Ask Sara - A Reader / Writer Q&A with Norma O’Hara



This week's Ask Sara features Greek Village reader Norma O'Hara. I asked Norma to tell us three things about herself, and to ask me three questions in return.

Here is what we chatted about:

Norma told us-

As you are a writer perhaps the interesting bits.

Dad was a jazz musician. I am not musical but my father played the drums

I have three children, four grandchildren and two great grand children.

I grew up in Heston near to London airport, I moved to Camberley, Sutton, Nottingham, Scunthorpe, the Lake District to Essex finally moving to small whitewashed village in the mountains in Spain, a very similar environment to yours.

We moved to Spain after renting for three months for two years and decided the life was real not "pretend" or artificial. We originally came to dog sit for friends.

We have now been here 6 years creating a garden on a steeply sloping mountainside. We are delighted today because it is raining!


And here is what Norma asked me:

Where might you go next?

I would love to embark on a world tour. Not in one go, but a series of two or three week visits around the world to see more than I have done so far. This would include places like Cuba, Cambodia, Hawaii, Brazil and I would love to do a tour of North America. Naturally I would take a good companion with me, maybe two - I am thinking these might be Stella and Mitsos as they like to travel. They might even get up to some adventures abroad that I could write about.

Has life coloured your writing?

I believe we are a sum of or experiences filtered through the wide holed net we call our inherent natures and stirred about with a spoon called “choice". In some ways life has been good to me but like most people I have been through my share of the bad, very bad some might say, which has led me to the conclusion that the good can make us either grateful or arrogant and the bad can make us either compassionate or bitter.

I hope I have taken the best from what life has offered, and I am very grateful for the privileges I have been given and the opportunities that have presented themselves. This all naturally colours the content of my books. My motivation to write has also been coloured by my life and that shows in two ways;

First the books give me a platform to voice my grievances against the unfairness of the world, which, like a child, I cannot hold in and must stomp my feet. This is my passion - and secondly my writing gives me the opportunity to give something back, to spread a little happiness and contribute to society in a positive and uplifting way, which is food for my soul. A letter from a reader saying I have achieved this gives me such joy.

Have you changed since living in Greece?

Greece has changed me and changed me again! What a country! The first change I noticed was that I started to look at my birth country from the outside and I saw how the media affected the way people viewed the world outside the UK. But I also saw how the press cherry picked what they published so it was a distorted view they offered. Compared with the range of news the Greek television and papers offered this came as a bit of an eye opener (Or was I just naive in the first place?) as there was far more happening in the world that I have previously been lead to believe.

I have been backwards and forwards to Greece for years now but the first time when I finally moved lock, stock and barrel I left behind my booming psychotherapy practice which I worked hard for and missed far more than I anticipated. I had not realised to what degree my work gave me my status, my label, my sense of self. I did not have the language to do the same work in Greece so I looked around for other possibilities. I scraped by, but what hit me hardest, was how patriarchal Greece still was/is. As a woman it is very easy not to be heard in Greece.

I have had many years to reflect on these two changes in my life and I have come to the conclusion that when I was in Britain I was the sum of all I did, whereas in Greece I had to find value in the sum of who I was. It was the difference between doing and being. The Greeks are very happy just being - for me it is an effort.

Thank you Norma for taking part in this week's Ask Sara!

Want to join in? Come and find me on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/authorsaraal...
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Published on October 17, 2016 01:16 Tags: greece, sara-alexi, the-greek-village-series, travel-fiction
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