Sarah Dickinson was our Founder Jacqui Lofthouse’s first proper ‘boss’ when Jacqui began her career as a graduate in 1988. Here Jacqui interviews Sarah and they reminisce about ‘the old days’, about their relationship and on the nature of business and being a writer.

 

Sarah, when we first met, I was a twenty-two year old graduate fresh out of university and you were a successful businesswoman, running a media training company and a radio production house. I know how impressed I was by you and all you’d achieved. I was also rather terrified of you! Dare I ask, what were your early impressions of me?

I remember you bounced into the office, fresh, eager and intelligent.  I tended to rely on intuition when I hired someone and certainly in your case was proved right.  Anyone who started asking me about holiday entitlement, pay or career opportunities early in the interview was unlikely to find a job with me.  As for being ‘terrifying’, of course, I find that hard to believe!  I like to think I led by example, not fear.

Of course, when I looked at you, in those days, all I saw was the power (who’ll ever forget our 1980s shoulder-pads!) and the success…  You made it look so easy. Was it?

No, it wasn’t easy, but then it wasn’t hard either.  Obama hadn’t come on the scene yet, but his ‘yes we can’ catch phrase could have been invented for me.  I realise now that I’m very much a start-up kind of business woman.  I seemed to have had the ability to spot a gap in the market and went for it.  Hence we were the first independent radio production company in the UK, one of the first to offer media and presentation training, and way ahead of the game with TV cookery shows.  Too ahead, I suspect, as we didn’t manage to get our pilot show commissioned – but we had a great time producing it.

One of the things I loved about working for you was the fact that you trusted me to do important jobs and plunged me straight in at the deep end. I edited a radio interview with Edna O’Brien on my first day in the job and was straight off to meetings with top-level corporate clients. Was it intentional, that trust – or just a necessity of getting the work done? One can certainly learn something from that ‘deep-end’ approach I think…

It was Edna O’Brien was it?  I’d forgotten.  Perhaps a little naively, I simply assumed you could do it.  You reminded me, when we last met, that it took you nearly a week to edit.  I trusted your ambition and desire to learn.  In an ideal world, everyone should be given the opportunity to learn and develop in their work.

I’ll confess, I was in love with the glamour of it all too – the fridges full of Chardonnay and Perrier, the luxurious radio studio, the celebrities wandering through the door and the Christmas treats – dinners at the Groucho Club and Mosimann’s… Was that just the world you moved in, or did you cultivate a sense of glamour?

God, that Chardonnay!  It looked and tasted like yellow turpentine!  Something to do with the wine having been matured in oak barrels, but both us and the clients loved it!

I never ever saw The Groucho Club or Mosimann’s as being ‘glamourous’, just fun places to be.  Also, because I was the main person bringing in the work, they were seductive environments for prospective clients.  I remember one time at The Groucho when I was pitching for a contract, Joanna Lumley & Dawn French were lunching together.  That didn’t go unnoticed by my guest.  We got the job.

One thing I particularly learned from working with you – that has remained with me until this day – was the importance of a good list. I’ll never forget the regular meetings and your words ‘Jacqui, come in here and bring your list…’   Are you still a lister?

I’m still an inveterate ‘lister’, relishing crossing things off and moving unfinished tasks to the next day’s list.  Psychiatrists have a name for this obsession, I’m sure.

Perhaps I also learned ‘dress for success’ – I’ll never forget the time you bought me a suit – I had £100 budget, which I spent in Jigsaw on my first proper business attire…  

A 100 pounds – a lot of money then and a lot of cheek on my part.  I’m not sure you were entirely comfortable though in being power dressed.  Nor that the corporate side of the business was for you, but you went along with it.

Down to more serious matters (remember, I see all this through the lens of an excitable twenty-something) – looking back at it, I feel very privileged that my first boss was a woman. Was it hard to start your business in what must very much have been a male-dominated industry in those days?

This probably sounds either arrogant or foolish, but I never thought ‘how can I do this, I’m a woman’?  I knew I had drive and tenacity and a wafer thin reputation as a broadcaster, but the main motivation was the desire to work in such a way that I could spend time with our two young boys as well.  Ironically, of course, I probably worked much harder building up my business than if I had been employed.  But the control was in my hands, and that was very important to me.

Thinking further about a ‘male dominated’ sector, although we now know there were, and apparently still are, wide wage discrepancies between men and women, the media is certainly no longer a male dominated world.  I never felt in competition with men.

