I SAID..
Adding to my series. Jackie is a travel-memoir writer who writes about caravanning – with dogs – all over Europe, to exotic far-flung destinations! She is here with me now – thanks ‘luv!
THE QUESTIONS
1. Focus on your books!
I’ve written five comic travel memoirs in my Adventure Caravanning With Dogs series. They cover what happens when you give up work, accidentally buy your first ever caravan (RV trailer), then decide to rent out the house, sell most of your belongings, and set off to tour Europe full-time with a husband and four dogs.
It’s called Adventure Caravanning because we Boldly Go Where No Van Has Gone Before. Don’t believe me? How about towing on a footpath, two cornfields, and a few of the world’s most dangerous roads?
A sixth book, Pups on Piste, follows our first three-month ski season in Italy, and my own skiing journey, which started with tears on the baby slopes. Yet, like the Ugly Duckling, I eventually fledged into a black run, off piste, all-mountain powder chick.
Currently, I’m writing about how to buy a 26-tonne 6×4-wheel-drive army truck blind off the internet to convert into a home-on-wheels fit to drive to Mongolia. With a husband and four, possibly five, dogs in tow!
2. Fine art: The craft of writing!
Writing is a lifelong passion. Published or not, I would still write.
The creative buzz I get from finding the most apposite word, placing it in a perfectly crafted sentence, or best of all, waking up with something fully formed in my head, equals the thrill of skiing down an off piste black run or windsurfing in a gale.
I own very little, but my travel diaries are my most treasured possessions.
3. Fascinating you: What would locals in a foreign country first notice about you?
The five dogs I have in tow! For the last seven years, The Fab Four have been our travel companions. Recently, we picked up a Bulgarian street dog. She has a suitably literary name, Iskra. Bulgarian (and Russian) for ‘Spark’: the name of the Bolshevik’s underground newspaper, before they opened Pravda.
Ever since I left home, people, including by my husband, Mark, have teased me about my Lancashire (Lanky) accent. However, those for whom English is a second language always find me easy to understand because I speak clearly and deliberately. In Bosnia, a gentleman found Mark’s ‘posh’ southern accent so unintelligible, he asked,
“Do you speak English, sir?” – to my absolute delight!
Cotton milling is Lancashire’s claim to fame, and I believe it shaped the region’s accent.
It was impossible to hear a conversation over the clatter of machinery in the weaving sheds. Workers spoke expressively and even developed a soundless means of communication called mee-mawing. They silently mouthed words, with exaggerated facial movements, which helped the ‘listener’ lip read.
Comic north-of-England housewives, Cissie and Ada, played by Les Dawson and Roy Barraclough, famously mee-mawed when talking about delicate matters, such as <mouths> women’s problems; ‘down there’,and ‘you know what!’
That said, if I went full-on Lanky and deployed both accent and dialect, I’m not sure I’d be quite so easy to understand.
So nah, Ah’d best shut me cake ‘ole an’ gerron wi’it. (So now, I had better stop talking and continue.)
4. Following: Which authors, fiction or non-fiction do you admire?
I mostly read historical fiction and memoir, because I like to laugh and learn. Comic travel memoirs top my list.
I started reading memoir as a child. James Herriot’s It Shouldn’t Happen To A Vet series, and Gerald Durrell’s wonderful books about the natural world on Corfu. I could see myself living in Lilian Beckwith’s croft on a remote Scottish Island and still laugh out loud at wordsmith Patrick Campbell’s outlook on life, captured with creative language and razor-sharp wit. I’ve read these all again as an adult, and felt the same joy exploring different lives, different experiences, different countries, and a different, possibly simpler, time.
Tim Cahill, Joe Simpson, and Andy Mc Nab all awoke my passion for raw excitement, travel, and adventure, which I have now made my life, although unlike McNab, I never joined the Special Forces (or did I?!)
Recently, one of the most wonderful and inspiring memoirs I’ve read is I, Tarzan, by Jean-Philippe Soulé. If you want to learn about succeeding in the face of the most unbelievable adversity, this insightful and beautifully-written book will leave you speechless.
5. Fame: What’s your claim to fame?
F is for Fire eating – and Film.
I mention fire eating for Japanese TV in my author bio, but have never told the full story. Professional fire eater, Mad Bob The Rascal, arranged for a group of us, his students, to be filmed doing a mass fire breathe at London’s Crystal Palace. The Japanese production company also wanted to film a ‘typical English birthday party’ in someone’s back garden in Cheam.
