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.
Well, I was born in the year of the Berlin Airlift, by which time the War had ended and Angela was getting to grips with having survived Hitler. My first involvement with technology was communicating with my little brother, using the tried and tested method of two Kiti-Kat tins joined with a long piece of string. I don’t know what was so special about Marconi!
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