Without doubt, working with you helped my early ambition as a writer. I was lucky enough to produce your interviews with many authors and I remember seeing the mention of the UEA Creative Writing MA in one of the publishing catalogues that landed on my desk. That definitely changed my life… as did the opportunity of hearing so many writers talk about their work. Did interviewing them influence you too?

This is the one moment in our relationship when I initially felt let down.  If I’m honest – envious.  I would have liked nothing better than to have waltzed into writing heaven with Malcolm Bradbury at UEA.  There I was, poor little Cinderella, hacking away at the coal face.  But I got over that pretty quickly and was genuinely pleased when your first novel was published.

As for interviewing authors influencing my writing ambitions, I was so preoccupied with running the business that, no, they didn’t.  But I loved helping them express themselves.  Edna O’Brien, about whom we talked just now, opening up her soul, and Peter Carey describing how he felt an electrical charge through his fingers when he’d find the right phrase or word.

As a small business owner today, I remain in awe at the ambition of your business – that when you set it up, you had such beautiful premises and permanent staff. What advice do you have for women in business who have similarly ambitious plans?

Find something you really like doing, be brave, be enthusiastic and be prepared to work night and day.  Hope that your staff respect you, but don’t automatically assume they will like you.  Always make time for feedback and constructive criticism and appreciate that no-one stays forever.

Now you are a writer, of course, and your book ‘Plenty Mango’ has recently been published. We speak about this in our first interview here. How did your life in business prepare you for life as a writer?

Well, in business you are writing all the time – treatments, scripts, proposals, reports, staff appraisals.  It teaches you how to write clearly, how to judge tone and the important role played by grammar.   Or am I being old fashioned?  I still find the informality of e-mails surprising.  Now that I have more time, writing has become my main focus – as you know only too well.

What general advice would you give to women looking to lead in business? Do you have any particular ways of working that others could learn from?

I think we’ve already touched on this but, if you were to ask me the one most important quality needed to lead, it has to be courage.  Courage to develop, courage to delegate and, although it happens rarely, the courage to fire someone.

In 2015 we had a reunion, which is how you and I met again after many years. What was it like, seeing everyone again after so long? Was it odd to see your protégées grown-up or did we seem just the same? I know that for me it was a strange experience returning to that place only as more of a grown-up and being able to talk to you in a very different way…

It was wonderful.  A kind of levelling.  None of us had changed (we all lied about not having aged) that much.  What fascinated me the most was how differently we all remembered things.  Memory is an unreliable witness, isn’t she?

‘Plenty Mango – Postcards from the Caribbean’ by Sarah Dickinson is available via either Amazon.co.uk/books or Amazon.com/books in paperback, Kindle, Audible and iTunes formats.

You can read the first part of Sarah’s interview with Jacqui, about her writing of the book Plenty Mango here.

It is with great pleasure that I introduce a new book and Audible recording, Plenty Mango: Postcards from the Caribbean by Sarah Dickinson. This is a very special one for me as Sarah was my first ever proper ‘boss’ after I graduated from University – aged 22, she offered me a role as a radio producer at her company Ladbroke Radio. The full story of how I met Sarah and what I learned from her as a female business-owner way back in the mid-eighties will form Part Two of this feature. But in the meantime, let’s dive into the interview and find out more about this tale of life on Montserrat and living through the volcano years.

 

Sarah, when I was in my early twenties, I remember working on your first book ‘How to Take on the Media’ as your researcher.  How do you remember the experience of writing that book?

And a very good researcher you were!  The abiding memory is of acute physical pain. I’d slipped a disc and could only get comfortable either by standing upright or flat on my back, so the physical act of writing was challenging, to say the least.  But the thinking, mapping and ordering of the content was exhilarating.

I knew I ran the risk of being labelled ‘poacher turned gamekeeper’, as I was revealing the tricks in a journalist’s arsenal. But I genuinely believed then, as I do still, that an interviewee has a right to know the so-called ‘rules of the game’.

Apart from being verbally mauled by Melvyn Bragg on Radio 4’s Start the Week show, the gamble paid off.

In those days, I mainly knew you as my boss, a businesswoman and a radio producer/presenter. But have you always been a writer?

From about the age of 6, I have always wanted to write.  My first favourite author was Monica Dickens (no relation sadly) whose witty series ‘One Pair of Feet’, ‘One Pair of Hands’ made a big impact.  Won a few writing prizes at college, but then had to earn a living, a need which occupied me, as well as bringing up a family, for many years.  It’s only in the last ten years that I have the luxury of time to write continuously.

