About Me

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Early days

I was born and brought up in Leeds, in what was then the West Riding of Yorkshire. My parents, Walter (Jack) and Gladys Collie, moved several times, but mostly within the Hyde Park/Headingley area. Compulsory purchase orders, due to the expansion of Leeds University, were responsible for some of these moves.

Schooldays

With the exception of one year, when we moved temporarily closer to my father's workplace, my schooldays were happy ones. Brudenell Infant and Queen's Road Junior Schools were followed by seven years at Lawnswood High School. My contemporary Sandra Baker (now Midgley) is the inspiration behind the Alumnae site, which holds many precious memories of our old school and information about the new one that replaced it.

My friend Susan Teal and I must have been very proud of our school blazers to wear them on holiday as well.

Our girls' grammar school shared a site with Leeds Modern School, whose best known old boy is Alan Bennett. Sadly, even if we had been contemporaries, it is doubtful whether our paths would have crossed. An invisible border line, patrolled by prefects, ran down the middle of the playing field behind the two schools. It might as well have been the Berlin Wall.

First holiday without parents

Our parents were very protective, but allowed Susan and me at the end of the 4th form to go youth hostelling with our friends Vivien Freear, Kathryn Wormald, Shirley Teale, Pamela Browne and Pam's older brother Nigel (in woolly hat), who did his best to keep us all in line.

We made our way by a roundabout route from Scarborough to Whitby, mostly on foot, and had an exhausting but mainly enjoyable time.

Self catering meant forward planning and hanging onto what you'd bought. Here, Pam was guarding our breakfast cereal from Niklaus, a predatory German student who attached himself to our group for a while.

First holiday abroad

Foreign languages were always my favourite subjects. My parents couldn't afford to travel far, but they made sure that I didn't miss out. After O levels, they sent me off to spend three weeks in Gladbeck, Westphalia, with my penfriend Brigitte Fritz. Her family was very kind, but spoke no English, so it was tough going.

It was very hot that summer and Brigitte's mother insisted on putting my long hair up in a bun every morning. I was too polite to argue, but maybe that's why I look so subdued on our cruise down the Rhine.

Sixth form

Some limited fraternization with the boys of Leeds Modern was allowed in the Sixth form, but by then it was too late for most of us. Leeds University had a large majority of male students, so Sixth form girls were very welcome at the Union hops and other social events.

The rest of my spare time was divided between stomping to the music of Ed O'Donnell's New Orleans Jazzmen at Casey's, listening to folk music at the Royal Sovereign on Kirkstall Road and hitching to Robin Hood's Bay to camp out on the beach on summer weekends.

First visit to France

In the summer between the Junior and Senior Sixth, I went to France for the first time. Anne Burnett, Pauline Thwaite, Rosemary Phillips, Christine Robinson and I booked ourselves into an international work camp at a youth hostel deep in the Forest of Marly. The strangeness of the location - an old fort, with underground dormitories - and some bizarre events during our stay inspired my novel Shadows of the Past.

Jean-Claude Quehan, a local boy I met at that time and who is still a good friend, has helped me with the research.

Leaving Lawnswood

The leavers' concert was a riotous, but also sad occasion for most of us.

Paris

That summer, I went to Paris with Pam, Mike Mennell, Steve Appell, Graham Wood and Nick Rogers, all of us living semi-hippy style on a shoestring.

I was obviously determined to hold onto my suitcase key!

Angelo Agiato, an acquaintance from last year, came to take me out to breakfast, not realising until it was too late that the six of us came as a set. If you're counting, Woody was there somewhere.

Manchester University

I arrived to study French and German the year Anna Ford was president of the students' union. She was very kind and helpful to a nervous Fresher who got hopelessly lost on her first day in the union building. My first two years were spent in Owen's Park (aka The Student Village), a hall of residence that housed around 1000 students, three quarters of them male. John Glanville (bottom right), with whom I worked on the Village Voice, the hall newspaper, Mick Crittenden (Critt) (bottom left) and Pete Cockcroft (top right) were among the first friends I made.

