Out and About July 2022 issue199

50 | OUT AND ABOUT COSTA BLANCA
ANNE RODGER
My First Published Work
By
ANNE RODGER
In 1958 I was 16 and at the peak of my
powers. I loved school and wanted to study
all possible subjects. But I was classed as
“academic” so didn’t get to do anything
vaguely artistic.
We had a different teacher
for English in the fifth
form and she gave a
whole new meaning
to the subject for
me. One of our
homeworks
was to write a
“descriptive
essay”. I
thought about
describing
the estate
where I lived
and including
people I knew,
but it all seemed
very tame and
uninteresting.
Then I realised I
could include ‘action’.
By the time I sat down
to do my homework,
my imagination was fired. I
was going to be a passenger in a
stagecoach, driving through the countryside at
dusk. As darkness fell, the stagecoach entered a
forest - just as a sudden, intense thunderstorm
began.
I sat down with my notepad and large
Dictionary, and wrote a list of adjectives I
thought would be relevant to the story, down
the left hand side of the page. Then I looked up
each of them in the Dictionary. The words used
to describe each adjective, I wrote next to it,
right down the list. Starting at the top again, I
looked up each of the second adjectives. If that
gave me a third word, that was also added.
I then wrote a list of relevant nouns and
tried to match them, by the way they sounded,
with the adjectives.
When I began to write the essay, I started
very low key as the stagecoach entered the
forest, building up to a shattering climax at the
height of the storm, when lightning strikes a
tree and it comes crashing down.
One of the rules I made for
myself was never to use the
same word twice. This
taxed me a little, but,
at the end I read the
finished piece out
loud to myself,
and loved it.
Fortunately, so
did my teacher,
and she said
it would be
included in
the School
Magazine for
that year.
So, how can
you use a Scientific
approach to create a
work of art? This mix
of genres has continued
throughout my life as I have
refused to be “put into a pigeon
hole”.
I was able to throw off the “Scientific” and
“Academic” labels when I gave up teaching
Biology and started my Catering business in my
early thirties. I had everything to learn about
food and cooking as I had no background in
it, but became very absorbed as I built up my
business.
After retiring and moving to Spain I
became a widow and suddenly had endless
time on my hands. Drama and Creative Writing
entered my life, but when they were taken away
with Covid, another void appeared.
From that first published work in the
School Magazine when I was 16, after a gap of
more than 60 years, here I am, being published
again.