Allan Ahlberg

Presenter0:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in two thousand eight.

Presenter0:27

My castaway this week is the children's author Alan Ahlberg. One of our most acclaimed and successful writers, his creations offer wit, wisdom, and just enough whimsy to capture young imaginations and the essential truth of childhood. Peepo, Each Peach Pear Plum, and The Jolly Postman are among the many works he produced in collaboration with his late wife, the illustrator Janet

Presenter0:51

He himself has been responsible for more than one hundred and forty titles selling tens of millions around the world.

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It would seem it's his own vivid experience of childhood that has gone some way to enabling him to be the hugely popular writer he has become.

Presenter1:06

He says The best and the worst times of my life occurred, I truly believe, before I was twelve years old. Do you think that's generally the case, or do you think you had a particularly dramatic childhood?

Allan Ahlberg1:18

I I don't think I had a dramatic childhood, and I think the quote that you just used comes from a story of mine called My Brother's Ghost.

Presenter1:24

It does.

Allan Ahlberg1:25

Of course that's a a character in the book rather than me necessarily saying that's

Presenter1:29

But you have said the character is very much based on your own.

Allan Ahlberg1:31

Yes, yes. And I the thing is, I do find that when I sit down with a pen in my hand and a piece of paper in front of me, that my own childhood increasingly comes up in front of me and I want to write about it. The power and drama of things that happen to you, say before twelve, registers and goes down deep and stays there, I think.

Presenter1:47

Working in collaboration is that more satisfying than working alone?

Allan Ahlberg1:52

Collaborating with Janet was just wonderful because it was like a cottage industry. We made the book, words, pictures, and we were obsessed with the entire book, the paper, the printing, the binding, everything. And then we went to our publisher with it.

Allan Ahlberg2:04

I now work with an editor and a designer and an illustrator in a different way, and I enjoy that as well.

Allan Ahlberg2:10

But the real fun, the greatest fun is when the ink is still wet on the paper. Uh often you have to destroy it later'cause it isn't good enough, but at the time that's where the real

Allan Ahlberg2:18

Hot excitement is.

Presenter2:19

You said just there that that's the fun and and I wanted to ask you, do you m I mean, when I'm reading your books with my children, when other children read them on their own, they're they're laugh out loud funny often. Do you do laugh out loud?

Allan Ahlberg2:29

Yes, yes.

Allan Ahlberg2:31

I do, really, yes, and initially I'm the first person to hear the joke, and I laugh at it. Sadly, quite often the thing that I most laugh at has to be cut because it doesn't stand up after six or seven readings, but it's essentially playing with words, and you come up with some comical absurdity, and you hope that a six year old will enjoy it.

Presenter2:49

And they do. Tell me about your first choice, then.

Allan Ahlberg2:51

I love all kinds of music, and I couldn't narrow it down until I hit upon the scheme of choosing eight songs and eight singers that I would people my island with voices. My first song is Judy Garland, and she's singing the trolley song from Meet Me in Saint Louis.

Speaker 43:08

With my high starch collar and my high topped shoes and my hair piled high upon my head I went to lose a jolly hour on the trolley and lost my heart instead. With his light brown derby and his bright green tie, he was quite the handsomest of men. I started to yen, so I counted to ten, then I counted to ten again.

Allan Ahlberg3:17

Jolly hour on the trolley and lost my heart

Presenter3:35

Judy Garden singing the trolley song. And so, Ellen Olberg, you were born in Croydon and brought up by uh would it be fair to say a poor family, certainly of the family.

Allan Ahlberg3:43

Yes, it was a poor family, yes, yes. My father was a labourer, my mother was a cleaner.

Allan Ahlberg3:48

and there was no money. But then there was no money in any of the houses, in any of the streets where I lived. It was a pretty evenly poor population.

Presenter3:56

And a highly industrial environment. It was Oldbury in the Westminster.

Allan Ahlberg3:57

It was Aldbury in the West McClintock. And it smelt a high heaven. There were glue factories. And I grew up there.

Presenter4:12

And what did your father do?

Allan Ahlberg4:14

He was a laborer. He worked in one factory or another. In one of my stories I refer to him as my invisible dad because the only way a labourer can make money is to do overtime, and he would leave the house at five thirty. I would never see him in the morning. He would come home at eight, and some when I was little I was in bed. He would work Saturdays and Sundays.

