Tag Archives: Janet Sandison

My Friend My Father by Jane Duncan

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My Friend, My Father Book Cover

My Friend My Father by Jane Duncan was published in 1966 and it’s the thirteenth book in the ‘My Friend’ series. The setting is mainly north of Inverness.

Young Janet Sandison lives with her parents on their small farm in the hills, World War I isn’t far away but it’s an idyllic life for Janet as she’s at the centre of her loving extended family. It’s her relationship with her father that’s most important to her and luckily he’s a wise and kind father who manages to avoid spoiling Janet, even after the tragic death of her mother.

This is a great read which takes Janet from northern Scotland to wartime England as an adult when she joins the WAAF and eventually on to a Caribbean island, but always with the company of her father, even if only in letter form. As you would expect from a Jane Duncan book there’s quite a bit of humour too.

These books are semi-autobiographical, very much inspired by her own life experiences. She also wrote the Janet Reachfar children’s books which are still in print today.

As it happens she was born and grew up in Renton, Dunbartonshire not far from where I grew up, but I don’t think there is a blue plaque anywhere for her. She also wrote under the name Janet Sandison.

 

 

My Friend Muriel by Jane Duncan

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My Friend Muriel cover

My Friend Muriel by Jane Duncan is the second book in the author’s ‘My Friends’ series. It was first published in 1959, which was a very good year by the way! This one was a perfect read for these Covid-19 times, it’s a great light read with plenty of laughs. I took this book out to the garden to read on a glorious day last week and it grabbed me immediately. It’s a first person narrative with Jane Duncan – or Janet Sandison as she is in the book telling how she met her friend Muriel who is definitely a bit of an odd bod. It begins in 1930 when Janet was a student at the University of Glasgow and she was lodging with family friends in a village on Clydeside between Clydebank and Dumbarton, which just happens to be where I grew up (see my header photo – it’s Dumbarton). So I knew exactly where Jane was. On her commute to uni every morning she could see No 534 being built at John Brown’s shipyard, the ship was of course eventually named Queen Mary.

It’s just the wrong time to be graduating from uni as there was just about no chance of any graduates getting a job due to the Great Depression. Janet is faced with having to go back to her family home in the Highlands, but before that happens she is troubled for the first time in her life with toothache and while waiting in the dentist’s waiting room she peruses the magazines. An article titled Are You Lonely catches her eye and the upshot is that she writes off to a given address to get a pen friend from the writer of the article Mrs Whitely-Rollin. This eventually leads to an offer of work in England where Janet meets Muriel who pops up off and on throughout Janet’s life.

This book takes Janet from the age of 20 to her mid thirties so it includes WW2 when she joined the WAAF, working in the Operations Room and getting engaged from time to time as she was the only female there! There were lots of familiar situations in this book, for me anyway. There’s even a character called Alexander Alexander and you might think that is an unlikely name for anyone to be given, but I knew a man with that name, although he was called Sandy Eck by everyone – both of those being diminutives of Alexander.

The blurb on the front says: A riotous romp – moving, funny, fresh and alive. Second in a series that is making publishing history.

Back in 1959 this book cost all of 2/6 which if you aren’t old enough to remember pre decimal coinage is 12 and a half pence. It cost me all of £1.60 on our February trip up to Aberdeen (which must have been our last trip away from home) it was money well spent.