Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Writer, actress and countrywoman best known for her books about rural life in Oxfordshire.
On the island
Eight records
Every time I hear it, I'm back there in that little cottage at Ducklington, and my mum has got me on her knee tying that riven on.
Pretty Polly Perkins of Paddington Green
this Grampy of mine I was very fond of, and he of me, and we used to sit on this Cotswold Wall then, near the cottage, and he used to sing all sorts of things to me since I was only about eight or nine and one of the ones that I remember is Pretty Polly Perkins from Paddington Green.
I had started work at ten shillings a week in a laundry ... and a new fellow came on the scene ... and he said to me, Would you like to come to the Oxford Theatre? And for the first time in my life I went to the Oxford Theatre, and I heard a girl sing La Vienne Rose
during the war this song was very popular, You Are My Sunshine. And [my son] was about three or four, and and I taught him it, or he picked it up and learned it, and he used to sing it to me.
another girl and I were going to sing a song that was very popular at that moment ... and my grandsons were sitting in the front row, and I sang it for them, and and they uh by the expression on their faces, they knew I was singing it for them.
What a Wonderful WorldFavourite
one that I'm very fond of is what a wonderful world, because it is a wonderful, wonderful world that we live in. You only got to sort of Open your eyes and have a look, and it's all there.
Three Maidens a-Milking Did Go
Bob takes the part of Tom Forrest in the Archers, and he made a record of all lovely, lovely country tunes, old fashioned country tunes, and uh the one particular one I like is Three Maidens a Milk in Wood Girl.
I think we couldn't help but ending with the the Archer's signature tune. and I would think of them. still plodding on after thirty three years.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:11Could you endure isolation, complete loneliness?
Yes, yes, I think I could for quite a long while.
Presenter asks
1:25Is music important to you?
Uh well, i i it would be then very important. And I like to hear some music, but it isn't, you know no, not my life, really.
Presenter asks
3:53Was [Ducklington] a big village?
No, very small about three hundred souls, I think, when we lived there.
Presenter asks
16:00When did you start to write down all this country knowledge, all these country memories of yours?
Well, not until about the early sixties, I think. I used to think about it a lot, but never sort of got it down on paper.
The keepsakes
The book
The Life and Times of Anthony Wood
Anthony Wood
some one quite recently lent me a a very slim volume of this, and I hadn't got time to sort of really get into it, but he was such a knowledgeable man.
The luxury
I would put it up every day in case there was a ship going by at some time, and they would think Ha ha That's not chartered, that island we must go and see what it is and they might come and rescue me, you see, before I had to make a raft or something. And then I would take it down at night, and then I might be glad to sort of wrap myself in it.
Presenter asks
20:36How did you come to start writing books?
Well, you see, this programme that I finally got into, all in the country, Phil Drabble used to introduce it ... And he said to me one night, he said to me, Molly, have you ever thought of writing a book? ... And he put me in touch with his literary agent ... [who] said, I think you ought to go back and start writing about the village that you were born in, all about the school and the characters and your family ... And that's how the first book came about.
Presenter asks
24:07When did you join the Archers?
Um about thirteen years ago. ... I applied for an audition and passed it ... soon after the play had been on, I was asked if I would like to be in an episode of The Arches, and I really thought it was going to be a one off thing.
“I was chosen to be a princess ... and all the girls in the school nearly all the girls in the school from somewhere or other had ribbons in their hair, but I didn't. Anyhow, the day of the concert arrived ... and my mum said to me, Come here a minute. and from somewhere, and I don't know how she afforded it. But she'd got this piece of ribbon, and she tied it on my hair. And it was the most wonderful thing.”
“I drove um a three-ton lorry all through the war. ... And I used to deliver great big cheeses and two hundred weights of sugar on my back into these bakers and these uh shops that I had to take it to. And it was very hard work, but but I quite enjoyed it.”
“I have to be very grateful to the editor of the paper at that time, because it was he who taught me how to prune my writing. And anybody who knows anything about writing knows that like roses, it has to be pruned drastically.”