Presenter4:32

And when your dad was around, what was your relationship with him like?

Allan Ahlberg4:36

I regret it in a way. I because he died when I was seventeen, the kind of memory of him faded too quickly, really. Whereas my mother, who I had a pretty rough time with my mother when I was a child, and I grew to love and admire her when I was in middle age, because she was still around. And I would like that to have happened with my father, but it didn't. So he was really invisible. He was shadowy.

Presenter4:56

And your mother, you say you had a pretty hard time with her. She she was, it seems, having a pretty hard time herself. She she struggled with life.

Allan Ahlberg5:01

She struggled with life. It's so hard in a few sentences to pin someone down. You know, I know I won't do her justice, really. When I was a kid, she wailed me, but then most of the mothers round there wailed the kids. The teacher said.

Presenter5:11

Teachers without smacking, I will.

Allan Ahlberg5:13

Yeah, ah, well more than that and and you know, they would say when your dad comes home he'll give you the belt, which he did, and at school the teachers would hit you with sticks. It was a more violent time, but

Presenter5:13

Yeah.

Allan Ahlberg5:21

It was. At least everybody got it. I wasn't being singled out. So my mother-

Allan Ahlberg5:27

My my mother's classic move was to smack me round the head, you see, if if I was a trouble, which I was a trouble. But she was deaf in one ear, because her mother had smacked her round the ear when she was little. When she was eight, my mother was uh taken to a doctor's surgery and she scrubbed the floor before she went to school. So she had a massively tough life. And she was working too.

Allan Ahlberg5:47

She used to clean people's houses in the daytime and then from six till nine she'd go down the local factory offices and clean the offices. And much of the money that she earned, which wasn't much, she spent on me. And of course they adopted me. If they hadn't adopted me, I'd have been in an institution. And the best institution in the world is worse than almost the worst family. There were two of us. They adopted a brother, really. They adopted Andrew.

Allan Ahlberg6:09

And we didn't get on. Brothers often don't get on anyway. We didn't get on particularly.

Presenter6:13

When did you find out you were adopted?

Allan Ahlberg6:17

I was playing in the street with a gang of kids and this girl said to me, Your mother's not your mother, because she'd heard it from her mother, you see. So I went home and spoke to my mother and she said, What? No, no And she she confessed. But even then she couldn't tell me the truth, so what she told me was that my parents had been killed in an aeroplane crash. But of course um I was a poor little illegitimate unwanted kid which they had adopted. Did that original background matter?

Presenter6:40

Uh Yeah.

Allan Ahlberg6:40

Yeah.

Presenter6:40

Uh

Allan Ahlberg6:40

Good

Presenter6:40

Build

Allan Ahlberg6:40

Uh

Presenter6:40

Yeah.

Allan Ahlberg6:40

Uh

Presenter6:40

Something you've ever explored.

Allan Ahlberg6:42

No, as long as my mother was alive and she lived into her eighties, it never occurred to me to look for my blood mother, or for that matter, father. It felt disloyal. I had a mother, why should I go and find another one? Tell me about your second piece of music today, then. I grew up in the Midlands, as far away from the sea as you could get, but I've always loved the sea. And so I've chosen one of Stanford's songs of the sea, Drake's Drum, sung by Thomas Allen. I just love this song, and I love his voice. It's a story song, really, Drake's Drum. And so the pine begins like this, and then we'll hear the second half.

Allan Ahlberg7:14

Drake is in his hammock.

Allan Ahlberg7:16

And a thousand miles away Captain, art thou sleeping there below?

Allan Ahlberg7:21

Slung between the round shot in Ongra Dias Bay, And dreaming all the time at Plymouth Ho.

Allan Ahlberg7:27

Yonder looms the island yonder lie the ships, With sailor lads adancing heel and tow.

Allan Ahlberg7:33

And the shore lights flashing, and the night tide dashing, He sees it all so plainly

Allan Ahlberg7:39

as he saw it long ago.

Speaker 47:42

Break it in his hammock till the great horn was gone.

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Help him on the singing heavenly boy.

Speaker 47:58

Slung between the ranch or

Speaker 48:01

Listen.

Speaker 48:02

Come and wait for the time we are all.

Speaker 48:10

Him on the deep sea, but the storm, when he sailed to be the war.

Speaker 48:22

Uh

Presenter8:39

Drake's Drum sung by Thomas Allen with the London Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir conducted by Roger Norrington. And you were saying during that that one of the reasons you're choosing it for your island is that wonderful chorus.

