We have eventually taken delivery of the first small print run of 'Life and love 'tween the North and South' - a collection of letters exchanged between Mona Mustard and Jimmy Brown during the years 1932 and 1936 which has been painstakingly compiled and edited by their daughter (my mother) Vera May Redden.
It contains over 250 letters illustrating life lived in the 1930’s of a woman ‘in service’ in the large houses of wealthy people and a pitman working long hours underground.
This project began a long time ago...
I’m glad to have had the opportunity to glimpse parts of these years of their lives that share some of their innermost thoughts and ideas on life so many years ago. I only wish I had tackled this ‘project’ sooner when Mona’s siblings were still alive and maybe could have answered some of the questions and mysteries the letters raised. (Mona was the first of her siblings to die). However, I have done my best and hope you have found them as interesting and enjoyable to read as I have.
Vera Redden (nee Brown). June 2013
Once mam's draft was complete (approximately 1,500 pages in word) she handed it over to me to start to design and artwork as a long term project whenever time would allow. So I began to work on some layouts, type size, fonts in the hope of condensing all of the information into something small enough to print. I was still employed by another company at this point in my life, so my own time wasn't as readily available back then as it is now and I would sometimes stay on at work after my day had finished to work on the book. This was going to be a long project...
I had been working on the first draft (very sporadically) for a few weeks, an hour here, twenty minutes there - basically whenever I could justify stopping back or if I had a night going spare! Then my mam made a discovery...
Another 25-30 letters that had been stored away in a different box - all of which had to be inserted in to the draft and date order re-flowing the whole book!
Draft 2 commenced.
I had been working on the second draft (also very sporadically) for quite a few weeks... and was roughly two thirds through the project when the company I was employed at went into liquidation - all planned while the staff were on a weeks closure due to a court case (another very long story for another time). So all the artwork disappeared with the building and its contents... I had a version safely copied and saved - unfortunately the software I was using wasn't compatible with my newer 'Mac' at home and was going to cost £1,200 to upgrade!!!
On to Draft 3 and PJR Creative.
So it all began again (now my own work office) on software I was much more comfortable using and any spare time didn't need to be justified to anyone but myself. I advanced through the artwork at the speed of that once great supersonic bird and and eventually arrived at proof 1 - but there had been issues along the way, I realised that mam had been adding 'returns or line-breaks' at specific line ends to avoid hyphenation, all well and good on an A4 word document but when the copy was re-flowed into the proper artwork there were line breaks appearing everywhere. Unfortunately, quite a few of them were 'hidden' when appearing naturally at the end of lines so when images or chapter pages were added 'later' causing the text to re-flow, suddenly a whole host of 'returns' appeared from nowhere. It became a real labour of love and a test of endurance.
I then discovered that there were too many pages for paperback and I had to lose approximately 60 pages so on to proof 2. More returns appeared, then proofs 3, 4, 5 and 6 passed due to more line breaks, minor indiscretions, interpretations, dates and re-ordering.
By proof 7 the pages were reduced to just 499 - small enough to print and glue without falling apart, all the images were inserted in the correct place, a couple of new images had been added for context and we were ready to start looking to publish.
I have never produced a book of this size before so I had to venture outside my close ring of trusted friends and suppliers and request print quotations from specialised book printers and binders. So prices started to flood in, were we going for hardback, paperback, gloss or matt laminate, hard cover, dust jacket... my poor mam was overawed - 'do whatever you think is best son?'
After refining our quotes and deciding how many copies we were going to produce I spoke to a printer who said 'unfortunately we don't print here, we just bind books but we use a wonderful company, very cheap, but very reliable and great quality too'- you know when someone tells you something is too good to be true it normally is! So with his recommendation in my hand I dialled up their number, a Welsh sounding voice greeted me - he was friendly, kind, polite and very helpful (or so I thought). We were in discussions for a few weeks while tweaks to the artwork were made, a dust cover needed to be designed and some filler notes were added to the jacket from templates supplied. My new 'best' contact even offered me work, seemingly very impressed with the book cover and it's contents, asking for and downloading my portfolio while being very complimentary about my body of work and offered to put quotations my way with the promise of up to 20k's worth of work a year. Brilliant! Just what I wanted to hear with my business still in it's debut year.
So the day finally arrived - hi-res artwork was uploaded to the printer's website and 'printers proofs' were returned for one last check before committing ink to paper. Two more returns spotted by mother! A quick amend and off we go... Oh hang on, if you pay by pro forma there is a 10% saving, it was my mam's money so I asked her is she wanted an extra £30 off her invoice and she said yes!
All systems GO! After three long years 'Life and Love' was eventually going to print.
I knew that the print schedule was 7-10 working days but informed my mam that it would be longer due to workload with the intention of arriving unannounced on her doorstep with 'book in hand' and a shout of 'surprise'. So a week later - books were on a courier due for delivery on a Friday afternoon (excitement was at fever pitch) oh to see mam's face after all this time it was finally happening...
Or was it?
I rang the printers at 4.15pm so see what time the courier delivery was planned for as time was getting on. The line was dead...!
My heart sank - too good to be true they say, always go off recommendations they say. There had been something in the back of my mind, just a niggling doubt when I noticed a slight change in the (so called) printer's attitude and a slightly more blasé approach to our project. Where the hell was he?
