FIRST PERSON: Usk writer Julie McGowan

"I was born in Blaenavon and moved to England in my teens. I eventually moved back to Wales 20 years ago, settling in Usk with my husband Peter and our four children.

I had a typical upbringing in Blaenavon, attending Hillside Primary and had a cousin in every street. It was a close knit community but life was hard. We lived in a little terraced house that had an outside toilet and a cold tap in the kitchen.

I left Blaenavon just before my 11-plus and we moved to North Wales for two years before moving to Kent. Every holiday we would come back to Blaenavon and spend the summer there. It was always referred to as ‘going home’.

As a teenager I lived in Sidcup, Kent which is 20 minutes from London. I would go on the train into the city on a Saturday and visit Carnaby Street. It was at the time of The Beatles and ‘Swinging London’ and was great fun. It broadened my horizons.

I always had two ambitions; to become an actress and to be a nurse. I knew my parents would not let me go into acting so I became a nurse. At 18 I trained at Guy’s Hospital and it was fabulous.

I lived in the nurses’ hostel in Bayswater for a year. Our uniform was striped dresses and starched aprons and when you became a senior nurse you had bows under your chin. It was run with military precision and you knew exactly what you were doing. First year students had to come onto the ward at around 6am on Christmas morning to sing carols to the patients. It was a lovely few years and the time when I met my husband Peter through a friend of a friend.

We decided we wanted to get married and he would go to university to train as a teacher. We moved to Durham where I trained as a Health Visitor and spent four years working in a mining community. It was very much like South Wales and a close knit community.

Peter got a teaching job in Chichester so we moved down south where our first child was born, then his job took us to Boxhill. By 31, Peter was headmaster of a private school in Lincolnshire and then at Bishop’s Stortford.

With four children of our own, I remember that the only way we could go on holiday was to take a school trip. We took parties of schoolchildren to Paris and by train to Venice; always around 28 kids, plus our four, one of whom would still be in a buggy.

During this time I worked as the school matron and teacher of health education topics and child development. I also produced the annual drama show with the pupils.

Eventually, as we were always desperate to come back to Wales, we decided it was make or break and handed in our notice. Peter couldn’t find a teaching job here so he became a management consultant.

I had always done amateur dramatics wherever we lived. At our last school it was difficult to find scripts for the number of children we had so I started writing plays and adapting scripts.

I have always liked English and read since a child. During my teens I would spend a Saturday afternoon at the library and loved the thrill of coming home with a pile books. Before moving back to Wales I began writing short stories for women’s magazines.

So I was already writing short stories, features, pantomimes and children’s sketches when I wrote my first novel ‘The Mountains Between’, which was published in 2007.

Whenever I drove from Usk to Blaenavon to visit my parents I had this feeling of being home; I could feel my ancestors and the heritage and history. My father would talk about Blaenavon in the old days and, as they were both the last of their generation, I started taking my tape recorder with me and got them to talk about their lives.

Dad left school very young and went to work in the Co-op because his older brother was killed in the mine and his parents didn’t want him to work in one. He knew everybody. I was talking to former Argus reporter Lesley Flynn about it and we published ‘A Pensioner Remembers’ in the Argus, but my father was such a modest man he wouldn’t put his name to it.

Mum grew up on a farm in Goytre and had a more prosperous rural upbringing on the other side of the Blorenge Mountain which seemed to be the demarcation line between two very different worlds. I thought there was a novel in there.

‘The Mountains Between’ follows the lives of two families as each of their worlds struggle through the Depression years and into the chaos and uncertainty of the Second World War. Whilst the characters are fictitious, the book is a tribute to the brave people of these times.

It came out around the time of The Coal House Series, which was filmed in Blaenavon, and sold like hotcakes in the area because of the local connection.

Once back in Usk, Peter had to commute weekly to London but I couldn’t find work because of the children so I started child minding and giving piano lessons.

I later became the first Grassroots correspondent for the Argus and the Town Clerk to Usk Town Council, where my first job was to negotiate the purchase of the historic Sessions House from Monmouthshire council. We eventually raised the money to buy it and moved into the building in 1999. It had no kitchen and the roof needed repairing.

It really was in a bad way. We had to increase the precept and sent a letter to every household in Usk saying that it would cost each one an £10 extra a year. We did not get a single reply saying ‘no’. We let out the offices to pay the mortgage and got a lot of the work done with the help of donations and support from local organisations.

I was Town Clerk for around four years and became Sessions House manager before stepping down from the role.

I have also been involved in much fundraising to renovate Usk Memorial Hall. It had fallen into disrepair so a Panto group was formed to raise funds. I went along to report on it for Grassroots and somehow the whole family became involved in their second production. After this I started writing all the scripts and Peter has been directing them for 18 years, and we both perform. Among the memorable pantos are ‘Brynbugadoon’ and ‘Robin and The Hoodies’. Peter was once a fairy in our version of Sleeping Beauty wearing a tutu, tights and hob-nail boots.

Our children have all been passionate about drama and music. Our older daughter Catherine studied for a theatre and drama degree where she gained a 1st for the production she had to write and produce for her finals. Afterwards her lecturer suggested the play, which was about sexual health and the choices one has to make, should be shown in schools. So she and I developed ‘Is It? Theatre Company’ which gradually grew into a substantial company taking 4 of Catherine’s plays – covering topics such as bullying and drug and alcohol abuse - to schools throughout South Wales.

The company ran for seven years until funding started to dry up and Catherine got married and had her first child. We still run a children’s drama workshop together in Usk.

My second book ‘Just One More Summer’ came out in 2008 and is set in Cornwall. It came about after I entered a competition to write the first 1,000 words of a novel. It was judged by Katie Fforde who awarded it first prize and then said she wanted to know what happened to Allie, the main character, so I wrote the rest.

My latest novel ‘Don’t Pass Me By’ is set in the Second World War and is about a woman, Lydia, and her baby who escape her violent alcoholic husband. She leaves him barely breathing amongst the wreckage following a gas explosion and boards a train full of evacuees heading for the Welsh village of Penfawr. Her life becomes inextricably linked with East End evacuee Arfur and his friend Amy. During my research for the novel I became fascinated by the first-hand accounts of evacuees’ lives in South Wales during the war. Some were extremely well looked-after and some were very badly treated, and this book shows both sides of the story.

I’m now busy writing my fourth book. It would be lovely if my books were one-day turned into a series or film. I feel inspired by writers such as the late Monica Dickens, Elizabeth Jane Howard, Jojo Moyes and Kate Atkinson.

My latest activity is to lead the Save Usk Library Action Group because our library is under threat.

Monmouthshire council needs to make savings of £180,000 within the library service as part of £9million savings next year. They are looking at closing Usk and Gilwern libraries in their current form. I became involved and organised a public meeting to discuss the budget proposal and the reaction has been swift and overwhelming. So many of the libraries in South Wales only came into existence because miners paid for them. They knew that the resource was a way out of poverty by educating themselves. They would be turning in their graves that we are throwing our heritage away.

There is no other publicly funded facility in Usk and there has been no investment in Usk Library, which is the best used in the county. We will stand firm in our campaign and continue to fight for the library.

Despite a varied career, w hen I look back on my life so far the best achievement out of all I have done is being a mother and seeing my children remain so close to each other. "