Our Other Lives

By Pam Rae

Four great friends - Shiel, Greer, Abbie and Sam are on holiday and playing football in a school playground. One of them whacks the ball through a broken window below the gym hall. As the youngsters enter the basement, they are astonished to find themselves entering another life; moving into a world they could never ever have imagined.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Airlie Books
• Release date: Mar 1, 2021
• ISBN: 9781838431716

Pam Rae

I have worked as a primary school teacher for over twenty years and still do some teaching when called! I thoroughly enjoy teaching writing to children of all ages and nationalities. Seeing children develop their writing skills as they progress over a year is always a delight to experience. Before I joined the teaching profession, I worked as a Researcher in television and produced some education and children's programmes for STV and BBC Scotland. I have written many scripts and stories for educational purposes but this is my first published novella for children.
I live in Glasgow with my partner, Aubrey who is a Librarian. As you can imagine, our home is full of books!


Book preview

Our

Other

Lives

Pam Rae

Airlie_Books_Logo.png

Published in 2021 by Airlie Books

Copyright © Pam Rae 2021

Pam Rae has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

ISBN Paperback: 978-1-8384317-0-9

Ebook: 978-1-8384317-1-6

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.

All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue copy of this book can be found in the British Library.

Illustrations by Helen Cochrane

Published with the help of Indie Authors World

www.indieauthorsworld.com

IAW_Ident_Vertical_B_W.jpg

Reviews

I thoroughly enjoyed your story.  I loved the characters, story line and the fact that I was learning something new about that period of time. This will be a great resource and I look forward to it being used by pupils at Bankhead Primary.  

Fiona Earl (Principal Teacher, Bankhead Primary School)

Firstly I just wanted to say how much I enjoyed your story. I know it is meant for children, but I love fiction about the Second World War – I am just finishing V2 by Robert Harris – and your evocation of the austerity and danger and drabness that is lightened by a strong sense of community was excellent.

I should also say that as a teaching resource it will be invaluable. You are much more likely to remember D-Day if is presented dramatically, through what characters were doing at the time, rather than a cold date that has to be memorised somehow. After all that is how we do tend remember key historical landmarks in our own lives, like what we were doing when the lockdown was imposed!

Vince Mills (Partickhill Creative Writing Class)

Dedication and

Background to ‘Our Other Lives’

The idea for this story is based on a real life event. The primary school I used to teach in – Bankhead primary in Knightswood, was bombed during the Clydebank blitz, in the Second World War on the night of 13 March 1941. Many houses in the surrounding area were bombed and in that part alone, 39 people were killed including the janitor and his family who were living beside the school. Part of the school was badly damaged but rebuilt.

On the 60th Anniversary of the air raid – 13th March 2001, a Memorial Plaque was unveiled to commemorate the names of all the people who lost their lives.

On that day, some of the men who went to the school at that time, visited me in my classroom and described what it was like during the War. All the windows were blacked out and there were no corridors outside the classroom; the door went straight out to the playground. So the classes were pretty cold in the winter. The area opposite my classroom were the gym hall is, was the section that was bombed. One of the pupils who had attended Bankhead then, Bryan Cromwell, wrote a book; ‘Bankhead – The Story of a Primary School at War’ which a friend from my writing group very kindly lent me. This has many accounts of what happened on that dreadful night and was an invaluable source for research.

The story is a work of fiction and begins in the basement where the four children go down to find their ball. Something quite extraordinary happens to them when they are taken back in time by some kind of strange force. The experience takes over their lives and they start to live in another world that they know nothing about but feel drawn into, and guided by a spirit from the past.

The story is dedicated to the staff and children at Bankhead Primary School: past and present, and all the people who lost their lives on that fateful night in 1941.

Chapter 1

PAMTIF1.jpg

‘Kick it, just kick it, over here!’ shouts Greer