Edna Fry: The Woman Beneath the Hat - Chapter One

Reader, I married him. But it hasn't always been so bad . . .

A long time ago, in a village far, far away . . . a small wicker basket sat plump and alone on a cold, damp limestone step, snuggled against the heavy oak door of a small country residence of debatable aspect. A banshee wind howled its mournful song through the desolate night hills and pellets of rain smudged the spidery script on a single, sodden scrap of paper - 'Please take good care of this poor wee mite for in truth I fear I cannot.'

Our grocer had a strange sense of humour.

Life all those years ago was altogether more simple and innocent than now. We knew nothing of such modern advancements as the i-pod, twitter and crystal meth. Aside from occasional, organised speed-dancing events, during which 140 character flirtations were exchanged with unsuitable gentlemen from the neighbouring villages whilst engaging in endless quadrilles, there was little to occupy a young lady of marriageable demeanor, save for tapestry, flower-pressing and rigorous bouts of self-gratification.

Times were hard. My mother, the novelist Mary Naughtie - author of 'The Illustrated Calmer Suitor - for adventurous but polite gentlefolk' found herself suffering from an extreme form of female writer's blockage and despite his best endeavours, our poor dear father, inventor and entrepreneur, Joshua Kiddie was unable to find a manufacturer for his revolutionary Spinning Nanny. Our parents, therefore, found providing for their twenty-six offspring excessively burdensome. In order to alleviate this burden, they would regularly host their famous Murder Mystery Weekends at the house and by the spring of my nineteenth year only me, my three sisters and brother remained.

My surviving siblings and I rapidly reached the conclusion that it would be in our best interests to either marry or find some form of gainful employment. Being, apart from myself, generally regarded throughout the county as visually repulsive we were severely limited in our choice. We were, however, a musical family - our father played the comb and paper and our great aunt was a harpsichord - and so it was that we found ourselves forming an ensemble, with Emily on vocals, Charlotte, percussion, Branwell ,the mantelpiece, myself the violin and Sharon miming and trying to look pretty.

The Naughtie-Kiddie Fiddlers proved an instant success, winning prize after prize in music festivals throughout the land. Following our Eurovision success with 'Boom-bang-a-tiddly-diddly-i-tie on a string', we were inundated with countless sponsorship deals, all of which, for some reason, were reliant on a change of band name. These potential sponsors were almost exclusively beer manufacturers. We toyed with renaming ourselves the Double Diamonds, the Budweisers and the Old Peculiers before settling, finally, on the Coors. Within days we signed to a major record label and before very long, you couldn't walk into a regency period theme pub without hearing one of our many ludicrously catchy tunes blaring out from the jukebox.

It was at this time, however, that the cracks began to appear in our happy group and jealousy reared its unsightly visage. No longer happy to be upstaged by their younger, prettier and more talented sister, the rest of the band relegated me to the back of the stage where, at the end of a particularly gruelling tour, I fell asleep, leaving my older sister Sharon to mime her violin solo in silence to a stunned audience of Latvian steelworkers. . .

As the tabloids of the day reported, I was forced to leave in an acrimonious split. I sought representation from 24 hour legal firm 'So-U-Claim' and after a tortuous six month high court battle was left with just the band's instruments, a castle in county Tipperary and ownership of the Beatles' back catalogue.

And so, with a heavy heart and a heavier piano, I bade farewell to the Coors and set off to seek fame and fortune alone . . .