I wish I had more photographs of those days and contributions would be more than welcome. Was it that everyone was camera shy or just too hard up to have films developed during term time? I also wish I'd done more work. Life was a whirl of student politics, parties, dances - and the occasional lecture. Life in the Faculty of Arts was very laid back - a handful of lectures, seminars and tutorials spread over about twelve hours a week. The scientists and medics worked much harder, or so I was told at the time.

My neighbour during the first year at Owen's Park was Christine Bissell, now of the Inner State Theatre Company, and she persuaded me to join the Women's Boat Club. It was on the Bridgewater Canal one chilly Saturday morning that I learnt the truth behind the saying 'to swear like a bargee'. We'd just done a racing start into his barge! Linda Barber is in front of me in the top photo.

The summer term, despite the looming menace of exams, always seemed to be sunny. Rosie Broome and Dave Bromfield were topping up their tans while revising Biochemistry and History of Art.

More friends from Manchester were Dougal Purdy and Dave Lundy (top left with one of the hall tutors, Ken Eveson), Bill Wilkinson (bottom left), Tony Sofair, Keith Dinwoodie aka Scouse and Dave Lundy (bottom right) and Chris Trent (top right).

Later on, I shared a flat in Daisy Bank Road with Rosie Broome, June McAllister (right) and Angie Ball (left). Our flat is the one with the red and orange checked curtains. One of the boys in the flat downstairs was road manager for Herman's Hermits and their parties were well worth attending. Ours weren't bad either!

We also acquired a kitten, Carver, half Persian and half Manchester alley cat. She stayed with my family until she died, aged 17.

MUU Russian Trip

One highlight of my student life was the summer I spent travelling around Eastern Europe in an old double decker bus with 13 other girls and 16 boys. With the Iron Curtain still firmly in place, the journey was not without its hazards and I doubt if my parents slept much while I was away. Our route took us through Dunkirk, Brussels, Cologne, Hanover, East Berlin, Warsaw, Minsk, Smolensk, Moscow, Novgorod, Leningrad, Oryol, Kharkov, Kiev, Lvov, Budapest, Bratislava, Prague, Dresden, Weimar, Aachen and Ostend.

We were a very mixed group. Micheline Brina (standing on the platform of the bus) was the leading light and her husband John Hyde one of the three drivers. Other people were recruited for a variety of reasons, for example their interest in politics, language skills and/or ability to drive a bus (you had to be 21 to get a PSV licence). I joined the group mainly on the strength of my Russian 'O' level, but my French and German came in useful too.

I never worked out how Barry Jones came to join us. We picked him up in London and he hadn't brought a tent. Only Lyn Barber and I had enough room for a third body and he slept between us for the whole six weeks! He's standing by the bus with Lyn on the left and John Davis on the right. My companions on the bench outside the Humboldt University in East Berlin are Tony Clark and Dave Harvey.

Dave Clark and Mary Davis were very active in student politics; Vicky Paschiewk spoke Polish. Dave Wynn became president of the students' union a couple of years later.

We camped in most places and cooked our own food. Vesta curry went down a treat with some of the Russians, who gave us vodka to wash it down with. Our Intourist man, Sergei, was very laid back, travelled everywhere with us on our bus and forgave us for leaving him behind after a roadside stop on the way to Leningrad. One day, he took us to a wonderful beach on the 'island of recreation' in Kiev. He also developed a big crush on Pauline Chandler. Martin Jacques (editor of Marxism Today until its closure in 1991) is gazing out onto the River Neva outside the Peter and Paul fortress, from which Tsarist prisoners used to be sent off to Siberia.

The architecture was magnificent, in brutal contrast to the lack of goods in the shops most people had to use.

We had a lot of fun along the way, but there were sobering moments, particularly our visit to Buchenwald concentration camp near Weimar.

We certainly caused a stir everywhere we went, not only when we held up all the traffic in Warsaw!

The members of our group not mentioned so far were the other drivers, Bill Taylor and Neil Coward and then Bruce Bebington, Jenny Clift, Charlotte Hewetson, Vanessa Crawford, Jane Simpson, Sam Hunt, Jan Welch, Hazel Hall, Judy Cohen, Pat McDonald, Hugh Martin, Harry Rimmer, Fred Steward and Les Stratton.

