interview
Island Life - April/May 2011
all across the Island. It is one she admits she
down and read novels to us, and even teach
enjoyed researching and writing – but I won’t
us how to play poker and pontoon – all sorts
reveal any more for fear of spoiling a good
of interesting things,” she recalls. .
read.
Gay was born in Bloxwich Maternity
Gay was an avid reader of books from an
early age, and spent all her pocket money on
Hospital in the Midlands, and lived in Walsall
buying Enid Blyton novels and the like. She
until she was just four-and-a-half when the
smiled: “My family used to say ‘give her a
family moved down to the Island – reckoned
cornflake packet and she will read it’. I was
to be the world’s most haunted.
always surrounded by books.”
Her father worked for Saunders Roe,
As her education continued at Carisbrooke
and the family lived in Newport, with Gay
Grammar School, it became obvious even
attending Nine Acres Primary, a school at
to herself that while maths and the sciences
which her daughter and granddaughter later
were never going to be high on her list of
spent time. Gay recalls: “I found it difficult
academic achievements, English could be ࠦ