Georgina Thompson 2

Georgina's parents, George and Betty, had given up all hope of her finding herself a husband and a home of her own and though, at first, this worried them they soon came to accept that it was much better for them. They weren't young any more and it was good to have Georgina around to help them with the running of the house and to bring a little extra money in from her job at the Aberdare Leader. She'd begun working at the newspaper when she was 18 writing a women's column that was really a collaboration between Georgina and Betty but her mother didn't want her name on it. Betty talked and Georgina wrote it all down and sent it in to the paper, once a week she would get a small amount of money for the column which she always handed over to her mother. The only money Georgina really needed was to buy fresh books so that she could document her inner world.

After a couple of years Georgina began to receive freelance writing jobs from the paper and occasionally one of her reports was picked up by the larger papers. She never really thought of herself as writer of any note but others could see that the way she constructed sentences and her use of metaphors revealed her different way of looking at the world.

When Georgina was 25 George passed away in his sleep, Georgina said nothing for 4 days until she woke in the morning to find that Betty had followed George on his journey. She arranged a double funeral and buried her parents side by side in Aberdare Cemetery. She adjusted to life on her own very quickly and did her mourning in her own world where death was considered to be a happy event rather than a sad one, although she was not fully entangled in this world so a note of sadness crept in all the same.

Georgina was 35 when a new editor took over at the Aberdare Leader. He was taken with her writing and asked her to submit some fiction for a weekly spot he wanted to run in the paper. Thinking nothing much of it, she sent him an extract from one of her notebooks and was surprised to receive an acceptance and a note to the effect that she would receive twice her normal payment for a weekly instalment. This allowed Georgina to live a little more comfortably than she would have otherwise, not excessively, but she could allow herself the luxury of a good pen and extra paper and envelopes.

She struck up a correspondence with Frances Griffiths who was the younger of the pair involved in the Cottingley Fairy Hoax and even though she knew it a hoax Georgina was always delighted at the photographs the two had produced. They wrote back and forth with tales of their favourite faerie goings on and their journeys into the other world. It was always a pleasure for Georgina to receive a letter from Frances and she never jeopardised that by saying too much in her letters about what she really believed about the other world.



Over a five year period, where Georgina simply copied out extracts from her notebooks and sent them in to the paper, she struck up a correspondence with the Editor, Gerald Ashton. Their business correspondence became quietly, almost unnoticeably, personal. Gerald began to ask Georgina if she would care to meet him for lunch, a movie, a walk in the park, but Georgina always politely declined. She was intrigued by Ashton but knew that with her lack of conversational skills it was destined to go nowhere as soon as they met. Eventually Ashton wore down her resolve and Georgina agreed to meet him in Aberdare park for a picnic, which he would bring with him. Georgina said two words during the hour they spent together, the first was 'Hello' and the second 'Yes' when asked if she would like some lemonade. Though she thought it had all gone very badly Ashton wrote to her and told her what a good time he had at the picnic. She thought about it and realised that he hadn't been lost for words at all and had talked enough for both of them.

At the age of 45, after 5 years of courting, Georgina married Gerald Ashton in a quiet church ceremony. Whenever he was home from work he would talk and talk and every evening before bed Georgina would write him a letter in response, slipping it under his pillow so that he would find it in the morning. For Georgina, he was the perfect partner.