A Dance With Romeo - Softcover

Hymers, Mary

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0993444458 ISBN 13: 9780993444456

Publisher: Inkspiration, 2017

Synopsis

"My name is Mary Hymers and I was born in the year 1927. My Mother’s maiden name was Thomasina Gilfillan; after she married my Father Norman Hymers she took his surname and became Thomasina Hymers. I have one elder brother Alexander who was the oldest of us, then my sister Barbara, then me; Mary, and the baby of the family was my brother Norman..."With these words, at the age of 74 and never having written anything longer than a letter before, Mary Hymers began to write her life. Sixteen years later, she's still writing. A Dance with Romeo is the first volume of her memoirs to be published and details her childhood and teenage years agains the backdrop of the second world war.Born in Winlaton, a small village in the north-east of England, Mary Hymers describes growing up in the 1930's, the traditions, community (and gossip) of a close-knit community whose way of life that had remained unchanged for almost a century and which, with the advent of the Second World War, was soon to disappear forever.When war was declared in 1939, Winlaton was transformed by the influx of troops billeted there before being shipped off to fight abroad. The transformation of the village coincides with the end of Mary's schooldays at the age of thirteen and the beginning of her working life at Sinclair's tobacco factory on Newcastle's Westgate Road. As she writes “War was declared, and life really began.”For Mary life had indeed begun. Working long shifts in the cigarette factory and out dancing every night, Mary's war is backlit by the searchlights, incendiaries and tracer fire of the overhead air battles lighting her way home. Whether she's inadvertently getting engaged to her penfriend, enduring (with an ill-grace) the steadfast devotion of Ginger Duffy - her brother's best friend, getting her sister into trouble for smoking cigarettes, holidaying in London or avoiding becoming a GI bride, Mary dances her way through the War and in doing so gives an honest and often funny account of daily lives of ordinarily people during that extraordinary time.

About this title

About the Author

Mary Hymers was born in 1927 at Winlaton, a small village within the parish of Ryton in the north-East of England. At the age of 14 she began work at Sinclair's Tobacco Factory on Westgate Road in Newcastle where she continued to work until her marriage; a marriage ban against employment being in place for women at that time. After the birth of her son, Mary returned to work and took on a variety of jobs within the village in which she lived, the local nature of her employment enabling her to keep house in the tradition in which she had been raised while still being able to contribute to the family's income. In 2001 at the age of seventy-four she decided to write her life. A Dance With Romeo is the first book of her memoirs and describes her early childhood and teenage years during the Second World War and ends with her marriage to Teofilius Yakubovksis and the birth of her son.

Edition details

• Publisher: Inkspiration
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 0993444458
• ISBN 13: 9780993444456
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 222