Spoken portrait

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On weddings and all that love

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Some personal reflections on the wedding tributes we are producing for couples who have had to cancel their big day because of Coronavirus lockdown

I’ve been to some fabulous weddings of very dear friends and family over the years. But, if I’m completely honest, I didn’t really ‘get’ the whole marriage thing until recently. I think it had a lot to do with being gay and that quite painful sense that this was an institution from which my partner and I were excluded. Then, a couple of years after the laws were changed, we got married ourselves (that’s us in the photo!) and the penny dropped. The big revelation for me was the amount of love we felt on our big day – not just for each other (obviously!), but for and from all our family and friends.

Having had such a wonderful experience myself, I feel huge sympathy for couples who are having to postpone their weddings because of coronavirus social distancing. So it’s a real pleasure to be able to produce Audio Tributes for them.

One example is a couple – both NHS workers – who were due to marry in April. The sister of the bride-to-be approached me about producing something as a surprise gift to cheer them up in these difficult times. We discussed who would be good to speak to and she sounded them out about getting involved. I then set up and conducted recorded telephone and internet interviews with nine of the couple’s closest friends and family, and gathered voice messages from a further five.

After some very absorbing work mastering the sound quality and editing things into shape, the final feature took the form of a 25 minute ‘Lockdown Special’ tribute from people all over the country and even in Singapore. Between them they told the story of the couple and what’s great about them, and sent their well wishes.

What struck me most from all the conversations and messages was the amount of love everyone had for the couple. There’s something rather magical about being able to capture that and bring it all together. Here’s what the bride-to-be said about it:

“Thank you so much for putting together the lockdown special. Everyone knew how disappointed we were when we had to postpone the wedding (I’ve been waiting 11 years!!! – it was our 11 year anniversary). It really was brilliant to hear my friends and family say those wonderful things. It really brightened up our day/week/month/year! I laughed a lot, I cried a lot, and smiled till my face couldn’t take it!”

I like to think the tribute helped to recreate that warm fuzzy loved-up feeling that the couple would otherwise have had on their big day – as we did on ours.

If you would like to arrange an Audio Tribute for a couple you know, we’d love to hear from you.

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The Telephone Operator

Here’s a short audio story we produced about a very attentive telephone operator in the 1950s. It’s told by one of my favourite raconteurs who we spoke to over the landline a couple of weeks into lockdown.

 

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Ums and ers: the sound of thinking

I spend a huge amount of time listening back over recorded interviews when I’m working on Spoken Portraits and podcasts. Once I have organised and cut the ‘tape’ into a flowing, engaging story, there’s the question of all those hesitations. There can be hundreds of ‘ums’, ‘ers’ and long pauses in a lengthy interview, adding up to several minutes (I make no criticism here: I’m a big ‘ummer’). I love capturing the way people sound when they speak naturally. But there’s a balance to be struck between realism and holding the listener’s attention!

Here are a few ‘ums’ and ‘ers’ salvaged from the cutting room floor that I’ve mixed together. I like to think of it as the sound of people thinking.

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Stories over the telephone

Woman Talking On the Phone

Are you thinking about commissioning a Spoken Portrait for someone who may be self-isolating at home? Perhaps you know someone who is planning a wedding or special birthday party but guests may not be able to come because of movement restrictions. A telephone-based Spoken Portrait or Tribute is a great way to capture their stories. Here’s an example of how it works, from a few years ago. If the idea appeals and you’d like to find our more, we’d love to hear from you. You’ll find our contact details at the bottom of the page.


I was asked to produce an Audio Tribute to a very special mother for her eightieth birthday. Her children were planning a surprise party and the idea was to present a This Is Your Life style collection of memories told by her oldest friends and family. The problem was that there was neither the time nor the budget for me to interview everyone face-to-face as they were based all over England, in Sweden and even in the USA. The solution, however, was simple: we did the whole thing by telephone.

It was all very straightforward. Her son put me in touch with everyone and explained what we were planning. I arranged a time to ring each of them — nine people in all. I recorded the calls and then edited the material into a feature that her children played to her on the big day. I’m told there wasn’t a dry eye in the room!

The full 18 minute feature included stories spanning 80 years woven together in chronological order, and intercut with music sung by one of the interviewees and his band. Here are a few of the most touching tributes.
 

 

The shocking past

Image of a crying woman

Image: Crying Girl by Roy Lichtenstein, 1964


Sometimes when I’m interviewing someone for a Spoken Portrait I learn things about the past that really shock me.

An extreme example came out of a conversation with a lawyer who had for a time specialised in family law. We were talking about women’s rights and in particular how things have changed for married women, and she gave the example of victims of domestic abuse (thankfully, this did not affect her personally).

