The Moth

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Angry Butler dies attempting to rescue Millie; Robert burns the living hell out of his hands actually rescuing Millie (and the puppy). The book becomes a story of two people who are very different, reacting to life through the eyes of what they have learned within their respective classes, finding themselves questioning it. What if all men in Robert's class are not ignorant? How is it that he treats me better than my own family does? Robert find Agnes a woman that he can talk to about serious subjects (such as in books), absent the games he has been subjected to by a number of women of his acquaintance. In short, he finds a woman who actually interests him. Cookie retired from teaching in 1969 and became Catherine’s full-time helper and organiser. But he seems to have been a sad man. The Cookson biographer, Piers Dudgeon, in his book ‘Kate’s Daughter’, believes Tom was unhappy for much of his married life. Dudgeon quotes Catherine’s cousin Sarah as saying Catherine had “a lot of hate” in her, with her only love being for Tom.

Tom was a stimulation not only to Catherine, but also to many of his pupils at Hastings Grammar School, now the William Parker. He was not the most skilful teacher, but he treated us youngsters in a decent, straightforward and human manner, unlike a number of his staff-mates. Sion Jenkins would have felt very much at home in Hastings Grammar School. But the party’s interrupted by Uncle Shithead, bringing news that since the death of Carrie and Carrie’s baby, Uncle Shithead owes him an apology, and also has pneumonia, so whoops. (Not shown: the scene where he probably says they should go ahead and just have fun without him, if they think that’s what the Lord would really want them to do, don’t worry about him, he’s just sitting here having pneumonia, he’ll be fine if the fluid drains, please, go ahead and keep dancing, those hostages are expensive, etc.)Tilly Trotter (1999) with Carli Norris, Beth Goddard, Sarah Alexander, Amelia Bullmore, Rosemary Leach and Simon Shepherd Catherine left her job at the workhouse in July 1939, and she married Tom in June 1940 in the St Mary-Star-of-the-Sea Church in Hastings High Street. In December that year, their first baby was born. But he was three months premature - and he was dead. They lost three more babies in the next four years. Catherine had missed family life as a child, and now she could not create her own family. This tragedy plummeted her into many years of severe depression and mental anguish that only began to lift at the end of the 1950s. Cookson was portrayed by actress Kerry Browne in the 2018 award-winning film Our Catherine, co-written by Tom Kelly.

Siblings that require looking-after: Millie, Sarah’s younger sister, who has Peculiar Yet Winsome on speed dial. Angry Butler set the whole place on fire, which even Mrs. Angry Butler cannot get behind, especially when they realize that Millie was NOT in the garden, but instead chasing her puppy in the attic. Also, that puppy chills out for several very uncomfortable scenes of people carrying it while trying to smash windows, dodge open flames, etc. It is the world’s most uninterested dog. Oh, fire? That’s fine I guess.) So, the setting for this one means that it covers a lot. There are pubs as the centers of political debate, the rise of industrial employment and urban living leading up to and during the war, and some low-level feminism. But mostly it’s an adorable love story, and some of the usual plot soup that Cookson does so much.On the eve of the New Year, everyone gathers to dance to accordion music provided by someone who is either their gardener or a hostage. However, Tractor Lung is the least of Robert’s problems, since when he comes home he finds out Carrie has a case of Bairnsketball and since he covered for her the night she was out late, he is Private Enemy Number One. He denies being the father, even as his aunt screams that he is, he is, can’t he stand up for his cousin, and you understand why, especially as Uncle Shithead gets more and more upset, but you also understand Robert’s need to extricate himself from this entire quagmire of awful choices, but not before Uncle Shithead gets him right in the brainpan with a chisel. (It’s even darker and blurrier than the rest of this miniseries, so screencaps were just not going to happen.) Because you’re saving the excessive force to press her up against a wall and explain yourself in a husky voice as she has Every Feeling All At Once. Just look how thrilled they are to be making out! (They also take a break from making out to laugh a little about her having to peel both their clothes off, which is a great and adorable ending even if it makes you wonder who exactly dressed him that morning and if that was awkward for him and Aunt Shithead or what.)

Catherine suffered depression for much of her life, not least because of her inability to have a child. It was the still-birth and miscarriages of four children during the Second World War that pushed her into a 15-year period of mental breakdown, despair and near suicide. Tom rescued her from this and gave her the confidence and inspiration to start writing. Her novels reflected much of the pain of her life, with many of them being set in the rundown north east.

In fact, they waste no time making her life worse – her mother succumbs to Lady-itis, leaving Sarah behind with her drunk-ass dad and a pile of letters she gives Sarah about how Millie isn’t her father’s daughter, but her mother’s LOVAH’S DAUGHTER. Our John Willie (1980) with Ian Cullen, David Burke, James Garbutt, John Malcolm and Malcolm Terris Tyneside was one of the poorest areas of Britain, and in these bleak surroundings fatherless Catherine was brought up by an impoverished family, in constant fear of the workhouse. Her childhood was deeply scarred by abuse, violence, alcoholism, shame and guilt, wounds she carried all her life and which came across so many times in her novels. She always had negative, self-destructive tendencies that damaged both her personality and her relationships with other people. Sarah exemplifies strong, assertive, very feminine womanhood. I watched the movie several times over, wanting to be just like Robert and wanting to find a woman like Sarah.