Featured Writer
Sheila Templeton
I can't remember writing stories as a child. I was probably too busy reading! My first memory of losing myself in a book was when I was 7 and my mother, brother and I were temporarily living back in Dyce for six months with my grandparents. I discovered the local library, an upstairs room, heated by an open coal fire, in our local village hall. There, an imposing librarian called Violet Robb, whose hair was the same colour as her name, presided over a long room filled with books. I truly thought I had discovered heaven on earth. All these books...and I was allowed to take one home to read. And when I'd finished that...I was allowed another one!
Then it was time for us to make our way to Southampton, to board the Dunottar Castle, bound for Dar-es-Salaam. I was still 7 years old. My brother was 5. We were en route to be reunited with my father, who had gone ahead of us to start his job with East African Railways. I have several clear memories of the trip: being bullied by some kids from southern England, who took issue with my Aberdeenshire accent ; being sea sick every time the ship left a harbour [and we docked at many places in the 6 week voyage!]; discovering, to my complete disbelief, that I was supposed to eat porridge with no salt in it; and...discovering there was a library on board. That last was my salvation.
I suppose I could chart all the many different places I have lived in by remembering their libraries. It's always been the first thing I do, in a new place. I think I probably do that before even registering with doctor and dentist! I certainly did when I moved here to Troon in Dec 2000.
Of course, nowadays, I buy a great many books too. Yet I've never lost my fondness and my need of libraries. And it's from that ferocious need to read, that I eventually, naturally, just began to write. I remember keeping a sort of 'charting my feelings, describing beautiful skies and most importantly, which boys I'd spoken to'...sort of journal, when I was about 14. I have that still...and though it's full of the most dramatic [and embarrassing!] purple prose, there's the beginnings of poems, of a feeling for words and how to use them.
It never occurred to me when I was approaching career- decision age, 5th/6th year at school...that I could perhaps make a career out of writing. Girls of my generation with university degrees became teachers...or civil servants. I did choose English Literature as my main degree subject, but changed at the end of my first year at university to History. I discovered in writing English essays, I had to quote critics. My own opinions of works read were not sought...indeed discouraged. I didn't like that. Even as a shy 19 year old, I instinctively felt this was wrong. That the relationship between the poem/novel/play...and the reader had to count for something.
By this time, I had stopped keeping my journal, stopped writing all the extra little essays, stories and poems I used to hand in to my favourite English teacher at school. I wrote course work essays, did my degree, taught History for 15 years, then another 15 years as a Guidance teacher, before getting early retirement aged 52. Yes...I was extraordinarily lucky. It rarely happens nowadays.
In 30 years of teaching...and bringing up my son, I had not written creatively at all. Though, through the guidance/counselling work in the 80s, I was certainly keeping personal journals [which sometimes flowered into poems!]...and doing all sorts of self-awareness stuff...working with dreams and the like.
But when I got the early retirement, it was as if a dam burst...creatively speaking. Within a month of stopping work, I had signed up for a creative writing workshop at the Salisbury Centre in Edinburgh where I then lived. And that...as they say...was that! I have been scribbling ever since.
I was first published in New Writing Scotland in 1998. Moved to Troon Dec 2000...just because I wanted to live by the sea, I may say. I had no connections with Ayrshire at all. And since I have been here, my out put...and volume of published work...has just quadrupled.
Is it the magical influence of Arran, just across the bay? Or the heritage of Rabbie Burns? [His family also moved from Aberdeenshire to Ayrshire, you know!] Or the warm support of fellow writers here...my Makar Poet buddies...Ayr Writers Club? I don't know. Probably all of the above. I only know I'm very grateful...and long may it continue.