Gay Clawson-Bray | Gay Gay is Retold Yorkshire Folk Tales' chief cook, bottle washer, critic, editorial department, grammar and syntax checker, encourager-in-chief, and all round good egg. Her many years at the chalk-face teaching Grade School, Gifted Education, and a decade as a School Librarian and Resource Centre Manager qualify her to cast her highly perceptive literary eye over my scribblings, which she does with customary patience and good humour. Although Gay is an American, she has lived in Yorkshire and grew to love Yorkshire Folks and their odd ways - especially when she got to "knaw wot they wor rattlin' on abaht, sithee!" Gay is an avid reader, quilter, cross-stitcher, homemaker, seamstress, and light-giver, and has been known to dote on babies. Despite her many health problems, Gay continues to soldier on, and has 'crossed the plains' many times, often with a broken handcart. |
Ronnie Bray | Ronnie Ronnie is researcher, re-writer, narrator, and recording engineer for Retold Yorkshire Tales. He is also Webmaster, media materials buyer, advertising executive, printer, post-room gopher, and dog handler. Born in Yorkshire in 1935, Ronnie has had more jobs than there are listed in the classified ads section of your local newspaper. It is this almost endless variety of trades and professions that has helped him to appreciate the wide variety of endeavours on which humanity's hands are set, together with the people on whom these hands are set. His employments include two enlistments in the Regular British Army, as a Vehicle Mechanic in the REME, in which he saw active service in the Suez Canal Zone, and in the Cyprus Emergency [will I ever get my medals?], and in the Fifth Royal Tank Regiment - a regiment he never clapped eyes on because he was seconded to the 17/21st Royal Dragoon Guards where he was the Squadron Chief Clerk He has also been a psychiatric nurse [three times], missionary [three times], lorry driver, door-to-door salesman, semi-professional Country singer [Ray Buck], welfare operative, storeman, tier-in, weft boy, core maker, driver's mate, tally man, shop manager, taxi driver, single parent ["Mummy-Daddy"], general manager, office sales manager, customer service manager, mature student [BA Hons, Theology & Religious Studies, Leeds University, '92], and lots more. Although a rolling stone, he has, nonetheless, gathered tons of moss, some of which comes out in his writings, and some of which he eats in hard times. He writes a weekly column "Letter From America" for Open Writing, his unfinished autobiography, "A Shout From The Attic" is in weekly instalments on Open Writing. He was awarded "Writer of the Month" at 2 The Heart and was the winner of their 2003 poetry competition. His writings are carried on many websites, with and without his permission, but life is for living and what enjoyment people get from reading his work is not begrudged. Although exiled from his beloved Yorkshire for nine years, he enjoys life in the South-Western Sonoran Desert in Arizona as long as the air conditioning system is working properly. |
