This week, I’m hosting a wonderful author and friend from down-under, Vera Berry Burrows.
Vera Berry-Burrows is a UK-born former teacher of English Language and Literature, living in Queensland, Australia with journalist husband, Alan. She has a son and two grandsons living in the UK. She has been writing for a number of years and has had numerous non-fiction articles published in the UK and in Australia as well as four novels published with Wings ePress Inc. in the USA. She was educated at Farnworth Grammar School in Lancashire, trained as a teacher at St Katharine’s College, Liverpool and gained a Bachelor of Arts degree with the Open University.
Since she took early retirement in 1994 having been in the teaching profession for thirty one years, writing has become her compulsive hobby.
Family Matters
For three children left without a mother in the middle of World War Two, survival is all they can hope for. Their father struggles as a single parent, but instills into his children, determination, ambition and self-respect so they might succeed in post-war years and achieve everything which he was denied during his life.
This is their story:
It went without saying that John Hawthorne was extremely proud of his children. They had survived circumstances under which others would have crumbled. To bring up three girls without a mother had seemed a daunting task at the beginning, but with Nellie’s help they’d pulled through. He often thought of the times when he was at his wits end trying to fathom the workings of the female mind and now Meg was a mother herself, he couldn’t help but hark back to the past.
“Meg?” he’d asked tentatively one day soon after her eleventh birthday when they unusually had the house to themselves for the afternoon.
“What, Dad? Have I done something wrong?” Meg looked at him quizzically, recognising the ominous, unfathomable expression on her Dad’s face. It was always the same when he was about to take her to task.
“No, you’ve not done anything wrong as far as I know, but…” he hesitated and fiddled with the buttons on his waistcoat. “I think we ought to have a chat.”
“What about? Have Patty and Abi been doing something they shouldn’t, because I try to keep an eye on them, but I can’t be there all the time and anyway, Gran sees Abi more than me while I’m at school so it’s probably her you should be talking to, not me…”
“Just shut up, Meg and give me a chance,” he urged feeling the sweat trickle down the back of his neck. “Oh heck, Meg, this is hard!”
“What is, Dad? For goodness sake just say it, whatever it is. You’re making me nervous.”
“Well, I’ll try. Er, well … er well you know that now you are growing up, you’ll soon be a teenager and the next step is being a woman …”
“I know all that, Dad. Girls grow into women and boys grow into men. I’m not stupid!”
www.facebook.com/veraberryburrows
