My new novel The Girls from Greenway! 
Life in the Sixties – Motown, jazz, frothy coffee, ten pound poms, the pools, love and betrayal. The book is set in Essex. Two sisters, Angie and Doreen have a difficult home life on their council estate in Chelmsford. And then things get worse – unknowingly they fall in love with the same man.
Last Thursday, The Saturday Girls, my novel about mod girls in the Sixties, was published by Bonnier Zaffre. The day was very exciting in a quiet sort of way. Quite unexpectedly, my niece first thing went to her local Sainsbury’s with her two sons (3 and 1) and sent me a photo of them in the trolley, holding copies of the book. It was such a lovely surprise and quite moving – that she should do that, and also that the boys should sit quietly and hold the book nicely. I have to say, other photos show them considering eating the books, but hey.
Now it’s off to Paris. Expect more pictures of coffee cups.
When was the last time you talked about Angel Cake?
Here’s my answer to that question – quite a lot, quite recently. About a week ago I received the first print copy of The Saturday Girls ) (out next Thursday!! pre-order it now). How lovely it looks! And there, tucked into the back of the book is a recipe for Angel Cake – because there is a delicious, moist, soft Angel birthday cake actually in the book. And this is a real life Angel Cake – not a cake mix! When I knew there would be a cake in the back of the book I decided to do a little research to see what it actually tastes like. I’m not sure it’s meant to have icing, but it tasted very good. I did a bit of a wide ranging search in fact and I have to say that Tesco’s own brand came out rather well.
Then on Wednesday at a social event, with much, much white wine and a sprinkling of canapes, I found myself in conversation with a French scientist who loves to bake. ‘What is your favourite cake?’ I asked, quite innocently. And she said, ‘Angel cake,’ just like that and proceeded to give me yet another recipe. We then had a discussion about what to do with egg yolks and how much mayonnaise can one household actually eat. But that need not trouble us here.
Because on Thursday, the very next day, a story was published in the Guardian about the reissue of the Suffrage Cook Book (read a review here). A book to warm the hearts and stomachs of those fighting the good fight to obtain votes for women. And the recipe they printed to go along with the story was … Suffrage Angel Cake!
I think what we can draw from this is that it’s all pointing one way. It all started with The Saturday Girls. And that’s where it’s heading. Published by Bonnier Zaffre, it comes out on 23 August 2018 – next Thursday. Pre-order it now!
And once it is in your hands – the book really is beautifully produced – you can try out the recipe. And when you have produced a delicious cake, then you can sit down with a generous slice, a cup of tea and a good book (The Saturday Girls obviously) and relive the heady days of the Sixties, when Saturday night was the night for dancing and the Corn Exchange was the place to be, and have a really, really good time.
The Essex Girls, out on 23 August 2018, is a book I’ve wanted to write for most of my life, because it seems the world has not paid much attention to the lives of mod, working class girls, and I wanted to redress the balance. When I was about 10 I started to write a book about a girl who didn’t go to boarding school. Somehow, apart from the Secret Seven books by Enid Blyton, there weren’t that many books around about children who went to day school. All those boarding school kids had to have their adventures in the long hot summer holidays, whereas in my world we were having adventures on weekdays and weekends. I say adventures – I mean writing the local newspaper, cooking ourselves little restaurant meals, putting on plays for the other kids in the street, and following someone on the estate we were convinced was a spy and noting his movements down in our notebooks (a spy with a very dull life, it turned out).
The problem grew more acute as I got older and became a mod. There were limitations with being a mod – if you weren’t interested in clothes and music and possibly scooters and if your mum and dad would not have let you go to Clacton or Margate on a Bank holiday, even if you’d wanted to, then there wasn’t much going on – but there was still a life, and one with a lot of action. The film Quadrophenia demonstrated that people were interested in mods, but the girls don’t get much of a look in, in the story.
So, out came the notebook and over the pages flew my pen, and then my word processor and then one computer after another.
I hope I’ve captured some of the essence of the excitement of Saturday nights, walking into a dance hall in time to the rhythm of Green Onions, or the smell of Wishing perfume by Avon, or seeing people you knew wearing parkas and leather coats, swooping along the road to park outside the mods’ coffee bar. It was a great time.
The Essex Girls is published by Bonnier Zaffre and is available to pre-order here
It is all go in Chelmsford, preparing for the launch party of A Sense of Occasion.
The Saracen’s Head will be humming – just as it did when mods dropped in, lurching from the Lion and Lamb, via the Golden Fleece and the White Hart, parking their scooters outside, slipping out of their parkas.
The play list for the launch has been one of the most important features. As regular visitors to this website will know, the stories in A Sense of Occasion trace the lives of four mod girls in the 60s – love loss laughter and scooters. So the music has got to catch the essence. The Four Tops, Spencer Davis, Green Onions, a smattering of the Beatles, James Brown, Donnie Elbert and more. Just listening to the tracks now is like being at the Corn Exchange on a Saturday night. Everyone smelling their best – Old Spice or Avon’s Wishing. Everyone looking their best in their suede coats and their Hush Puppies.
Books will be on sale, books will be signed. There will be a prize for the best mod outfit. There will be lights, there will be music. Can’t wait!
Hear more great tracks at The Sixties Made Me