Samantha Nash
All Muck and Mullets is crude, it’s lewd, it’s ludicrously rude, nothing twee or sickly, just raw accounts of country life in the 1980s. It begins in the spring of 1985, and each chapter reveals some disastrous or farcical event for the characters, which usually favours the locals one way or another. It’s a glorious romp through a country year.
Someone from my publishers was kind enough to compare it to some of Tom Sharpe’s writing who, of course, wrote ‘Wilt’ and ‘Blott on the Landscape’. I was incredibly flattered of course, and immediately set out to wade through all his books, and although I realise that I can only aspire to write even half as well as him, I can see some similarities in the style.
As a teacher of science and computing, when did writing come into play?
I’ve always wanted to be a writer, but earning a living kept getting in the way. From an early age I was steered towards arts and crafts and all things creative, but my family pointed out how difficult it was to make a living from it. My other passion was for biology, which I studied at university, and then I just fell into teaching as a stop-gap. Seventeen years later, I’m still doing it! I do love the subjects I teach, and the profession has some rewards, but I constantly feel the need to be creative. I carry notebooks with me everywhere, in case I think of something useful I can use or meet another peculiar character or someone tells me something amusing. Since people around me have discovered that I like to write, they seem desperate to tell me funny stories, so I will never run out of material!
What can you tell us about the second book you are working on at the moment?
I have mapped out the storylines for the next two All Muck and Mullets books and have completed the chapters for May and June 1986, so there will be plenty more drunken, incredulous, idiotic and bizarre stories to inflict on my favourite characters. I would be happy to continue writing about the residents of Adderstey for as long as there is an audience for their tales. I like to have a couple of projects bubbling away in the background, so that if I get stuck on a section of one book, I can swap over and continue to be productive on another. I have completed about 50 per cent of a draft, on a book about an entirely different genre, but as I am not sure how it will turn out, I’m reluctant to spill the proverbial beans, as it were.
What made you want to explore rural life in the 1980’s in All Muck and Mullets?
I lived through it! A friend of mine said recently that he thought it was one of those books where if you grew up in a village, you could relate to every character, and if you didn’t recognise a character from your village, it was you! Most of the feedback I’ve had so far has been along a similar vein. I suspect that most villages in Britain have formidable women and drunkards and idiots and shady characters. I wanted to show that living in the country is not all tea and crumpets with the vicar and garden parties for the wealthy, but more a battle of survival against very harsh and often poor conditions. Despite the hardship, there was always a great deal of fun and laughter, something that seems to be in short supply these days.
Tell us more about how you were persuaded to write your stories down.
It started with a ‘Rosie Day’. Imagine a group of my friends, mainly slightly older ladies with wicked senses of humour and a penchant for making waiters squirm, on a day out with Rosie at the wheel. I’m squashed between the former school bursar and the lady who mans ‘sick bay’, sitting on the middle hump of the backseat in a four wheeled drive. In the driver’s seat, sits a retired design and technology teacher (needlework for those who hate the jargon) and a diminutive design technician next to her, who is responsible for navigation. Goodness knows where we were supposed to be heading but we always found a high street that had plenty of shoe shops and an abundant supply of tea rooms. I have a vague recollection of dragging poor old Mavis the Bursar into an Anne Summers shop and Mrs B, insisting that she could use the chocolate boobies that she purchased there to embarrass the men at the golf club, but more than anything, I remember my face aching from the endless hysteria, by the time they dropped me off home. I would then relate my experiences to my friends and family, some of whom make the Rosie Gang look positively tame. In fact, ten minutes with our librarian would have you crying with laughter and gasping for breath and hoping that someone was recording the stories and silliness for future use, and that’s when it began. I moulded and embellished things I had heard and made up the rest and gave them to characters that I had amalgamated from characteristics I found amusing. The librarian caught me writing one lunch time and requested a peek at the chapters I had finished, and she is not a woman to be gainsaid. She cackled and shrieked her way through the first three stories before demanding more and before long, she had handed over the manuscript to her mother and husband, who were also putting pressure on me to finish.
How do you juggle your work and your writing?
Good question! The answer is, with difficulty! There is no point pretending that I have my life timetabled and compartmentalised down to the minute because those who know me well will tell you that outside school, I am a disorganised airhead. Teaching, managing my department, over-seeing the library, school related administration and course development has to take priority, but I do try to keep on top of everything so that I can save the majority of my holidays for writing. I can sometimes get a few chapters knocked out during term time, but I am usually too exhausted to get much done at the end of a 45-50 hour working week. I respond quite well to looming deadlines and persistent nagging from my friend, the librarian, who insists that she has to have another chapter to read as soon as it’s completed, another formidable lady that you wouldn’t dare to cross!
What is next for you?
I am determined to get the second and third All Muck and Mullets books finished and published and eventually, I’d like to write full time. Perhaps, if I am very lucky, I’ll earn enough to build myself a hobbit hole with a Bilbo Baggins style pantry and somewhere safe to keep chickens and maybe a ferret or two. I miss the countryside.
For more information and my blog, please visit www.allmuckandmullets.co.uk