Allan Ahlberg8:50

Yes, I wanted to have the the end of the song, because suddenly out of nowhere appear all these shipmates all singing beautifully, so that's why I wanted to hear this surprising addition to the the music.

Presenter8:59

You'll have some company on the island then.

Allan Ahlberg9:00

Oh yes, a whole band of them.

Presenter9:01

So, Alan Olberg, you've described the circumstances that your parents lived and worked in, harsh working class circumstances, but your your mother had a degree of aspiration for the family. You moved house quite a lot.

Allan Ahlberg9:12

Yes, yes. In that town, and in most towns like it, you c you didn't buy and sell houses, you exchanged houses and you put a card in the newsagent's window saying where you lived and where you'd like to live.

Allan Ahlberg9:23

I went to three infant schools in Albury in the space of about two years'cause my mother kept moving us. And uh I don't think I ever knew why she was moving us until I was about eleven.

Allan Ahlberg9:32

She was hunting for a house that had an indoor toilet and a bathroom.

Allan Ahlberg9:37

Uh

Presenter9:37

And

Presenter9:37

Describe the fact that you weren't close to your brother latterly, but when you were growing up, was there friction?

Allan Ahlberg9:42

I mean, he was, I don't know, perhaps four years younger than me. We we um

Allan Ahlberg9:47

We just didn't connect really and uh I was the older brother and I um could have been a better brother to him. Andrew wasn't into football very much and uh uh my childhood was mainly concerned with getting up in the morning, playing football, going to school, and playing football at playtime, at dinner time.

Allan Ahlberg10:02

Coming home from school and playing football. And uh Andrew wasn't a footballer, so that was a factor, I guess.

Presenter10:07

One of your poems, as you say, that I'm just looking at here, What I like best, yes, most of all, in my whole life, is kicking a ball.

Allan Ahlberg10:13

I love to play football all the time, but I was a little boy. You were playing in the street, I imagine.

Presenter10:16

I have a little

Presenter10:18

Oh yeah.

Allan Ahlberg10:23

But for about eight or nine years of my life when I wasn't doing that, I would just walk down our little road and kick a ball against Pernell's fish shop wall. The Pernal's fish shop was at the end and the end wall was perfect for kicking a ball against. That was my main like activity. I did it more than reading, I did it more than listening to music. You made your own ball, didn't you? Well my dad used to help me. You could make a ball by cutting up in a cut inner tubes. You'd get some silver paper, crush it to a ball and then you'd wrap these elastic bands round it tightly. So the ball was irregular in shape and it was tremendous for ball control because you couldn't rely where it was going to bounce.

Presenter10:59

And you passed your eleven plus. You went to the

Allan Ahlberg11:01

I scraped through. I got an interview and they I just dragged myself into the sea form, yes.

Presenter11:06

And was that a door to a different world, a different life? Did you see different sorts of people?

Allan Ahlberg11:09

I mean, you don't know that as a child, but the consequence of going to the grammar school was that one way or another I ended up with a couple of A levels, which later on down the road meant I could become a teacher.

Presenter11:20

Sold tens of millions of books, got his highest mark was seven out of twenty for English.

Allan Ahlberg11:27

That did happen. It happened in my last year in in in primary school, I think. Your talent for writing wasn't recognised earlier? No. At the grammar school I had a very good English teacher. Her name, suitably, was Miss Scriven. And Miss Scriven would give us essays to write. They weren't intended to be works of fiction, but I invariably

Allan Ahlberg11:45

twisted the title to write a story and she gave marks out of twenty. She gave marks for spelling and mine was rubbish and handwriting and I looked like a spider had jumped out of the inkwell and I wrote in such a state of excitement that I left words out. So I'd get about four out of twenty and she'd give it back to me and she'd say that she had enjoyed those bits that she could actually decipher. But the thing that she then did was

Allan Ahlberg12:08

She invited us to read our stories to the other kids, and that was the first time, because then I could I could read my own writing just about, and I could put the words back in that I'd left out, and the kids laughed at my story, and that was the beginning of thinking.

Allan Ahlberg12:23

I like this.

Presenter12:24

Tell me about your next piece of music.

