Norma Procter

Hello Reading World!

What can I tell you about me? I was born in a Norfolk village with a history that I did not discover until years later, when it became a source for my book, Love is the Fire. A war baby, I was brought up by my grandmother. I was a true village child ... a hick from the sticks, my husband was to call me later. After the war, I moved back to join my parents and siblings. Ultimately, there were six of us. Life was various. I have milked cows, watched mushrooms spring from the earth, seen the magic of fruit growing in a well stocked garden ... and I have met interesting people as I moved through life, my houses ever full of books.

An all girls grammar school taught me how to think and how to be me. I never considered there were things that were girl things, things that were boy things. We studied hard, played hard and worked on Saturdays to earn spending money. College meant London. Drama school for me ... echoes of famous names that I studied with still light my days. It was in London I met my husband, a trumpet player studying at the Royal College of Music. London was exciting after a Norfolk childhood. Together, we walked the parks, left wing politics every step, cried into the Thames, queued for the Gods in just about every London theatre. So many stories to tell, so many precious moments.

Trumpet players follow work. Our lives in London switched to Wales, where my husband joined a BBC orchestra. Three daughters later, and a lot of water under the proverbial bridge, we now live in a cottage that once belonged to Abraham Phillips, Overman at the local drift mine, Lan Colliery.

That might sound pretty usual for Wales, but this proved to be quite a story. For a start, I didn't want to move to the cottage. It needed work and I couldn't face it, having just lived through a renovation of a Victorian house that had become too large for us. My husband won that battle and we moved in! Decades later, I still look out at the Taff Gorge, ancient beech forests clinging to the hill opposite us and the Garth mountain rising up behind us. We are lucky. ( If you have seen the Chris Monger/ Hugh Grant Film, The Englishman who climbed a hill and came down a mountain, will know what I speak of!)

Some years back I was looking at the old vellum deeds of our cottage with Jo Thorne; we noticed that Abraham Phillips, the first recorded owner, had been killed in a local coal pit explosion. It was a story lost to history. Few knew there had been a pit here. To cut short a very long story, we found the pit, a drift mine cut into the Garth mountain, hidden in brambles in a local woodland. I have researched and put together the history. It is now firmly on the map. Abraham Phillips was found guilty of negligence. His name is steeped in controversy. My book, The House of Abraham Phillips, records a story of these people who lived in our cottage, this village, and who faced the ultimate loss in a pit disaster in 1875. My book has been picked up by Gabriel Beristain and a film project is pending.

So what more can I say? I write, I paint, have an MBE for services to the environment. At one time, I was a voice and speech tutor at the RWCMD. Before that, I taught tiny children to read, worked with dyslexic children and adults. Life is full.