sunday 15th April 2012. I was at his bedside with my brothers, my sister and other close family members. Dad’s passing was very peaceful, in a lovely Cumbrian cottage hospital, daffodils bright in the spring sunshine, birdsong at his window. He was aged 89 years.
Dad was a very private man, so I will say little. He served in the Royal Air Force during the Second World War and was an electrical engineer by profession. He met my mother in a milk bar in the Lancashire town of Farnworth during the Blitz year of 1940. They married after the war, were always devoted, brought up a family of six (myself the eldest) and celebrated their Diamond Wedding in June 2006, just a few weeks before he lost her.
Dad was a true gentleman and a wonderful father. We will miss him greatly but know that he and his “precious girl”, our dear Mum, are together again now, forever.
With much to attend to, and with a family wedding coming up as well, I will be unable to post again for two or three weeks. I trust you understand.
Two From The Valley
The other evening I slipped down the valley for a late stroll beside the Weaver. All was calm and still – the cooling air, the woodland, even the river itself, multi-coloured in the last rays of the sun, rippled only by fish snatching flies from the surface. No one was about save the occasional jogger or dog-walker, and the sharp kowk-kowk of coots served only to emphasise the hush. Galvanised steel kissing-gates squeaked and clanged as I passed through them.
The sun had sunk beyond Vale Royal Abbey as I came up the fields, and it was then I had the weirdest experience. Three geese came at me low and fast out of the darkness, necks outstretched, honking, and passed so close I felt the waft of their wings as they veered away over the lock-gates below.
It was something to cogitate on as I sat in the dentist’s chair next morning! And it’s surprising the connections you make with sharp instruments in your mouth…
I recalled a remark made to me by an elderly dog-walker on the riverbank back in ’89 apropos anglers after bream: “Some those men are on nights an’ it does ‘em good, the fresh air, dunnit? Aye, ye canna beat Lord’s fresh air.” Which led me to a pair of loosely linked poems from the past, the first written shortly following the old boy’s remark, the second seven years later.
Rejection slips (and their email equivalent) I tend to shrug off nowadays. And the company of poets I enjoy…
“WE REGRET THAT ON THIS OCCASION…”
A wisp of shag tobacco, perhaps,
A balloon adrift in the valley,
Self-esteem a snapped mooring –
So the willowed water’s edge I wonder,
Sun glaring from plankton depths,
Brain percolating,
Florescent fungus twitching with broom.
Humble I connect;
Proud and the poetry eludes me,
A wisp of shag tobacco, perhaps…
“Thank you for your interest.”
A FUNNY THING
When I’m with poets
I feel uncomfortable and different;
When not in their company
I know I am one.
Sipping white wine at a reading
I worry about an overdue report;
Photocopying dry text I’m turned on
By the slip-slap rhythm of the machine,
By a steaming copse across the valley,
By the pulse of words in my head.
-oOo-
© Copyright Paul Beech 2012