Allan Ahlberg12:26

In the democracy of music in cars, which most families experience, I've been exposed to a lot of Dylan over the years because Vanessa, my present wife, loves Dylan and it's taken me a few years to get into Dylan, but I do really think he's wonderful and uh I've picked a mysterious and comic strange song called Ain't Talkin'.

Speaker 312:39

Uh

Speaker 312:46

As I walked out tonight in the mystic garden

Speaker 312:52

It flowers are dangling from the thigh.

Speaker 312:57

I was passing by a young cool crystal fountain.

Speaker 313:04

Someone hit me from behind.

Speaker 313:08

Ain't talking.

Speaker 313:11

Just a whole

Presenter13:13

Bob Dylan and Ain't Talkin' and a tribute Alan Olberg to your wife Vanessa's taste in music and managing to persuade you too that he's any good at all. Postman, gravedigger, soldier, plumber's mate. You've done all of those things, and we'll come to them in a moment. But when you were around about eighteen you said you'd scraped a couple.

Speaker 313:19

Persuade you to

Presenter13:31

Availables, and you decided to just run away to escape.

Allan Ahlberg13:34

Uh

Allan Ahlberg13:35

I had a job. I think I was working at that time at Accles and Pollocks, which is a famous factory that makes steel tubes in Albury. What were you doing? I was in the I was in an office wearing a collar and tie, which I hated, and um I think I was an estimator, but I was really just they used to send me round to the shop to get the bacon sandwiches at half past nine.

Allan Ahlberg13:53

At that time

Allan Ahlberg13:54

I hated Albrey, and so I I I ran away. I got on my bike and supposedly went to work.

Allan Ahlberg14:00

But I peddalled up to Birmingham and pawned my Badminton racket and tried to sell my bike, and I left it in the street because I couldn't sell it, and with the little money I had I got on a train and went to London.

Presenter14:10

Yeah.

Allan Ahlberg14:11

I'm glad to say on that day I did send in fact, I think before I left Birmingham I sent my mother a telegram.

Presenter14:16

Your father had just then died the year before.

Allan Ahlberg14:18

So it was a harsh thing.

Presenter14:20

It was a harsh thing.

Allan Ahlberg14:22

I know it was. I did feel a sense of panic of being trapped and in fact subsequently the other jobs that I took when I was in my late in my early twenties were all overall jobs. I just I had the sense that if somebody got me in an office and nailed me down I'd stay there. As long as I was digging a grave in the middle of nowhere or pushing a plumber's cart around Maryleburn, there was a a degree of freedom.

Presenter14:44

And do you think your mother understood?

Allan Ahlberg14:46

No, and I I think I can't think she did. She didn't she never upbraided me, and uh within a few weeks I was sending her laundry. I mean, shameful again, but and uh got I got her to send me my football boots, which I desperately needed, and things like that.

Presenter15:00

Uh

Allan Ahlberg15:00

Uh

Presenter15:00

So

Allan Ahlberg15:00

For these jobs

Presenter15:00

Then

Allan Ahlberg15:01

Uh

Presenter15:01

We'll go through them again. Postman, grave digger, soldier, plumbers, mates, in which order? What did you start with?

Allan Ahlberg15:08

After I'd been in London for a few months, I then

Allan Ahlberg15:11

got to do my national service. I did three years instead of two, mainly because a a national serviceman I think got twenty one shillings, he's a bit over a pound. If you signed on for a next year you got three pound a week, and I know I sent my mother a pound a week, and that's why I signed on for another year. And then after the army I I was briefly a plumber's mate in Maryleburn, and I had to give that up after

Allan Ahlberg15:31

I think four days, because I pushed the plumber's cart around Malibu, and then we went to repair a lady's lavatory in some swanky bit of London.

Allan Ahlberg15:40

and I had to carry all his things down the steps to the toilet.

Allan Ahlberg15:43

All the time these glamorous young women were going up and down the stairs, and so I was as bright as a beetle and I was just unbearably embarrassed to be doing this, and I resigned my job as a plumber's mate, and I think I went home then, and that's when I became a gravedigger.

Presenter15:56

And you stuck at that a bit longer?

Allan Ahlberg15:58

Uh

Presenter15:58

Yeah.

Allan Ahlberg15:58

Uh

Presenter15:58

And it was Mr McGibbon, the Superintendent of Par

Allan Ahlberg16:01

He ran all the parks and cemeteries in the Oldbury district.

