Que sera, sera – whatever will be, will be

This song is the one I most remember from the time when I was a child in the 1950s, the setting for my book Cousins, Classmates and a Dog called Rover. I can imagine it being played on the radio in the home of Susan, my main character.

The words may sound a bit fatalistic, as though your future is already mapped out for you, but I didn’t see it like that. I just thought that the future, whatever it is, will happen and it can be dealt with then, so no need to worry about it now.

Nevertheless, I did wonder what my future would be. I was a quiet, serious child and my sister, only 18 months younger, was very lively and sociable, with lots of friends. I thought that any boyfriend I had in the future would immediately prefer her once he met her! I also wondered if I would live in the same remote Fenland area all my life.

I needn’t have worried. I passed the 11plus, which we all took in those days, and went to Grammar School. From there I obtained a place at University, where I met my husband-to-be. We have been together ever since. We had three children and now have two grandchildren.

It has been a varied and somewhat adventurous life. When our children were aged 5, 3 and 1, we set off for Sierra Leone in Africa and spent 4 years there. I taught English in a secondary school, and then Classics at the University. We have lived in different parts of the UK: Birkenhead, Leeds, Forest of Dean, Southend-on-Sea, and Derbyshire. Now we are settled in Hampshire.

If I had known when I was a child what the future would hold, I should have been amazed. My world centred on my home village and the nearby parts of East Anglia that we visited to see relatives. So much was to come that I could never have envisaged.

In the book Susan is living in a similarly remote village. She has hints of the world beyond when her cousins arrive from Leeds, and also she lives by a river and sees ships setting off for foreign lands. Her imagination is fed, as mine was, by her reading about schools on clifftops in Cornwall or in the Swiss Alps. But the world will gradually open up to her as she goes through life.

So present circumstances, especially if they seem unpromising, are not necessarily a guide to what opportunities or experiences may lie ahead. The book ends on a happy note, with many difficulties resolved. But that cannot tell you what the future holds – the unexpected can always be just round the corner! ‘Whatever will be, will be,’ as the 1950s song says.

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