So a corporate game of 'hide and seek' had begun - it was time to hit 'Google' (other search engines are available). I was searching for any news, just anything to shed some light on my predicament...
and after 10 minutes frantic typing - there it was staring back at me - I felt sick to my stomach! A trusted 'Print' information weekly greeted me with the headline 'The Bonny & Clyde of the print world are back!' - the truth was laid out in black and white for all the world to see and my worst fears were realised, I had been scammed!
'B&C' had set up both websites, one to recommend the other and lull the masses (and there have been hundreds) into a false sense of security and a multitude of empty promises, but neither company would ever supply you with anything but total heartache.
The book was never coming, I would receive letters, references, credit notes - everything rolled out like a well rehearsed theatre production, exactly as it was written in the article, false names and fake apologies to boot. So up next, was the laborious task of contacting my bank, the police and the anti-fraud squad... 4 hours of my life that I wouldn't get back but it was worth it because I got every penny of my mam's money back! Also from my latest correspondence - they might have eventually caught up with 'Bonny & Clyde' after more than 13 years, 10 fake companies, 10 liquidations (and probably an offshore piggybank somewhere)! Unfortunately, they have left a whole host of unfortunate authors, designers and everyday people left with nothing to show but empty pockets! #lessonlearned
I now had to puff out my chest, swallow my pride and somehow put my trust in another printer - after a couple of weeks searching, checking and double-checking the internet for any slightly negative review I found a company that could eventually provide my mam with her dream, albeit in paperback and £220 more expensive that the 'too good to be true' version.
But everything went as planned, proofs ok to proceed, off to publication, trimmed, books finished and on route... hopefully and then just as I started to twitch and the anxiety levels were slowly rising, worry not, there was a rat-a-tat at the door downstairs and burly courier with two big boxes and a Friday afternoon smile on my doorstep to greet me.
The books had arrived!
So Dad was called under the cover of darkness and operation 'Life and love secret delivery' was hatched... we arrived un-announced, the latch left up for our secret arrival and in we walked. Mam, sitting on the sofa knitting in her pj's gave a glance over the top of her glasses wondering where dad was with her 7 o'clock cuppa as I dropped the very first copy of her book in her lap!
It was emotional...
A little bit about the book...
When these letters began to be exchanged Mona Mustard’s family was living in the village of New Hartley with her father John William (known as Jack) and her mother Clara, his wife. They had five
children: George, Mary, Mona (born on 12th January 1911), Rita and John.
Meanwhile Jimmy Brown (born on 13th June 1909) lived at South Newsham, the third son of Annie (nee Walker) and John Brown (also known as Jack). He had six brothers: William, George, Robert, John,
Benjamin and Joseph. Jimmy, like his father was also a pitman at a nearby colliery.
Jimmy and Mona met regularly on a stretch of road known locally as ‘Dicky Bird’s Corner’. On the long road leading from Seaton Delaval to Seaton Sluice (known as The Avenue) there is an ‘S’ bend just before Seaton Delaval Hall where all the young folk of nearby villages used to gather and ‘eye up’ the local talent (usually on a Sunday evening). The young men would sit on the fence and whistle at the girls going by, making a sound like a bird, hence the name ‘Dicky Bird’s Corner’. This area was actually part of the small village of Seaton which went out of existence in the early 1950’s. Jimmy and Mona were part of this group and I believe that is where they first met. Dances were held weekly in local village halls and churches where they would also come upon each other. I understand from them that they struck up a friendship and one of them suggested they begin to keep in touch by letter...
One of then many letters that travelled the length of the country in the 1930's
Dear Jimmy,
Our visitor has departed after partaking of supper and now mother is just going upstairs for the night leaving me alone. But don’t be alarmed, I’m not going to write any more tonight as I have to be up early tomorrow. It’s washing day which reminds me – before I finish there’s a question I’ve meant to ask you for some time now. What did you suppose I did at work? I ask because once when I was relating some incident that occurred at work I referred to my mop and pail and you seemed so surprised and again on another occasion when I spoke of having to do washing. Mother is calling down. I’ll have to stop.
So cheerio
Mona
P.S. May I hope for an early reply?
I have copied a small text from the book's closing chapter - it reads...
Mona and Jimmy were nevermore to be parted but there were times
(one of the line break that we missed)
when Mona spent spells in various hospitals. One of these occasions was the year before she died when admitted to hospital for a broken hip. During the operation her femur was broken and she spent nine months in traction. When she came home she was never able to leave her bed and died five months later.
After my father’s death I came across a letter he wrote to her after one of his twice-daily visits
to the hospital during that time:
Letter 258
Dear, Dear Mona,
Somebody once said, “Parting is such sweet sorrow”. Well, I don’t believe it, nor I imagine do you. We have a parting twice every day and I fail to see any sweetness in any of them.
When I leave you, I turn as I go out of the ward door to give you a final wave and you always respond with a brave smile, but I can see through it and I know that like mine, your heart is heavy with the same ache and longing to be together again back home. You have to be stronger than me; you have more to bear, more, much more than I have. I have no physical pain, only the heartache.
You know that I love you with all my heart. Please let that thought sustain you in the next few weeks. Don’t give up now!
I know you well enough to realize you will shed a few tears on reading this – well, I am shedding a few myself as I write it.
Goodnight Dear
Jimmy
The first small print run of 50 books sold out in just 28 hours - another is on the way...
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