Back in the 1950s it was generally denied that domestic violence happened at all. If a woman was being abused by her husband she might confide in her GP. Typically, however, doctors would respond as if it were a problem with the wife and not her partner. So, if she had been suffering as a result from depression and panic attacks the doctor would focus on that. Worse still, it was quite common for doctors to recommend that women in this situation be lobotomised (yes, you read that right).

A lobotomy, if you don’t already know, is a procedure that involves severing connections in the brain’s pre-frontal cortex. It used to be a standard medical treatment for mental disorders ranging from depression to schizophrenia. The idea was that the surgery would stop the patient’s feelings of extreme anguish. The price for this, though, was that they would generally be left emotionally numb and intellectually impaired: think Jack Nicholson at the end of One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest. 

Presumably the doctors reasoned that the lobotomy would solve the woman’s ‘problem’ in that the violence could continue but she would be numb to it. If that wasn’t awful enough, the operation was extremely dangerous. 5% of patients died. Some were left suicidal, others severely brain damaged.

It takes conversations like these to appreciate just how much the world can change in a lifetime. Thankfully, the practice of lobotomising people with mental health issues was banned in most countries by the 1970s in favour of modern psychiatric drugs and therapies. Depressingly, there seems to be no end to domestic abuse. But thanks to the efforts of women’s rights campaigners it is at least now recognised as a serious criminal offence, with the victims deserving of protection. Law reforms mean that those who wish to stay at home with their children can apply to do so and have their partner excluded, where before they would have had to leave if the house was owned in the husband’s name. And those that dare not stay can seek safety in the network of women’s refuges started by Erin Pizzey in the 1970s.

Evacuated to the other side of the world

Child evacuees to Australia on SS Battory

Image: Musician Meta Maclean (an escort) conducts CORB evacuees to Australia aboard MS Batory in 1940.


As a childhood fan of Bedknobs and Broomsticks and Carrie’s War, I grew up with a keen interest in stories about children evacuated to the countryside during the Blitz. But I had no idea that some children were evacuated to the other side of the world.

The topic came up in an interview with a man for a Spoken Portrait. When the war started he was boarding at an English prep school as his parents were based in what was then Ceylon. When the public school that he was due to attend was bombed it was felt that the best thing would be for him to return to Ceylon. Soon after he arrived, though, Singapore fell to the Japanese. Fearing an invasion, all expat children were advised to leave the island. So, he headed to Australia where he stayed with a local family and went to boarding school until the end of the war.

His was a ‘private evacuation’ by a rather indirect route. I was surprised to discover that some 2,664 British children were evacuated directly to Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Canada and the USA by the Children’s Overseas Reception Board (CORB). The Board was set up in 1940 after Dunkirk when the country feared an imminent German invasion. The evacuations involved perilous journeys on converted ocean liners through war zones dodging U-Boats. One such ship SS City of Benares was torpedoed and sunk on its way to Canada. 77 of the 90 child evacuees aboard died. The tragedy led to the CORB programme being abandoned in September that year.

Each child evacuated abroad no doubt had different experiences there. I’m glad to say these were happy years for the man I interviewed. Perhaps the toughest part was the return to the UK. First, there was the question of how to get back. There were limited boats available and thousands of British troops who also needed repatriating. CORB evacuees had priority. For people like him, the options were either to wait many months for a place on a ship or to work your passage. For all children who had spent years apart from their parents, it must have been hard readjusting to family life. And I can only imagine how grim cold damp austerity Britain must have seemed. Perhaps unsurprisingly at least one-third of the children evacuated to sunny Australia eventually returned to live there.

 

Did the war mean crossing continents for you? I’d love to hear about other people’s experiences.

 

Life was much slower

England during petrol rationing in the 1940s

 

When I interview people who lived through the war and austerity period that followed, I’m always intrigued to hear how they coped with shortages of food and clothing. I’ve had some wonderful conversations about pet pigs, sweets, bootlegging and what to do with frayed collars (turn them inside out and stitch them back in, of course!). But one side of things that I never thought to ask about until someone brought it quite recently, was petrol rationing.

Fuel rationing was introduced in September 1939 soon after the start of the war. Petrol was, in fact, the very first thing to be rationed. That’s because of our total dependence on imports from overseas. In 1942 petrol for private use was withdrawn completely so that what limited supplies there were could be reserved for essential use, like ambulances and public transport.

I expect many adults must have felt as if their worlds had been cruelly shrunk. Not so, it seems, the children. With scarcely any vehicles on the road, their horizons opened up. Some people I have spoken to talked of wandering off round their villages as young as two or three. Others have described daily adventures cycling for miles, the only requirement being that they return home in time for tea.

Petrol rationing for private use came back in when the war ended in 1945. Old cars that had been stored in garages for years were dusted down, oiled up and brought back out on the roads – but only for special occasions. One person I interviewed described how it would take the family two days to drive from Surrey to Norfolk for their summer holiday, with a camping stop en route. ‘Life was much slower’, he commented.

