Mai Griffin

You can now preview the first few chapters of all five of the Ghostly Echoes Series here

I spent much of today editing my entry as an author (and artist) on Amazon.com – that isn’t to suggest that I have altered it dramatically – but more that, in updating it, I noticed how much that was put up in the past has gradually drifted away. There is a theory that, whatever you put up on the internet… Read More

You can see Mai’s portraits on https://www.maigriffin.com

While living in Dorchester-on-Thames, in Oxfordshire, in the seventies, I was asked to write and illustrate local stories connected to Dorchester Abbey. They were published and sold in the Abbey Museum which helped to raise much needed funds towards the upkeep of the cloister garden. Over the next decade in the Far and Middle East, more of my time was… Read More

Everyone seems to be researching their family tree, these days – I started one myself forty years ago. It grew quickly, and it became more interesting when the names and places reminded me of the stories I’d heard from my maternal grandparents about their early lives. My Granddad’s Holme family were farmers somewhere near St Helens and many of the… Read More

It wasn’t how I’d planned to spend my weekend – but, on the other hand, my weekends never needed much planning in 1951. The young man I intended to marry was serving in Malaya (jungle warfare, strategically called The Emergency to safeguard the Planters’ insurance), so I spent time writing letters to him or watching TV for news of the… Read More

On what started off as a fairly normal day, there is nothing like being pushed unceremoniously into an ambulance and spending twenty-six hours in an Emergency ward attached to an incredible number of needles, wires, drips and a blood-pressure machine, to make one appreciate being back at work! Work, for me, is sitting at the computer doing anything other than writing my… Read More

After hearing so much about the congestion at the Channel Tunnel and Ferries, we were expecting difficulties in getting to England but, in the event, our crossing was one of the best ever. We went from Dunkirk and everything was so well organised that it felt like part of the holiday. Fearing that it might be crowded we had booked… Read More

A more recent occasion when I neglected to grab a camera, was a couple of weeks ago while driving on (I think) the M6, to visit friends in the north of England. We were in the fast lane of four, when traffic came to a crawl. In the distance we could see smoke and, as we moved nearer, the smoke… Read More

I couldn’t help reflecting on other long road trips. Most went smoothly but one in particular was unforgettable. In 1963, while living in Singapore, my husband decided that we should have a week in Penang. If memory serves me right it was 132 miles away and he drove with only a couple of short breaks in eleven-and-three-quarter-hours, mostly through secondary… Read More