This is Me!

Hi Everyone

Sorry for the scary photo, but some of my supporters have been wondering what I look like! Well, here you go. People have also been saying they would like to know a little bit more about me and I thought I could explain about this selfie.

The pic is very recent – taken just a couple of months ago. I can tell that it was taken in 2024 in Bavaria. It was summer and I appear to be (what for me is) near naked, lol. Yes, I feel the cold. Behind me you can see the detritus of my mobile life – I am spending a few years living in a camper van with my husband, which is my excuse for looking less than pristine, ha ha ha.

My passion for Irene Mawer bloomed after I took early retirement and I had no idea where it would lead me. I decided I would like to know more about Miss Mawer because I trained in her method of mime and movement when I was in my early 20s (1981-1984). Although I never went on to use my mime training in any professional way, the love of it endured, and I have always been more aware of how I move because of it.

My teacher was Mrs Durling. Her first name was Nora, but I was never invited to call her anything other than Mrs Durling. At that time, she was married to Robert Durling, who was the passionate love of her life. She told me the story of how when they first met they were walking in the countryside and he held out his hand to help her climb over a stile. As their hands touched, she felt an emotional electric shock and she knew from that moment that he was the one for her. Robert was a well educated man, who I now realise supported his wife fully, as does my own husband, Andy.

Robert Durling was not Mrs Durling’s first husband, I think she was a widower when she met Robert. I didn’t know at the time, and only learned from my later research, that Mrs Durling had previously been Mrs Gregorious-Brown and had been trained at Ginner-Mawer. She taught me a few steps of Classical Greek Dance, but as Irene Mawer once said of herself “I wasn’t, and never would be, a dancer”. However, like Miss Mawer, I love dance and have always enjoyed participating, though I never achieved any qualifications in any type of dance.

I’ll finish this blog post here, as it is really supposed to be a blog about Irene Mawer – however, as I am so connected with her, I am sure you will forgive the indulgence. The biography that I am writing about Miss Mawer has taken an inordinately long amount of time – I am now in year five. I had no inkling that this would be the case when I began, which is just as well, as I probably wouldn’t have begun on the road of researching her. Hopefully it will be published next year (2025) and launched via Kickstarter (please have a look at the Kickstarter website, its not a scam, it is a way of achieving advanced funding to cover the costs of writing and self-publishing my book.)

Please do contact me via any platform if you have comments or questions, I love to hear from people and it makes me realise that I am not just pinging blog posts out into the ether. Best wishes, Janet Fizz xx