L'Étang-la-Ville

My French tutor wasn't thrilled by my decision to spend the summer in Eastern Europe, but I managed to squeeze in a couple of weeks in France towards the end of the vacation.

My friend Jean-Claude Quehan and his older sister Colette were working most of the time, but his parents, younger sisters Mauricette and Françoise and little brother Henri took very good care of me.

Everyone was patient and kind - even Henri realised eventually that I was doing my best - and I learnt more French from the Quehans during those two weeks than during the whole of my first year at university.

USA

My parents were anxious the following year, when Rosie and I headed for the USA on a BUNAC flight to New York. After a couple of days in the Big Apple, we spent a few weeks working as camp counsellors at Green Acres, Loch Sheldrake, a resort in the Catskill Mountains. If you've seen Dirty Dancing, you can imagine what it was like.

The work, supervised by Dick Einbinder and Debbie Karawan, was both demanding and poorly paid, but the tips from the children's parents were generous enough to make up for it. Rosie and I struck up friendships with Larry Katz (top right), the MC of the hotel night club, and Shelley Weinberg, the head waiter of the main restaurant, so we were better entertained and fed than might otherwise have been the case. Fellow counsellors above are Eddie Abel, Scott Gershen, Steve Levine and Carl Lowe.

Some of the counsellors and other staff were particularly friendly. A young man whose name slips my memory took me to the races in Monticello. Arlene Cooperman and Susan Braun from Los Angeles invited us to join them on a trip to South Fallsburg with their friends Robert and Zoltan. Susan Dubitsky, Larry Green and Joyce Kerrer took us to visit the Statue of Liberty on our return to New York and Susan's parents also put us up at their home in the Bronx. Another counsellor, Hilary Tessler, had us round for dinner.

After we set off on our travels across the USA by Greyhound, we spent very few nights in hotels. Joe Soffer, who had quit his job as night clerk at Green Acres just before we left, offered us a room at his home in Cherry Hills, just outside Philadelphia. Dr and Mrs Weimer (top left with little Scott) hosted us in Washington DC and my mother's cousins Louise Butterworth and CoraTatalovic were waiting for us in Los Angeles. They and their husbands Gene and Tatt shared a large house on Manhattan Beach and gave us a wonderful time. In San Francisco, David Johns, the son of an old neighbour in Leeds, and his wife Myrna took care of us. David ran a restaurant, so we were fed royally.

Between Washington DC and California, we had to fend for ourselves and were glad to team up with two English boys, Howard Jennings (top left) and Grant Lowe (top right). New Orleans, San Antonio and particularly El Paso and Ciudad Juarez on the Mexican border were not the best places for two girls on their own. Arriving in El Paso late one evening, we tried to book into the nearest hotel to the bus station and found that they only rented by the hour!

After a two and a half day drive from San Francisco to Detroit, we were very happy to accept hospitality from the family of my penfriend Diana Hoopingarner in Allen, Michigan. It was the first time that Diana and I (bottom left) had met after corresponding for eight years. Her sister Cindy (bottom right) and brother Ronnie entertained us while Diana was at work.

Our complete itinerary by Greyhound was New York City - Philadelphia - Washington DC - New Orleans - San Antonio - El Paso - Los Angeles - San Francisco - Chicago - Detroit - Buffalo (for Niagara Falls) - New York City. It was a very long time to sit on a bus and my ankles still swell at the thought of it, but I wouldn't have missed it for anything.

Lycée Les Bruyères

Part of my degree course involved a year teaching at the Lycée Les Bruyères in Rouen.

I taught English conversation, ate, drank and made merry with the other assistantes, spent a lot of time in Paris - my companion in the café is the now eminent art historian David Bromfield -

and managed to put on at least half a stone. Unfortunately, we all lost touch with Maria-Rosa Beluffi, but Carmen Presa, Elke Siemonsen (now Lughofer), Marie-Ange Muhr (now Pommier) and I have a reunion planned for October 2007.

