Alison J Barley
Repawter: Lisa Greener
Tell me a bit about your book.
Chasing A Dream is a family saga. It’s set in 1950 in the Derbyshire village of Kilburn and it’s centred around a mining family of that time, but primarily it’s about this character, Stella, who is chasing a dream to be an author. Unfortunately in 1950 lots of women were not really encouraged to do things like writing. They were just pushed into traditional female roles but she's got heart set on doing completely different and the story is all about her journey.
How old is Stella?
Stella is 16 in the book and it’s kind of set over a year. So she heads out to be 17/18 by the time it’s finished.
Unfortunately her family life isn’t the best. So she's struggling along with that as well.
I don’t think she had much of a voice really or women didn’t have much of a voice in those days. But I think she’s quite a strong character and she comes across in the book as wanting a lot more than that for herself. So yeah I think she gets there in the end.
Tell us a bit about you. What do you do in your spare time when you are not writing?
When i am not writing. I’m also a registered podiatrist and have been for 25 years. I work for myself in the community now so I'm trying to slow it down a little bit, but I still do very well with it. Lots of patients, especially in Kilburn. Lots of them in the past have helped me with the research for the book which has been lovely, so they're really interested in seeing the book and reading it.
Apart from that I've got a very crazy Labrador called Henry. He’s a black Labrador. He’s absolutely beautiful, so he takes up a lot of my time.
My husband and I have just bought another motor home. So we’ve got lots of adventures planned with that.
When I was reading the book, she takes a trip to Skegness. Is that one of the places you like to go in your motor home, camper van?
I have been, but not in a campervan. So maybe I shall have to go and visit. I do know whereabouts the miners camp used to be in Skegness. So maybe that is a place that I will have to go and have a look at some time.
I think it was the Butlins of the day. I can imagine it would have been an absolutely amazing place to have been. I do know that the miners back then they had to fight to have a fortnight’s holiday. So that camp really was for them and they would have had an absolutely fantastic time for two weeks. It would have been brilliant for him because it must have been a terrible slog to work in a mine. I think they would have had a fantastic summer and look forward to going every year.
Stella’s family life, what were the highlights and the low times of the family? Without giving too much of the story away
Well, I think her mother was probably very much cast aside by the husband and I don’t think she had the same fight in her that Stella has got. So she probably wouldn’t have been as supportive towards a daughter as she probably accepted her role as wife and mother in the kitchen with the kids.
The father was at war. He was a prisoner of war. So he’s not only seen a lot of trauma in his own life, it I think also his character probably has a lot to do with his personality side of it. So he wasn’t really the nicest of fathers to have. So his relationship with his daughter has never been a good one and probably never will.
Are there any plans to become more author orientated? Have you got any other books in the in the pipeline?
I have got a couple of ideas in the pipeline. I started off with wanting to be a scriptwriter for film. So I would like to explore a couple of opportunities within that. But also perhaps I might revisit the poetry side of things. I’ve written a lot of poetry. So, I might sort of drag all that out. Maybe have a look to see whether that could be collaborated into a small book.
Is she based on you as a child? Is she based on somebody that you know?
No she’s just completely pulled out of the air. The only connections that we've got really I would say are probably the writing and the determination.
In the book grandpa was into a lot of poetry as well. Do you have any poets in your family tree?
I do yes. My father has written lots of poems. In fact, his claim to fame is that during covid he wrote a poem every single day. Just a short one. When we were doing all of the zoom meetings within families and keeping our connections together online, every morning we would have a little session of dad’s poems, which I keep egging him on to get published. He’s got lots of ideas that he’s never taken up, but now he’s nudging me into that direction to try and write some of his stuff. So, I don’t know. We might.
Do you enjoy the writing as much as you like the feet?
Oh now there’s a question. I think both of those are in their own right there. I like to come away from doing somebody’s feet and seeing a smile on their faces when they can walk better so that's, that's really good. But then I think the writing it does take you off into a different realm really. So, they're both different in their own way.
Have you lived in Kilburn all your life?
No, I’ve been in Kilburn for almost 30 years now. I have always been Derbyshire. I lived in Alvaston as a child. Grew up there. Just near Elvaston castle. So, I spent a lot of time around there with horses and dogs and things like that growing up and then I had a short spell in Borrowash which again was a nice little sort of villagy area and then I moved to Kilburn in ‘95.
It’s got a bit of a bigger place over the last few years, but there’s lots of history to Kilburn hence the book. It’s a lovely place to live. The people are all nice there.
Does everybody know everybody?
I think as the village has got bigger, the people probably not quite so much so but when I first moved there I think at one time everybody would have known everybody else, especially in the '50s. Especially on a street like that this is sort of set in. Definitely everybody would have known everybody else's business.
I can almost imagine some a lady scrubbing the doorstep and sweeping the pavement.
Cleaning the windows or whatever. Like they use to back in those days. I think a lot of people back in those days, it was all about making sure the front of your house looked immaculate. Again that comes down to the woman and that’s probably really the way that they were brought up to keep everything tidy and clean. Then I suppose while they were out there doing that, that’s when the gossip would start and they’d have all the little conversations and find out each other’s business.
Kilburn looks like a lovely place but it’s a bit of a trek to the church.
Yeah. It is a bit of a trek to the church. So back in the 50’s they had a Methodist chapel and a baptist chapel, but the nearest parish church would have been Horsley. Which is probably I'd say maybe a mile, mile and a half away from Kilburn but that would have been the place to go and obviously it was.
It’s the church, parts of the church date back to the 14th century so people have been going there for a very long time and it is a beautiful church so again there's lots of history there.
I noticed the difference in the houses between Stella and Will. I think she called it cottage, didn’t she?
I think those cottages along there were primarily built for the miners. The whole street is quite compact with little terrace houses, but I think Will’s family, his dad worked at Royces, his mum’s got a small part time job at Denby pottery, so they would have been slightly more affluent than Stella’s family
Is that why you focused the book on mining because mining is such a big part of the lifestyle back there?
Yes it is really, it’s a very big part of what Kilburn was at one time. Speaking to people as I did. I think that’s pretty much where it all kind of started. I was chatting to local people while I was doing their feet, and, and that really sort of set me thinking about history. I’ve got a massive love of history anyway and my inspiration came from there.
You said you’ve written a screenplay. Have you got plans to write anything along this line again? Like this massive novel?
I’m not so sure as a massive novel again. It has taken me a long time, but I have got ideas for a possible script for the Creswell disaster that features in there.
Fiction or factual?
I think based on fact, because there are so many facts there and as I’ve said in the book, this is the 75th anniversary of that disaster. Which is still obviously still in lots of people’s minds. It was the biggest disaster that Derbyshire saw at that time. So it will still be very raw for people, but I mean it’s only got a small place in the book, but I think maybe in the future that that really could do with being explored and perhaps brought out there a bit more. So I don’t know. We’ll have to watch this space.