Your new book ‘Plenty Mango – Postcards from the Caribbean’ tells the story of your experience of the Caribbean island of Montserrat – how did your relationship with that island begin?

As with so many things that change the course of our lives, it was serendipity.

One summer, many years ago, I was driving through Northern France with my husband John.  We were on our way to Switzerland and at one with the world.  It was one of those typical straight French country roads with white ringed poplar trees on either side.  Nothing coming the other way, I signalled to overtake two cars in front of me.  All was well until I was alongside the first driver who decided to overtake the car in front of him.  There wasn’t room for the three of us, so I ended up hitting one of the poplar trees while they drove on.  John somehow got me out just before the car exploded.  He saved my life.

Despite being grateful for being alive, come that winter, we couldn’t quite get over the enormity of what could have happened.  So, to cheer the soul and warm the body, we headed for the West Indies, unknown to both of us, eventually finding and falling in love with Montserrat.  So much so that John, who is an architect, decided to follow a dream and find some land on which he would build a group of contemporary West Indian style villas.  We did find that land, 27 acres of tropical hillside overlooking sea, beach and mountains.  We re-mortgaged everything we had to pay for it.

We only needed to build one more house to almost break even.  And then the island’s volcano re-awoke after 400 years …..

That was in 1995 wasn’t it?  I assumed everything changed for the island?

I can tell you the exact date .. Tuesday, July 18^th.  I remember it was one of those glorious tropical days, bright sunshine, cooling breezes, our two teenage boys glued to their Walkmans, working on their sun tans.  I was dozing on a sun lounger when it suddenly felt as if someone was trying to tip me out of it.  I shouted at the boys to back off.  When they looked up at me from the other end of the pool, I realised my mistake.  Something very strange was happening. I learnt later that I was experiencing a tectonic earthquake, one of the indicators that a volcano is ‘waking up’.

I devote quite a few chapters in Plenty Mango to the devastation caused by the volcano and the impact that it has had on the economy and the lives of Montserratians.  Tragically 19 people lost their lives, more than half the island’s population (5,000) left and those who stayed had to endure years of uncertainty.

Today, albeit very slowly, life on Montserrat is returning.  I’d like to say ‘returning to normal’, but that wouldn’t be strictly true.  I still jump when the 12 0’clock siren rings across the valley, and the especially adapted radio tuned to the Montserrat Volcano Observatory, in case of an emergency, is never turned off.  But, and I include John and I, we’re a resilient lot and we all still say of our precious little island ‘still home, still nice, still paradise.’

How did ‘Plenty Mango’ come into being?

For 40 years I have written a Christmas report on the activities of the Renton family during the past 12 months.  Not surprisingly, Montserrat had a starring role.  It wasn’t until about 3 years ago, when I was invited to give a series of illustrated talks ‘Living Under a Volcano’ on one of Fred Olsen’s cruise ships, that I dug out the letters.  And what a valuable history they provided.  At the end of each talk, I read directly from some of the letters and was surprised and gratified by how well they were received.  ‘You should put them in a book’, several people suggested.  So I did!  Obviously, Plenty Mango is very special to me, but I think what gives it an added attraction are John’s wonderful, quirky illustrations.  We have this catch phrase between us ‘I do the words, he does the pictures.’

What’s the essence of the book?

I suppose Plenty Mango is a kind of love story, between two people who share a love for a tiny island in the West Indies which, despite the ructions of a volcano, is home to about 5,000 people who care about each other and are proud of their heritage.  Incidentally, it’s astonishingly beautiful.

I’ve structured the book as a series of illustrated postcards – word portraits about its history, traditions, myths and, most importantly, its people.

I believe you still live part of the year in Montserrat?  How has your experience of the volcano affected your life and relationships there over the years?

There’s that quote by the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche ‘that which does not kill us, makes us stronger.’  As I think I was trying to say just now, the hardship has brought us all closer together and made us more determined to make Montserrat a real tourist destination.  John hasn’t given up on Isles Bay Plantation and hopes, one day, to build some more villas.  The British Government seems to be still hanging in there, providing much-needed aid and more and more people are returning.  Of course, we’d all like things to move much faster, but we know we’re still dependent on the whims of the volcano.

It’s the characters, of course, that we remember after reading your stories …

And they are all people I know!  I’ve changed the names of one or two, but not many.  I’m relieved that the book has been very well received on Montserrat.

