Living with Isla and the Part stories

Isla Goodchild has been with me since early-2011 when I joined the Beeston WEA writing class, then led by Mike Wareham. He was a good tutor. I joined the class because I was looking for ideas as to how I might write a memoir. The local historian in me was already well aware of reminiscence writing, life story telling and autobiographies, having read hundreds over the twenty odd years Susan, my wife, and I published Local History Magazine. What I hadn't expected Mike to do was divert me, by introducing me to short story writing and its challenges.

Quite early on, Isla Goodchild came into my life. I knew from the off who she was — a amalgam of people and events, men and women, personal, family, work, politics. You name it, she was it. I could see her, hear her, feel her and she has been part of me ever since. Early on Mike asked the class to write in a gender not our own and there was Isla, in my head, waving, 'I'm here, I'm here'.

I love her. I have been writing and parking stories about her ever since. I have probably said before that I am more interested in how words tumble onto the page and how we remember the past, how we prioritise what we write, how easily we are distracted and diverted. Story telling is not a straight line, so why should we expect a life story to be a chronology of dates and events. It is not how we remember things.

Our heads harbour the lives we think we have lead, the ones we wanted to lead or could have had, and when we speak of them those we love and others are there waiting to correct us.

When I first met Isla in 2011 she came, it seemed at the time, out of nowhere, prompted by Mike Wareham. I quickly realised she has always been part me and her life is mine and those of others I have connected to, some fleetingly, whilst others will be with me I until the day I die.

Life is a collection of parts and this fact is enough to explain why I have began to post my Part stories.