I created a new hashtag on social media yesterday, #NonagenarianNovelists. I created it to celebrate the publication of a debut novel written by my amazing 97-year-old great-aunt! Aberdeen-born and Huntly-bred, Tonie Ritchie completed her first novel this year. A great achievement for anyone, let alone a nonagenarian!

The novel, Spur of Light, was begun after attending a creative writing course on the Scottish island of Iona in 2002, but lay unfinished for many years until Tonie’s eldest daughter encouraged her to finish it and now, at the age of 97, she has finally completed the task.

Tonie’s life certainly hasn’t been quiet or uneventful. Just the opposite in fact. And perhaps that’s where some of the ideas in her novel came from! She was born in Aberdeen in 1923 and grew up in Huntly, attending Gordon School until she was 16. She then worked for the Clydesdale Bank before joining the WRNS (Women’s Royal Naval Service) in 1943. She lived in Hong Kong, Malta and Gibraltar with her husband Jimmy, who was a Naval Surgeon Captain, and while in Hong Kong she worked for BFBS (British Forces Broadcasting Service) as a radio announcer. They had five children – at one point she was left looking after them all plus two aged parents while her husband was away at sea.

She now lives in Plymouth where she’d returned in 1990 after Jimmy died. She then studied English at GCSE and A Level, before taking up creative writing and having several short stories and poems published.

When I was a child one of my favourite books was Joyce Lankester Brisley’s Milly-Molly-Mandy Stories. Milly-Molly-Mandy, properly Millicent Margaret Amanda, had a great-aunt and I envied Milly-Molly-Mandy for this. Imagine my delight, therefore, when I discovered that I had a great-aunt of my own! Though there, it has to be said, the similarity ended, for while Mily-Molly-Mandy’s Great Aunt Margaret was a “little, little white-haired lady in a black bonnet and dress spotted with little mauve flowers,” mine was the complete opposite. Not remotely a little old lady, but rather a woman of great energy and full of fun and laughter, my Great Aunt Tonie.

Tonie and Vivien in Plymouth, September 2019

Tonie and my Great Uncle Jimmy seemed very exotic to us. They had travelled the world and had many marvellous tales to tell. Including terrifying encounters with the Triad in China, where, despite living through events that could vie with The Third Man for their menace, they lived to tell the tale. Perhaps even ruthless Chinese gangsters recognised that Aberdeenshire folk have iron in their souls!

Now, very many years later, Tonie has another tale to tell and this is it, Spur of Light, her first novel, completed at the age of 97. A remarkable achievement by a remarkable woman.

Spur of Light is published by Vival Publications and is available from Amazon both as an ebook and a paperback.