I’m often asked, do you have a favourite?  Of course not, but I am forever grateful to a lovely old man, never seen without his white wellingtons, who is a dab hand at clearing storm drains.  I was waiting for John who had gone in search of a particular type of screw (no mean feat on a small island) when the old man came up to me and said ‘I jus seen your Daddy, an I tole him I clean dem drains soon.’  Who needs botox with compliments like that?

Do you see the book as journalism or creative non-fiction or short stories.  Did you think about ‘genre’ when writing?

I really dislike this pigeon-holing ‘genre’ thing but, if pushed, I suppose it would fit into ‘travel’.

What made you self-publish?

How long have you got?  Despite knowing lots of publishers and agents and receiving some very encouraging feedback to Plenty Mango, that depressing conjunction BUT kept appearing.  ‘We’d love to publish it, but travel is such a tough market’, ‘Love the text and the illustrations, but all that colour would make it expensive to publish.’  Those are from people who bothered to reply;  there were an awful lot of who didn’t.  So, self- publish it was.

What has the experience of self-publishing been like compared to traditional publishing?

It’s much harder!  You need cash, time, determination and, in my case, a technical guru.  First of all, John and I set up a small publishing company called Tamarind Press (just in case we needed it later on).  Because my media background is as a reporter/presenter, I decided, initially, to record all the stories and try and get them played on radio or on some of the airlines flying to the West Indies. It meant finding a producer and hiring a radio studio but, as I’d been in the business for some time, that wasn’t difficult.  I’d also heard of an organisation called ACX who operate as an intermediary for Amazon’s audio imprint Audible and iTunes.  There is no upfront charge and, once satisfied with the quality of your submission, will add it to their catalogue.  ‘Look no further,’ I thought.  Another lesson to be learned.  Always read the small print.

What I’d failed to notice was that Amazon won’t publish an audio version of your book until it is available either as a paperback or in Kindle – which leads me to the Kindle Direct Publishing site which urges you to ‘Self-publish e-Books and paperbacks for free with Kindle Direct Publishing, and reach million of readers on Amazon.’  Sounded good to me and because my technical guru was right by my side, I didn’t have to worry about such things as JPEGs, or page and line breaks.  My job was to proof read the final manuscript before pressing SEND.  You know, I swear I spotted every ‘typo’ and slightly confusing edit but, (there’s that but again) as I suppose is inevitable, I have spotted a few since reading the published version.

The great thing about publishing with Amazon is that it’s a ‘just in time’ outfit.  Someone orders a copy and, if it’s an e-book or audio, it’s instant, if it’s a paperback, could be with you the next day.  No remainders this way.

How have you found the marketing side?  What advice would you give to others going this route?

I compiled a data base of about 400 people and e-mailed them all INDIVIDUALLY, letting them know about Plenty Mango and the formats in which it was available.  I kept the price of the e-book very competitive.  The paperback version, which had all John’s coloured illustrations, didn’t offer me such lee-way, and Audible charges a fixed price.  I have to warn you that the royalties are pretty small.

Word of mouth is, I’ve found, the best marketing tool and, to this end, I have become very active on Facebook.  It’s quite hard work, as I’m not one of those people who post photographs of my last meal, so it tends to be news, at the moment at least, about the book.

I’ve also got a website sarahdickinson.net – which is proving to be a useful communication tool.

I’m thinking of commissioning a PR specialist as well, but haven’t as yet done so.

The book, I’m happy to say, is doing well.  Not ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ – well, you understand, but well enough.

You recently took part in a literary festival in Montserrat – what was that like?

Hard work, but great fun and it’s a wonderful experience being asked to sign copies of your book. Have written a piece for the book’s sequel

‘PLENTY MORE MANGO’.

When we met recently, you told me about your regular journaling and that was very inspiring.  How has writing regularly changed you as a writer?

It’s like exercise, the more you do, the easier it gets.  I write in Moleskines – good size for carrying around and protected by a hard cover.  Anything and everything goes into them – funny things our grandchildren say, rants about politics, the beginnings of stories.  A word of advice – always date everything.To-day’s entry will be about this interview!

‘Plenty Mango – Postcards from the Caribbean’ by Sarah Dickinson is available via either Amazon.co.uk/books or Amazon.com/books in paperback, Kindle, Audible and iTunes formats.

Thanks so much for sharing your experience Sarah – I can’t wait for our second interview about our early days, though I’m slightly nervous what you’ll say about the younger me…