KEEPING UP WITH THE JUVENILES

New Zealand Listener, Volume 37, Issue 944, 13 September 1957, Page 5

KEEPING UP WITH THE JUVENILES

HATEVER family life may do, it generally does not lead to a calm and placid existence for mother. Caught up in the endless demands upon her time and energy, most mothers begin to feel almost as though peace and quiet were as apocryphal as some statesmen seem to believe. They begin to feel as though the essential qualifications for motherhood are inexhaustible energy and a never-failing sense of humour. Jillian Squire is one mother who seems to have both. Twice before in the Family Daze series she has lightheartedly reported the way in which her family has left her somewhat bothered and_ bewildered, although these effects were not apparent in her writing. Now in Daze of Our Age her family is a little older, but the daze, as she says, goes right on, and Mum is still at the centre of things. Daze of Our Age, which has been playing in the Women’s Hour at 1XH, will start from 2XA and 4ZB on Monday, September 16, and from 2XP and 4ZA on September 30. It will be played later in the Women’s Hours of the other Commercial stations. Jillian Squire is the pen name of Joyce Thom, of Lower Hutt. She was born, as she puts it, "in Nelson, far

too many years ago," and is married to Donald Thom, a tobacco manufacturing executive. They have three children. "I began writing," she says, "about seven years ago when my youngest child started school, and my father, no doubt trying to fill ‘that gap,’ presented me with a heap of old iron he cal:ed a typewriter. ‘Write a few short stories, he encouraged me. And lied cheerily, ‘It’s easy.’ "So from my cosy little domestic rut I wrote about my rut-mates and my-self-also the loved ones of my rutmates, the dogs, cats and guinea-pigs, and about our life and times, all. the crises that sometimes seemed funny at the time and sometimes much, much later." Daze of Our Age was written about three years ago, when Sylvia was 17, Dennis 14, and Alan 9, The four talks begin with Sylvia’s decision to choose her own "fashionable" clothes, an occasion many mothers find rather (in fact, Father had to be called in to cope with a duffel-coat), Then: Alan shows signs of becoming a successful businessman-especially when his parents find him changing the New Zéaland coims in the church collection for Australian ones, saying "God won't. know. He’ll think I live in Australia,"

"In the last seven years," said Mrs Thom, "I've written several hundred short _ stories, articles and radio scripts, because writing is like drug-taking, you can’t stop once you start. I wrote under pressure to achieve a trip to England and the Continent last year-and it surpassed my wildest and most demanding dreams. Since then I have been writing and broadcasting a series of New Zea:and Newsletters for the BBC Women’s Hour, and apart from many letters from people genuinely interested in New Zealand, I’ve had some amusing ones from discontented housewives who want to leave their husbands and find a new life (and perhaps a new husband) in New Zealand. I try to answer all with tact, if not encouragement,"