Presenter16:02

But you should

Allan Ahlberg16:07

He discovered I'd got a couple of A levels, and so he

Allan Ahlberg16:10

He kind of hoisted me out of my hole in the ground, and he said he thought I should be a teacher. I was very shy in those days. I mean, I had trouble buying a bus ticket without blushing as the conductor spoke to me. Anyway, he took me round in his car, took me to some schools.

Allan Ahlberg16:25

And

Allan Ahlberg16:26

I worked for a year in a rather nice little school called Bleak House Junior School.

Allan Ahlberg16:30

And discovered that I could do it. Lucky. We'll talk more about that in a second. For now, tell me about your. Next piece of music

Presenter16:36

Yeah.

Allan Ahlberg16:37

Norma Waterson. This is a spare, simple voice and guitar song. Tragic really, but wonderful.

Speaker 416:46

A yeoman farmer, he loved me dearly.

Speaker 416:53

So did my father, but not that clearly.

Speaker 417:01

Trying to spoil things for my man and me He said a trap would break the back of any tree

Presenter17:15

Norma Watterson singing Anna Dixie. So it was to Bleak House Primary that you went to teach but y

Presenter17:21

You weren't actually trained as a teacher, so

Allan Ahlberg17:23

No, in those days it was legal to go and work in a school with no qualification at all. I I think if the parents in that area knew that an ex gravedigger had walked in and begun to teach their kids, they might have protested. Because on the first morning I arrived

Allan Ahlberg17:36

Full of doubts, really, and shyness, the head mister Fellows, met me, and he said,'Come with me,' he said,'and he took me into a classroom.

Allan Ahlberg17:44

And he said,'Sit here' and I sat at the teacher's desk, and he and he opened the register, and he said,'I'll be back in a minute' and he disappeared then till playtime, because the teacher of that class had not shown up, and mister Fellows, whatever else was going to happen, was not going to teach them himself.

Allan Ahlberg18:00

And luckily these little kids they were only seven, they'd come up from the infants, so they didn't know I wasn't a teacher. And so somehow I survived that day, and by the end of that day I realized that um

Allan Ahlberg18:11

this was something I might be able to do and I'd I

Allan Ahlberg18:14

Increasingly I just loved it, and for about seven or eight years I forgot all about being a writer, and I was obsessed with being a teacher.

Presenter18:20

What about the shyness?

Allan Ahlberg18:22

There wasn't any.

Presenter18:22

You said that for those seven years you enjoyed it so much that you gave up all notion of being a writer. Yeah, but there was no indication, well, so far, to me, that you had been harbouring the desire to be a writer. I mean, was it a very, very private notion?

Allan Ahlberg18:26

Yeah.

Allan Ahlberg18:35

Yes, it was a permanent dream really that I think arose probably as early as thirteen or fourteen.

Presenter18:38

Somewhere.

Allan Ahlberg18:42

I knew I wanted to be a writer, and my image of the writer was a man in a white suit who strolled down to the harbour side in Nice or Cannes or somewhere, and had an aperitif and sat there at about eleven o'clock. And he looked as though he'd done nothing at all, really, but in fact he'd been up at six and he'd written two or three pages. It was words, and it was also a way of life that I was romanced by. Do you do that now? Do you in a white suit and have an aperitif at eleven? I have a scruffy white suit. I don't I'm not I'm more a a pint of beer man than an aperitif and uh

Allan Ahlberg19:12

I do like the way of life. I mean the the way of life is you just go off on your own and try and make something out of words, and that does still please me.

Presenter19:18

Snap

Presenter19:20

And you say that if you hadn't travelled to Sunderland, you might never have made things out of words. It was there that you met the woman who was to become your first wife. Yes. How did you meet?

Allan Ahlberg19:25

So it was there that she

Allan Ahlberg19:28

How did you

Allan Ahlberg19:29

Sunderland students used to go up to Newcastle, which was the really lively place. I went up with a friend of mine to the student union, and Janet went up with a friend of hers, and we all rushed to get the twelve o'clock bus back to Sunderland. And my friend fancied her friend, and it went from there, really, so we just sat on the bus and got to know each other.

Allan Ahlberg19:46

More about Janice in a moment. Tell me about your next piece of music.

Presenter19:48

Uh

Allan Ahlberg19:48

Janet Baker, isn't it? I've got three women's voices, one after the other, and a very different voice from Norma Waterson's, but just so beautiful. I've picked a song called Come Sing and Dance, despite the fact that it's a religious song, because I'm not religious, but it's so ecstatic that I forgive it its religious flavour.