It’s remarks like these that make me long for a return to ‘slower’ times, with less choice about where to go and more delight in the journey. But, of course, that’s from a privileged position of being someone who is very well-travelled. For those brought up in the 1940s, the lifting of fuel rationing in 1950 on ‘VP day’ (victory for petrol) was a major event. It opened up the possibility of impromptu day-trips to the sea-side or visits to see friends. And perhaps having grown up with such limited horizons explains why people of that generation tend to be such keen jet-setters.


Do you have memories of petrol rationing, empty roads and what it was like when the controls were lifted? I’d love to hear other people’s recollections.


Images from September 1939, during the first week of petrol rationing.

Universal Aunts

Image of a Universal Aunt accompanying two young children

 

One of the things I love about producing Spoken Portraits is learning about how different things were in the past. Often, these discoveries come from the little details of a bigger story.

So it was with ‘Universal Aunts’. I was talking to someone about his childhood during and after the war. We got onto the subject of his education, and the fact that he went to boarding school on the south coast from the age of seven. During that period the family lived in various parts of East Anglia and Scotland for the father’s work in the Navy. How, I asked, did he and his brother find their way across the country at the start and end of term?

He answered that, if his mother were not able to travel with them, the boys would take the train to London by themselves (hard to imagine young boys travelling alone these days!). They would be met off the train either by one of their ‘real’ aunts who lived in the capital or by a ‘Universal Aunt’. Being an aunt myself with lots of children in my life, I was tickled by the idea of a Universal Aunt. He explained that ‘UAs, as they were always referred to, were comfortable aunt-like people who were there waiting on the station with a visible notice saying UA. They’d take us across London to meet the School Train [two carriages at Waterloo reserved for the returning pupils] stopping at a Moo-Cow Milk Bar or a Lyons Corner House for something to eat.’

I later did some digging on the internet. I found out that Universal Aunt was the official job title for employees of the Universal Aunts company who could be engaged to look after unaccompanied children. The business was established in 1921 by Gertrude Maclean, who herself had looked after her nieces and nephews during the first world war while her siblings were serving overseas. When the war ended and they returned to England she found herself redundant and, like so many women of her generation, unlikely ever to marry due to the huge number of men who had died in the war. Her brilliantly ingenious response to the situation was to make a business out of the business of being an aunt and help out other children whose parents were serving in the armed forces or away working in the colonies.

I was intrigued to learn that the Universal Aunts company still exists today. Their duties have expanded with the times to cover caring for older clients, pet sitting, house sitting and pretty much anything else their clients need help with. And, of course, they include women with families of their own as well as a good number of men.


Do you have memories of being looked after by a Universal Aunt? I’d love to hear other people’s recollections.

Our new Presentation Boxes

Images of our hand-bound presentation boxes

We’re absolutely thrilled with the new presentation boxes for our Spoken Portraits. Each one has been hand-crafted specially for us by the wonderful folk at Bespoke & Bound. If you don’t know Bespoke & Bound, they’re a collective of master craftspeople who make, print and emboss the most exquisite albums and boxes. 

It’s been a hugely enjoyable process collaborating with their founder Gareth and box maker Cat to come up with the design. We wanted something really special for a feature that will form a treasured part of a family or business archive. It had to be able to accommodate CDs, a USB stick and a paper insert and be made from the highest quality materials. 

We settled on a design that, when closed, has the look and feel of a rare book. Each box has been hand-bound in book cloth and lined with suedette (vegan suede), with our logo embossed on the cover. There’s an extra tray in some of the boxes. This is so that they can hold additional CDs if the Spoken Portrait lasts over an hour.

You can view more images here.

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What is it about Desert Island Discs?

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A recent Radio Times article declared Desert Island Discs the greatest radio show of all time. Such was the verdict of a panel of industry experts including the Today programme’s Justin Webb and 6 Music’s Cerys Matthews. Of their 30 top-ranked shows, it was also one of the longest running (going since 1942), second only to The Shipping Forecast (which began in 1911).

So what explains the show’s popularity and longevity? Its’ producer Cathy Drysdale put it down to the “absolutely genius format [that] makes sure that each programme gets to the heart of people – what moves them and motivates them, what inspires them and enthuses them, who and what they care about. Those are all such incredibly human things that are applicable to absolutely everybody listening.”

The format is of course structured around music: the eight records that each person chooses to take with them to a desert island, which form the soundtrack to their lives, and give a window into their values and joys.

But it’s not just the music. For me, the programme is as much about the space that the presenters give to their castaways to tell their stories, and the kindness they show when talking to them about their struggles and vulnerabilities.

We take inspiration from the show when producing our Spoken Portraits. We don’t generally structure things around music. But, as in Desert Island Discs, the aim of our interviews is to create a space where people can talk freely about their lives, knowing we will respond with interest, humour and sensitivity. And our goal when editing the material is to give the listener an intimate connection with the subject and what makes them tick.

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