From Fantasy to Reality

My Teenage Idea of the Ultimate in Sophistication

When mentioning my own experiences in Palestine, if I have left the  impression that Patsy is thinly veiled autobiography, that is far from the truth.

v Patsy was born in 1921.  I was born  in 1933.

v Patsy is an only child.  I am the eldest of three.

v Patsy is close to her mother and protective of her. My relationship with my mother fractured when I was four.

v Patsy is at boarding school in England during the Arab Rebellion .  I was in Palestine.   
v Patsy, as a young adult, plays an active role in preparations against German invasion. I was a child throughout WW2. 

So what inspired the character, Patsy?

When I was 12, my current school, the British Community in Jerusalem, offered me an  opportunity to sit a scholarship exam to a prestigious English boarding school. My father, however, refused to sign the forms, on the grounds that the daughter of one of his colleagues had won that scholarship before the war but, on returning to Palestine, she had broken her parents' hearts by frequenting night clubs and refusing to go to church.

As, at that age, going to a nightclub and not wasting Sundays at chapel  was the height of my ambition,  I fantasised about the sophisticated young woman I had never met and whose name I knew not. 

 Patsy grew out of that fantasy but when, as an adult with a somewhat different definition of sophistication,   I started on her fictional story,  Patsy became less of a fantasy and more a real woman with concerns similar to my own. Perhaps after all her mental state is slightly autobiographical although her experiences are so different to mine.