Speaker 420:11

Don't say it.

Speaker 420:24

Couldn't I stay?

Speaker 420:30

Come sing and dance!

Presenter20:38

Janet Baker singing Come Sing and Dance.

Presenter20:42

So the collaboration began with Janet Olberg when you were you were married by the time you started to write stories together. She was illustrating And one day she said to you, Will you write a story?

Allan Ahlberg20:48

Together.

Allan Ahlberg20:52

She did.

Presenter20:53

In order that I can do the drawings to

Allan Ahlberg20:55

She had done a number of books by then and they were mostly non-fiction books about how to make things out of yogurt pots and she was sick of that and asked me to write a story. It was five books actually called The Brick Street Boys and it was about a gang of boys obsessed with playing football and we did these five and I thought this is a piece of cake. So I gave up teaching and then we carried on with other books and uh

Presenter21:16

So you were making enough money to give up.

Allan Ahlberg21:17

No, not really, no. I just thought because we'd had our first book accepted, I thought it was just as easy as that. We then spent about 18 months writing and illustrating more. The the system was yeah, I'd write a story, Janet would do some pictures and we'd post it to a publisher. And the publisher would keep it six weeks or two months or three months and then send it back and say they didn't want it. We had about twenty rejection slips. Then we ran out of money, so I had to go back to teaching for a while. And then suddenly we got two or three things taken.

Presenter21:43

And thirty seven books together then with uh Janet Olberg, and and probably your biggest collaboration would be Jessica, your daughter.

Allan Ahlberg21:53

We'd been married about ten years.

Allan Ahlberg21:56

It was generally supposed, of course, in the business, that he was not so much a baby, more a piece of market research. But we were. And she did.

Presenter22:03

Did you did you always put your ideas in front of her to see how she responded?

Allan Ahlberg22:03

Did you did you

Allan Ahlberg22:05

Oh no no, but some quite good books came. I mean the Jolly Postman came because Jessica used to play with the post when she was two, just putting things in and out of envelopes like a toy and I thought

Allan Ahlberg22:16

How nice it would be to have a book with envelopes that you could take things out of.

Presenter22:19

Which is exactly what the jolly person is. Each time you turn over you have a new envelope to open and your little chubby fingers go in and and pick out this bit of paper.

Allan Ahlberg22:20

Person is

Allan Ahlberg22:24

Yeah.

Allan Ahlberg22:26

Yeah.

Allan Ahlberg22:29

That is a very intricate book. Well, Jessica was two when she gave us the idea, and um

Allan Ahlberg22:33

You're right, it was a fight to get it made. You could obviously make it, but it would have cost £30 a copy. And we eventually managed to find, I think it was made in Hong Kong initially. So did you actually make the prototype yourself at home? Yes, yes. We needed to have an envelope and then a blank page and then an envelope and then a blank page and they would send it back and say, We can do it, we can do it. But you've got to have two blank pages here. And we said, no, no, no, we can only have one. So then. They did it again and they said, Well, you've got to have two blank pages at the beginning. It ought to do with the way paper is cut and folded. Jessica was seven when the book was published, so it took five years. Tell me about your next piece of music then. I've got these three lovely voices: Norma Waterson, Janet Baker, and now Ella Fitzgerald.

Allan Ahlberg23:11

There's a whole lot of songs written in the 30s and 40s by people like Cole Porter or the Gershwins, but particularly Rogers and Heart that I love. And this one is one of theirs and it's I didn't know what time it was.

Speaker 423:23

I didn't know what time it was then I met you.

Speaker 423:33

Oh, what a lovely time it was How sublime it was too I didn't know what day it was now

Presenter23:50

I didn't know what time it was, sung by Ella Fitzgerald. I'm wondering, Ellen Olberg, how much what you wrote in those days when you were collaborating with your then wife Janet, how how much it was influenced by how she drew?

Allan Ahlberg24:02

She was really quite a versatile illustrator, so that the text tends to come first, you see, and although I knew the kind of pictures she made, I would write a story and bring it to her, and then she would respond to that. I think it was that was the sequence.

Presenter24:15

She died of breast cancer in nineteen ninety four. I'm wondering how on earth uh you felt that you could write again, because when people lose their their partners they they often there's a resistance to doing anything that they've done, but if if every day's work is a reminder that the person isn't there, it must be very difficult to work.

