I trained as a newspaper journalist with EMAP in Spalding, Lincolnshire and worked for the Oxford Mail and Times before coming to Scotland with my husband Ray Perman in 1975. Since then – 50 years, 3 sons and four grandchildren later – my work has evolved through newspapers, magazines and books, to new media publishing. And woodland gardening.
My career as a journalist helped me to discover that so-called ordinary people are always doing extraordinary things. The cult of celebrity (swallowed so eagerly by much of our media – new and old) ignores the rich abnormality of normal people, demeans the unrecognised triumphs that all of us achieve in our everyday lives.
In recent years my work has taken new directions. I still enjoy editing printed publications, but there is also the creative challenge of digital communication.
Since 2011, I have had the great pleasure of working with an innovative young company Walking Heads (part of InnerEar) using spoken word with moving images to reach a wider audience. We bring the best of old and new knowhow together: digital reach combined with real life immediacy and a simple curiosity about people and places.
Scotland’s political landscape opens challenges too. As co-editor of Sceptical Scot, launched in 2015, with my colleague and friend David Gow, we are exploring what kind of Scotland we are and might become.
Before that, five years as a director of former Edinburgh City Centre Management Company, discovering the value of public space, helping to start Poetry in St Andrew Square. ( The Poetry Garden thrived briefly but still lurks beneath the surface.)
Plus 15 years of community voluntary work in Leith ( Leith Open Space, informal shadow scheme, Opening Doors and World Kitchen in Leith).
Now, living near Kinross, Ray and I are members of Scotland’s Gardens Scheme and part of a new environmental community group Greener Kinros-shire.
Somehow it all fits. Our manmade and and wild worlds are always entangled. It seems more urgent than ever to make that connection in the age of constant crisis: pandemic, Putin, war and colliding realities of Climate Change.
With the on-off closure of Sceptical Scot, I return to the website my sons created for me as a birthday present way back in what now seems the different world of 2005. I hope you will enjoy exploring a world of curious ideas with me.
Could I get a copy of your book about the history of Broughton Primary
Hi Fay! I hope you are well and doing OK in these stressful times. I am an MA journalism student at City, University of London and am currently working on my final project, an in- depth article about how small communities are coping with the virus.
I plan to write about how places that are already isolated in some way are adapting, and what their inhabitants might be able to teach people about how to manage in these new circumstances.
I came across your blog while searching for ways to contact Ann Cholawo. I was wondering if you still have her email and if you’d be able to pass it on? Or, failing that, if you’d be able to put me in touch with anyone else living in small isolated communities who might be willing to talk?
Thanks a lot, and all your work looks fantastic!
Best,
Tilda
Dear Fay, I hope you and Ray are well as Sue and I are. We last met in 1979 when you came to Opinan to interview my father-in-law, Gwyn Macfarlane, about his biography of Florey, I think for the Scotsman. Since I retired from the Oxford Mail and Times in 1994 I’ve written a couple of books: a history of Oxford Playhouse and much more fun, Wearing the Trousers: Fashion, Freedom and the Rise of the Modern Woman, which appeared in 2017. You can access it via my Facebook page, Don Chapman Wearing the Trousers. I am now writing my memoirs for the family, the reason for this email. Was it your article or a review of Florey in the Glasgow Herald that prompted an angry academic to accuse my father-in-law of traducing the memory of Sir Alexander Fleming? You may not remember but it prompted Gwyn to embark on another biography debunking Fleming, though in fact he ended up rather liking him. Maddeningly, he never finished his own memoirs, but the story is worth telling if I can pin it down. With best wishes – Don
Hi Fay,
I’m a photographer, originally from Skye, currently working on my new book project, which is looking at the islands of Skye, and speaking to people with interesting connections to these landfalls. I would like to take a trip out to Soay (sometime), and I wondered if it would be possible for you to put me in touch with Anne? It would be great to take a trip out there – when you grow up in the islands you end up not travelling to other islands very much!!
Many thanks
Alastair
I do indeed have Anne’s address and have forwarded Malcolm’s message to her. Anne remembers his visit well and I’m now looking forward to following the magician’s trail across inhabited islands of Scotland. Time permitting, I’ll report back on my blog. Such chance encounters are rare in cyberspace these days.
Hello Fay!
My name is Malcolm Russell. I’m a magician currently living in Calgary, Canada, but I previously lived in Orkney. In 2004 I travelled across Scotland in an attempt to become the first magician ever to perform on every inhabited island in Scotland, which included a visit to Soay, where I met Anne Cholawo. I’ve been going through photos and I have a bunch of my visit with Anne that I’d like to send her but I can’t find an email address for her. Would you happen to have it?
if you’d like to read a little about my tour, there’s a page on my website at http://www.malcolmrussell.net.
Thanks so much!
Hello Fay
I found your name in Anne Cholawo’s acknowledgements to her book on Soay.
I have visited the island and have met Anne a couple times.
My father organised the evacuation of the island in 1953. I have used his reports (Register House archives) and other material including photos to compile an account
Donald