Bob spent the afternoon strutting around like a mother hen, urging those of the ovarian gender to look our best for the camera. In his broad Mancunian accent, his mantra. on a loop, was,
“Teeth and tits, ladies. Teeth and tits!”
Since they screened it in Japan, I never saw the final footage of me lighting candles on a birthday cake at a typical English garden party by breathing fire over them.
Or, should I say, the footage of me blasting a six-foot horizontal column of flame across the candles on a birthday cake, which melted them instantly, charred the royal icing, ignited the decorative ribbon around the cake, and set fire to the white lace tablecloth.
Presumably, fire-damaged furniture and a smouldering mass of blackened cake, smothered in flame-retardant chemicals from a fire extinguisher, was not as typically English birthday party as they’d hoped. The crew filmed a second cake, lit the candles with a match, then filmed it again. I imagine the wonders of documentary television wove my fire breathing bit in seamlessly in the edit.
I’m due another television appearance later this year, but I’ve signed a nondisclosure agreement, so I can’t possibly tell you what it is. So, watch this space.
Unless, of course, I end up on the cutting room floor, which happened when I instructed everyone I knew to watch me being interviewed on London Tonight!
6. Fortune: Have you ever made any money? Won a bet, a round of poker? Or been the beneficiary from a long-forgotten distant Aunt?
I never win anything.
I considered myself the world’s unluckiest person until I worked out that fortune need not be fiscal.
Very little has gone to plan in my life – although at least that means it’s never been boring!
Still, despite the difficulties, I feel I’m a winner in life’s lottery.
I met and married the man of my dreams, and we retired early to live our dream lifestyle. I’ve achieved many ambitions and ticked off a plethora of ‘bin there, seen it, done it’ bucket list items. Plus, I’ve accepted graciously that I’ll never be an astronaut, stunt woman, or Mongolian horse archer.
People say you make your own luck. Certainly, I have worked hard, saved, taken chances, and made brave decisions, but luck did play its part.
I was born in a wealthy European country, to a loving and supportive family, at a time of unparalleled peace and prosperity. My parents gave me the best education they could afford, and despite the prejudice against a female scientist* with a broad north-of-England accent, I’ve still had opportunities that some women in my family – never mind those in many countries around the word – could barely dream of.
I consider that extreme good fortune!
*The wonderful book Lessons in Chemistry read like my own biography!
7. Fool: Just for fun: tell me about the time you made a silly mistake or found yourself the unwitting centre of attention.
Oh, there are just so many to choose from. I am accident prone, frequently say the wrong thing, and am the mistress of missing the point. I skipped a year at school, so was by far the youngest in my year. Some of my peers were 18 months my senior; an unconquerable abyss when you’re ten years old! When they discovered I came top in the school’s entrance exam, my classmates quickly labelled me an immature bespectacled ‘swot’ with zero dress sense – all of which was true!
It was an all-female grammar school, but my lack of interest in traditional pink pursuits made me stand out even more. I preferred to play rugby or British bulldogs with my brothers – and still favour fun over fashion. Although a cheesy grin, full of lust for life, lights up a face far more than makeup. And is much more comfortable to wear.
I knew I was a misfit, and got used to ridicule. Yet, I was always quite content with myself and viewed giving people a laugh as a positive thing, even if it was at my expense. Since I came to terms with making a fool of myself at an early age, I’m not scared to try things and look stupid. Plus, when there’s an idiot in the room, people automatically feel better about themselves, and I’m happy to give them that!
When I moved away from home, I suddenly realised that besides being a clumsy, tactless tomboy with no sense of style, I also had a ‘hick’ Lancashire accent, straight out of the soap opera Coronation Street. At university, classmates used to giggle and repeat things I’d said back to me. Or shout things like, “Eeyup, lass. Black puddin’! Wheer’s yer whippet?” in my wake. It came as a terrible shock. I’d never left the north of England and honestly thought I enunciated my words in the clipped and refined tones of a BBC newsreader!
But my Teflon shoulders have come in handy over the years.