During that year, I celebrated my 21st birthday and my parents threw a big party for me. Dad took charge of the drinks, of course

My father was a talented artist, but family circumstances denied him any formal training. He took great vicarious pleasure in my success, as is evident from another cartoon he sent me just before my graduation.

Morocco bound

I kept up with my schoolfriends and one summer Pam, Pauline and I joined a group travelling down to Morocco.

In a couple of old desert trucks, we visited as many places as we could fit in, including Tangiers, Fes and Marrakech.

Hilderstone

I spent three very happy summers teaching EFL at Hilderstone in Broadstairs.

The students came from a large number of countries and backgrounds, and got on very well on the whole. The little group above consists of Miodrag from Yugoslavia, Michelle, Hélène and Marie-Christine from France, Dimitrios from Greece and Temucin from Turkey. Living with local families and with English as the only common language for most of the students, they made good progress.

Of course, it wasn't all work. We tutors ran the social programme too and got to know both the students and the local pubs very well. The Crown and the Tartar Frigate were favourites and most of the tutors had rooms at the Clarendon.

My fellow tutors were a cheerful bunch. Robin Davis, Geoff Parkes and Dave Collins were there with me every year and I also remember Linda (who married Dave later on), Chris Joslin, Mike Wills and Beverley Towe. We had great fun organising extracurricular activities, especially the floats we entered for the Broadstairs Carnival. With the future Michael Wills MP as Fagin and a Saudi prince as the Artful Dodger, we were a cinch for first prize that year.

West Park High School

I returned to Leeds to teach at West Park High School. I wish I'd had a better camera in those days. The first form I was responsible for ran rings round me to begin with.

Sports Day was always fun. Unlike at some schools, not all the events were for serious athletes!

Holidays

During my first stint at West Park, I spent time with friends in the Netherlands. On the right of the group photo are Evert-Jan Bout with his mother Cornelia and his sister Jannie; on the left, his mother's neighbours in Huizen with their son Jaap. I never quite got my tongue round Dutch, but I tried hard.

I also visited Bulgaria, far too early in the season. Our hotel was almost deserted, but the back streets of the nearby town were interesting.

The worst holiday of my life was spent sailing round some Scottish islands.

I may look cheerful in the photo, but I spent most of my time throwing up over the side of the yacht. The only day I enjoyed was the one without a breath of wind, when my friends were all grinding their teeth.

Mick Wilde, quite an amiable soul on land, turned into Captain Bligh on the water and even expected me to cook! He and I have recently been reunited and had a good laugh about it all.

I also attended Elke and Rudolf's wedding in Augsburg.

and then spent the following week in Nienburg, Celle and Bremen with Carmen and Marie-Ange.

The following year, Carmen and I took a road trip around northern Spain, joined for part of the time by her boyfriend Heron and his friend Javier. The photo was taken in Salamanca.

Heisenberg-Gymnasium

After two years, I had the opportunity to spend a year teaching English at the Heisenberg-Gymnasium in Leeds' twin town of Dortmund. During that time I lodged with Frau Helene Kiebler.

The Kiebler family and their friends treated me as one of their own and took me everywhere they went.

My pupils came as a shock. I'd expected docile rows of tidy blond children. There were a few of those ...

... but not in 7b, my form. I became very fond of them, though.

Some of the boys' hair was longer than mine and I had to lend them rubber bands to keep it out of their faces in the summer.

I met Nobel Prize winner Professor Werner Heisenberg, when he came to bestow his name officially on the school. I was hoping for some memorable quote from the great physicist when I was introduced, but all he could find to say was that he supposed I was there to teach English. Well, it had been a tiring day for all of us.

Having to work on Saturday mornings curtailed my weekend activities, but I still managed to visit friends in Hamburg, Stuttgart, Heidelberg and Hanover, as well as a couple of trips over the Dutch border, one to Amsterdam and another to Koudum in North Friesland.

I also went to Waterloo, where my American penfriend Diana and her fiancé John Bowers were performing with their band, the Forerunners.

During the October break, I went to Berlin for a week with Shelley Pyner, another English teacher, and we stayed for a week with Helga Kiebler and her boyfriend Henrik Heroven.

