To Suffering Wall Din and beyond!

Mummy's book, launching June 6

27^th April

Hello. This is Henry Fawcett Dodds writing. Damien, our publisher, left a message on my answerphone which I could hardly hear. Where he was I’ve no idea. It sounded like the House of Commons at PMs questions time, but with music. Honestly I don’t believe it! He seems to be leaving us to do all the publicity for the book of Mummy’s book Not Going Quietly! while he effs off to the Costa del Sol! He says Mummy has to blog and go to a booklaunch somewhere in the wilds of East Anglia!!!  It sounded like Suffering Wall Din. Could there be such a place? I know there are some odd names around but I’m not sure this place actually exists. Must Google it. Well, fat chance! Mummy doesn’t set foot outside Bartlesham these days. She’s waiting for her hip replacement op too, of course, so isn’t in the best of moods. I shall have to buy a large bouquet and go and try and talk her round. OMG! 

She's Not Going Quietly!

I’m introducing a guest blogger in this new blog, Henry Fawcett Dodds, son of Mabel Fawcett Dodds.  He has been told that blogging, tweeting and facebooking is a good way to promote the publication of his mother’s new book Not Going Quietly! The secret recorded diary of Mabel Fawcett Dodds, which is officially launched in June 2019.

Ok, you may have guessed that neither Mabel nor Henry is a real person.  It was a few weeks after I first got to know Angela Howard, that she revealed her not-so-secret alter ego, the marvellously ghastly Mabel Fawcett Dodds. Mabel is living in a retirement home and supposed to be writing her memoirs with the help of a digital recorder. 

Initially, I was a bit worried that I wouldn’t like her creation. I need not have been.  Mabel is a slow burn, one of those characters you find funnier the more you know about them, and I loved Angela’s monologues as the dreadful Mrs Fawcett Dodds, with her Queenly voice and Machiavellian plots.

As a fan of her work, I wanted to help Angela with the launch of her new project, a book ostensibly written by Mrs Fawcett Dodds herself, and illustrated by Rebecca Lee.  As a friend and knowing my parlous financial state, Angela insists on paying me for the work I do. 

Angela would like me to tell you that as she was born in the year World War II broke out she is not really at home in the modern screen-gazing, button-pushing world, and is really grateful for the help of someone like myself to help her connect with the digital age. So, I am being paid to help Angela with the launch of the book – but with my hand on my heart I can tell you I wouldn’t say anything as a paid employee, I would not say otherwise.

We are agreed that Mabel Fawcett Dodds would never cope with a computer – she barely copes with a digital voice recorder.  So her son, Henry Fawcett Dodds will be the blogger, written by Angela, posted by me, Fee Berry.

This blog will chart the progress of the project, up to launch day – and beyond.