Bohemia Village Voice

Iris Coussens-White

Local resident Iris White of Amherst Road has just had her first book published [see review, this page].
Born in Mount Pleasant Road in 1929, Iris has lived in Hastings all her life, apart from when she was evacuated. She qualified as a teacher of English and worked at a local language school from 1978 until 2004, when she retired due to illness at the age of 76.
Iris started the book many years ago, but put it away as her children were growing up. As the years passed she forgot all about it. In 2004 she had three heart attacks and a mild stroke, which affected her speech and spelling. One day, her grand-daughter was clearing out Iris’s junk/hobby room and found the manuscript.
Iris told the Voice, “She said, ‘Finish it off Grandma. It will be good therapy and help you get your words and spelling back.’” Iris did so, her grand-daughter typed it all out, and local illustrator Stewart Buchan created the art-work for the cover.
Iris said, “Every incident in the book really happened. The “mile of pennies” was really two miles, and it was laid along Bottle Alley. The story deals with the war more lightheartedly at the beginning when I was a child, and then goes on to when I was a teenager.
“The place to which I was first evacuated, with the school, was really Stansted Abbotts in Hertfordshire. When we arrived we were taken to the village hall. All the women in the village then chose their evacuees and took them away with them, but there were still two of us left when everyone else had gone. Then a lady came in who looked like an early hippy, and took us both. She was lovely. We were lucky, but some of the other children had a terrible time.
“The second evacuation was when we were doodle-bugged out. It fell at the bottom of our very long garden and the house was shattered. My elder sister was pregnant at the time. We sheltered at Marine Court for the night. Then we went to stay with my godmother at Ogmore Vale in Wales, and I started work.”
She said, “I did the book partly to show what you can do if you have had a stroke.” Iris told the Voice that she  might write a sequel. This year she and her husband celebrate their diamond jubilee, “and it would be an appropriate time to write about how we met – see the last sentence of the book!”