The carnival in Cologne was good fun too.

Turkey

At the end of my year in Dortmund, I went on a road trip to Turkey with Shelley, her flatmate Gill Baker and Gill's boyfriend Bulent Ozbelli, an engineering (I think) student at the university.

We spent most of our time in Istanbul, where we met Faruk Akyol and his friend Mehmet.

Aydemir (his surname eludes me at the moment), a friend from Dortmund, invited us to stay with his family in Zonguldak on the Black Sea coast and we were joined there by Sitke and another Dortmund friend, Ziya Serifoglu.

Back to England

Faruk came to study in Leeds and stayed with my family for a while until he found his feet. He got on like a house on fire with Dad,

enjoyed himself in London

and had a taste of Blackpool Pleasure Beach.

Back at West Park, I soon became Head of Department and introduced German to all new pupils, whatever their ability level. Later on, I bought a house just across the road from the school and small groups used to come over occasionally to make German dishes and picnic in the garden.

German for Low Fliers, an account of my early work in making what is generally perceived to be a difficult language accessible to all, can be found in the Audio-Visual Language Journal, Vol.17. No 2. I was asked to write it following the videoing of some of my classes by Michael Law, a lecturer at Leeds University, some of whose students I mentored during their teaching practices. I was also invited to collaborate on the writing of a new German course to be called Voran for less able pupils

I set up an exchange between West Park and the Heisenberg-Gymnasium and always enjoyed the opportunity to see my former German colleagues and pupils again. In the picture below, Frau Charlotte Scharfenberger, Herr Imker and 10b are being received by the Mayor of Leeds at the Civic Hall.

For some of the West Park girls, it was the first time they had stayed with anyone outside their own culture and for others the more affluent German lifestyle was quite an eye opener.

The exchange flourished for several years and was still going strong when I left West Park. The German end was very ably organized by Hans-Peter Acker.

Trips to Paris were always popular too.

Death of my father

My beloved father died of a heart attack shortly after having a cancer ridden lung removed. A smoker since his boyhood, he paid the price. Coming from a generation positively encouraged to smoke, he never stood a chance. I like to think he would be pleased to know that none of his descendants is a smoker. The last photo I have of both my parents is at a family wedding, not long before my father became ill.

Bruce enters my life

Bruce Cobbett, working for Cyprane (British Oxygen) in Keighley, came on the scene a month after my father died.

We hit it off straight away and he joined me on a Leeds Ski Club trip to Courmayeur in the Italian Alps.

The poor chap had to be my carer for the next few months, at the end of which we tied the knot. Bruce got a job with Leeds Timber Group and we settled into domesticity.

Christmas in Austria

Skiing in Birgitz wasn't a big success for me, because it was icy and I couldn't get my confidence back. The company was good, though, and Bruce was persuaded to do his first (and last) black run.

Egypt

We visited Cairo, Luxor, Aswan, Abu Simbel and also went to visit the Suez Canal.

China

We spent a few days in Hong Kong first, after which China came as a compete culture shock. We loved the architecture and hated the food, which was nothing at all like the dishes served in Chinese restaurants in Leeds! We visited Guandong, Guilin, Shanghai, Suzhou, Nanjing and Beijing.

Our guide Lim (he refused to be called Mr Lim) was with us all the way and took very good care of us.

Two became four

Our lives changed dramatically when first Richard and then David came on the scene. Bucket and spade holidays were on the menu for the next few years.

I made a conscious decision to give up full time work while the boys were small. Between leaving West Park High School and moving up to North Yorkshire, I worked a few afternoons a week in the modern languages section of Leeds University's Department of Education library, helping students to prepare for their teaching practices.

North Yorkshire

Bruce accepted a job at North Yorkshire County Council, based at County Hall in Northallerton. It was too far to commute, so we packed up and moved north, bringing my mother with us. We spent a year in temporary accommodation in Romanby, two years in Bedale and finally settled in Ripon, where we have been ever since.

Ripon Grammar School

For many years, Ripon Grammar School played a big part in our lives. Richard was a pupil there and I taught in the Modern Languages Department.

More later.