My childhood growing up on a smallholding in rural Norfolk has been a big influence on my writing. Secrets and Promises has a lot of my experiences woven into it, from teaching a calf how to drink milk from a bucket to making butter. At the time, I had no idea that I would use these in stories one day.
I loved being around our animals and adored the cows. We’d had them from calves and they were very friendly and gentle. They were Guernsey breed and named Beauty and Buttercup. Their milk was rich and the cream from it was perfect for butter making.
We didn’t have a churn, but instead used to make the butter in a very large sterilized Horlicks jar, which would be tipped upside down and back again, in a rocking motion, over and over again, and made your arms ache! This would go on until the yellow granules of butter formed and gradually clumped together leaving the buttermilk. Then my mum would wash the butter, add a little salt and use my grandmother’s wooden butter pats to form a block of butter.
In Secrets and Promises, eight-year-old Marigold experiences such things when she arrives at Orchard Farm in Norfolk after having been evacuated from London. It was lovely to re-live my experiences through her eyes as I wrote the book.
Secrets and Promises is out on 6th April and available now to pre-order at:
Amazon – https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B08Y59F7FM/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_tkin_p1_i2##
Kobo – https://www.kobo.com/gb/en/ebook/secrets-and-promises
Apple – https://books.apple.com/gb/book/secrets-and-promises/id1558206636