Allan Ahlberg24:24

The partners that they

Allan Ahlberg24:33

Well, it was and um curiously eventually it was writing that got me out of it really. For months and months I just drifted around and uh the usual

Allan Ahlberg24:42

um, despairing, empty, hollow, tragic thing that

Allan Ahlberg24:47

Thousands of people endure, of course.

Allan Ahlberg24:49

The way I got out of it was instinctive more than anything. I suddenly, after quite a few months, I

Allan Ahlberg24:55

I thought that I would try and make a little book about Janet. In part it was a book about how she dealt with the

Allan Ahlberg25:01

awful business of knowing you're gonna die and dying and uh

Allan Ahlberg25:05

But then it was also a celebration of all the things that she did, not just the books, but she was wonderful at making gifts and cards and toys and models and things for all her friends and her family. But the business of making this book, which is quite a short book, almost like a picture book in lots of ways, not many words, but a great many pictures. Her pictures, her ruffs, and the things that she made. I made this book myself. It was privately printed and it was beautifully bound and the paper was immaculate. And I could have great rows with the printer about everything and get really lunatically sort of precious and obsessive about it. And it took a year to do it. And so I made the book, and I think I printed 500 or 1,000 and gave them away to family and friends. And that

Allan Ahlberg25:47

Just the making of that book.

Allan Ahlberg25:50

Um got me out of the tunnel, the part way out.

Presenter25:52

And you said a moment ago that the way that she coped with the knowledge that she was dying, how did she cope? What did she do?

Allan Ahlberg26:00

She worked she worked almost to the very end. She she finished a couple of books, and then at the very end she wrote

Allan Ahlberg26:07

um beautiful postcards which she illustrated and gave to her family and friends. Farewell. You know, she in one of them to a friend she said um she didn't want to go, she was enjoying it so much, but she'd just go on ahead and put the kettle on.

Presenter26:21

And you were left then not just with your grief, but with your daughter, a teenaged daughter.

Allan Ahlberg26:24

She was fifteen, yes.

Presenter26:26

And I can't really imagine what that must be like. What was it like?

Allan Ahlberg26:32

Well, in some ways it was just ordinary, you know. Jessie went to school. Jessie helped when we organized Janet's funeral. We we we put photographs and flowers all up, and family and friends spoke, and Jessie managed to speak as well.

Allan Ahlberg26:45

But then after, for many months, it was just ordinary, rather painful life. She went to school, she came home, and we had meals, and we just kind of limped along, shipwrecked, for months and months. I got into making this book, and and Jessie survived, and that's about it, really, I think.

Presenter27:04

Let's take a break for some music just now.

Allan Ahlberg27:05

Which is Leonard Cohen, isn't it? Yes, I do love this this song called Closing Time. It's about singing and dancing in a in a dive and it's about it's a song

Presenter27:15

It's not very proper.

Allan Ahlberg27:16

It isn't very proper, is it? No, I'm I'm quite proud of this one, really. It's funny and it's sad.

Presenter27:17

Yeah.

Allan Ahlberg27:20

And it's sexy and it's wonderfully musical and I love it and um I I thought we might come in the middle of it because there are bits in the middle that I would quite like all of us to hear.

Speaker 427:31

Let's do that.

Speaker 427:42

And I lift my glass to the awful truth Which can't reveal to the ears of youth Except to say it isn't worth a damn

Speaker 427:52

And the whole damn place goes crazy twice And it's once for the devil and it's once full price But the bust don't like these daisy heights We're busted in the blinding light

Presenter28:02

Leonard Cohen and Closing Time with all its debauchery in there, somewhat unsuitable, Alan Olberg, for children's objects.

Speaker 328:07

Uh

Speaker 428:07

The children's auto

Allan Ahlberg28:08

Absolutely, yes.

Speaker 428:08

Uh

Presenter28:08

So you moved publisher after Janet's death. Y you felt that you couldn't go through the motions with the same people again and still make books, is that right?

Allan Ahlberg28:16

That that yes, I simply went to them and said, Look, I I think I want to try and work again, but I can't

Allan Ahlberg28:21

To begin with, come and work with you, it would be it would be too painful. I went to a publisher where some friends worked, and I did one or two books with them to as it were to get me afloat again.

Presenter28:31

And did you enjoy swimming in the waters again of work?