For example, at my gymkhana debut, my borrowed steed, Thor, was a purebred fell pony who resembled a small black carthorse. We galloped majestically into the ring to compete in the bending race. Without faltering, he galloped straight out of the other side, bypassing both the start line and the forest of poles the others weaved nimbly around. While I clung to his mane for dear life. The crowd went wild!
Thor and I returned to the scene to conduct the potato race with equal aplomb. Our task was to gallop forth to collect six potatoes from the top of the same poles we failed to bend around, then deposit each one in a bucket at the end. The poles scared Thor. As did the potatoes. And the bucket. So, he refused to approach any of them. By the time I’d coaxed him close enough to the first pole to lean out from my saddle and collect my first spud (which I had to lob from there into the bucket because he wasn’t going near THAT) the next heat had started.
The commentator had a field day! Thor and I won our only rosette for coming equal third out of four in the fancy dress competition.
I still feel slightly unworthy of my prize, since I exceeded the gymkhana’s maximum age limit by two years.
8. Frippery: how do you make your mark?
F for food – and wine. And beer, since I’m a former professional beer taster.
I am fortunate to tour in countries whose devotion to such foodie fripperies equals my own.
Although I live full time in the back of a rumpety bumpety army truck, I draw the line at plastic plates and glasses. Comestibles taste far better from classy crockery.
The Wedgewood dinner service and crystal stem-ware that distinguished Mark and I as Upper Class Trailer Trash has not survived seven years on the road. I’m not sorry. Better to be used and enjoyed than gathering dust at the back of a cupboard, awaiting a special occasion that never came. (A metaphor for many people’s lives!)
However, the replacement Dartington Crystal and bone china platters from the bargain store TK Maxx are a fitting foil for fine fare.
This year, we visited Moldova and I’m going to let you into a secret.
Moldova produces exceptional wines.
Shhh! Don’t tell anyone. Nobody knows!
Moldova sits on a similar latitude to Europe’s renowned wine regions, like Bordeaux and Piedmont. Her climate, rolling hills, and fertile soil are ideal for producing top quality wine grapes, and the Moldovans are very experienced. Grapes have grown there for between 6 and 25-million years (who’s counting?) and, according to some, the tradition of winemaking in Moldova dates back to 7000 BC.
Moldova has the longest wine cellar in the world. A mere 124 miles (200 km) of limestone cavern at the perfect temperature to store and age wines, including traditional Méthode Champenoise, where they add the sparkle with a secondary fermentation in the bottle. Obviously, they can’t call it Champers, because that’s a geographic designation cornered by the French. But if you want fabulous fizz for a fraction of the francs, you found it here first.
When you joined me to dial F for Frippery!
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9. Favourite books?
Fun, not Formal – And Follett!
My favourite books are all of ‘em. How amazing that you can visit another galaxy from your couch.
I’ve always loved reading, but favour laughter and ‘light’ over literary.
The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follet is one of the few I have read and re-read. The cast of characters in this historical page turner will not only keep you gripped, but teach you a great deal about medieval cathedral building in Britain.
Two other historical authors I love are Bernard Cornwell and Conn Iggulden. I adored Iggulden’s Wolf of the Plains series about Genghis Khan, his sons and grandsons. Genghis was the 9-year-old second son of a family put into exile to die when a rival tribe murdered his father. The guile and tactics that led to this young pariah uniting the disparate Mongolian tribes and founding the largest contiguous empire the world has ever seen is a story worth reading and – note to self – re-reading. Especially before we go to Mongolia.
Which reminds me, I must mention Nick Middleton. If you want to laugh, try Last Disco in Outer Mongolia and Travels As A Brussels Scout. And for added canines, Travels With Boogie by Mark Wallington.
10. Forgiveness – Is it better to ask for forgiveness or permission?
If you ask for permission, it gives them a chance to say “No”…
11. Finale I added this one myself!
“F Off.”
I know. It should be “J Off,” since I’m Jackie, but I wanted a suitably F-themed “Over-and-Out” for a barrage of questions beginning with F.
Forgive me! (See above.)
[Editor’s note from Steve: “That’s OK, Jackie, I like it, and you are keeping well in my theme.”]
Blog: https://worldwidewalkies.com
Amazon: https://author.to/JLambert
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/18672478.Jacqueline_Lambert
About Me: https://about.me/jmlambertauthor
Here’s the Amazon series link: https://amzn.to/3YaOuo6
Read the rest of the series!!
Stephen Malins, Author & Photographer 