Publisher Sandra looks back on her life for the Festival of Chichester

Sandra will be discussing it at this year’s Festival of Chichester, offering talks on Wednesday, June 14, and Thursday, June 22 both at 12 midday in the Old Court Room, the Council House, North Street, Chichester. The book is called Night Things On, as Sandra explains: “Writing it was pretty straightforward. I started writing during the lockdown when like many people I was stuck in my flat. I was thinking ‘Oh I can't go out! I'm not allowed to go out!’ But I was thinking that maybe things will be better tomorrow and so that's why I called it Night Things On. The idea is that you get ready for the next day in the hope that on the next day it's going to be better and actually tomorrow has been better, hasn't it. I do think everything has improved.”

Sandra is calling her talk Mirror, Mirror, Make Me Younger! Is that going to happen? “Well, I am working on it but I thought if I can't be younger then at least I can stay the same age I am and I do feel that I've done very well. I've had an amazing life. It is like the title of that film It's A Wonderful Life. I'm 88 now and I think one of the great things in life is to keep yourself healthy. I've been able to do that from a very young age when I used to have to walk a mile and a quarter to get the train. I've been very fit ever since. I do think that started me on a fitness route. I'm 88 and I do find it more difficult now but I am bullied by my sons… in a nice way. If I'm sitting there and I'm thinking I don't want to go out then usually the telephone goes and one of my sons rings and says ‘Have you been out yet?’

"But I also think you've got to keep your mind working, and if you find your mind fading you've just got to jerk yourself out of it. But I'm extremely lucky in that I've got an amazing memory. I do remember my first day at school. When I got there my mother left me there and I was given some plasticine to play with and I soon got pretty bored of that so I got permission to go to the outside loos and I just found my way back home. It was quite a long way. My mother came to the door and said ‘What are you doing there!’

“Another great memory is scent. We had a shed at the bottom of the garden. We had a big, big house. My father had a good job and at bottom of the garden there was this big shed where I used to play with all my pots and pans but the other side of the hedge there was a privet hedge and when it rains you could smell that privet hedge and that smell has just stuck with me forever. It was so fresh and fragrant and quite distinctive and even now if I am walking past a privet hedge in the rain, I always lean right into it!” Sandra has finished writing her autobiography and is delighted to say she has improved it by revamping and re-editing to the extent that “the text now sings off the page”, as she says.

The task she has now set herself is to try to find a publisher by Christmas.