Allan Ahlberg28:34

I did, really, yes. And there was a bonus. When I went there, a friend of mine said see if they'll put you with an editor. She's really very good. Her name is Vanessa Clark.

Allan Ahlberg28:45

And they did, and it turned out to be quite a good thing.

Presenter28:48

She's now your wife.

Allan Ahlberg28:48

Yeah.

Presenter28:49

And so when did the professional relationship become more than that with Vanessa?

Allan Ahlberg28:54

I'm not absolutely sure the timing, but I do remember that my editor, David Lloyd, came to the house up in Leicester, where I then lived, with the book that we were working on, and we we spent some hours working on it. Then I drove them to the station and gave Vanessa the usual kiss on the cheek which one gives one's editor, and only when I got home did I

Allan Ahlberg29:13

begin to feel that there was something a little more in that kiss than uh than usual and uh

Allan Ahlberg29:18

Then gradually over the next few months or so I courted her really, and we we got together.

Presenter29:24

And what about the money?

Presenter29:26

There must be plenty of it now, and you were brought up with none of it at all. Can you can you enjoy your money? Because often people who've come from very sort of basic beginnings find it tricky enjoying money.

Allan Ahlberg29:36

I buy loads of C D's. I I spend much less than I earn.

Allan Ahlberg29:41

I think the the great advantage of the money has been

Allan Ahlberg29:45

that it meant that we could just simply spend as long as we liked to do the next book.

Presenter29:48

And you do like the garden shed still to write in. So being solitary on on this island is not much of a problem for you.

Allan Ahlberg29:50

The rule of the mm.

Allan Ahlberg29:55

Well, it's half not a problem, yes. Not only do I need solitude for my work, I enjoy it. But there's a world of difference between being in a shed and being on your own and knowing that there's someone up in the house that you can go and have a cup of tea with. So I would be half of an excellent castaway, and the other half of me would be driven insane. Tell me about your final choice today. This is music to strut to.

Presenter30:13

Yeah.

Allan Ahlberg30:16

It's also I think daydreaming music. You can imagine yourself into the story of this music. It's Joseph Locke singing Goodbye from the White Horse Inn.

Speaker 430:25

In some Methodists in French dominion I shall do my beat and fall for the flag if I must

Speaker 430:42

Oh and I you know the reason why I went home.

Speaker 430:47

Oh Leopold's last

Presenter30:54

Joseph Locke singing Goodbye from the White Horse Inn. So, Anne, I will give you the Bible and the complete works of Shakspere on your desert island. What other book would you like?

Allan Ahlberg31:04

The book I would take would be Alice Munro's Selected Stories. Uh I've got some of her stories at home, but I realize I've not really read many, but the ones I've read are wonderful, and in this selection you get twenty eight stories and five hundred pages. I'm a slow reader, so it will last me.

Presenter31:09

BEAP

Allan Ahlberg31:18

Plenty of time.

Presenter31:19

And your luxury.

Allan Ahlberg31:21

I've given this a lot of thought.

Allan Ahlberg31:22

And um

Allan Ahlberg31:24

It's slightly complicated. I would like

Allan Ahlberg31:26

A large barrel of bricks.

Allan Ahlberg31:29

A bucket of water,

Allan Ahlberg31:30

A trowel

Allan Ahlberg31:31

A lump of chalk.

Allan Ahlberg31:33

and a football size four.

Allan Ahlberg31:35

Then I would build a wall with the bricks and the mortar. It would be misses Pernell's wall from the fish shop.

Allan Ahlberg31:41

and I would chalk a goal on it, and I would kick a ball against it.

Allan Ahlberg31:45

One thing I like best is kicking a ball still at my it it seems a a rather boastful and ridiculous luxury, but I would rather enjoy kicking the ball against the wall.

Presenter31:54

I was worried there that you were going to choose something very useful to build. I don't know.

Allan Ahlberg31:57

So you may have it. Thank you.

Presenter31:59

So you may have it.

Presenter32:00

And the one song that you choose to save.

Allan Ahlberg32:02

Oh yes, if it's one disk I'll take the Leonard coin.

Presenter32:06

You may have that. Alan Orberg, thank you very much for letting us hear your desert island discs.

Allan Ahlberg32:10

Thank you, I've enjoyed it.

Presenter32:17

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Islandists Archive.

Presenter32:21

For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four