Oxford Storypods

Never in our Wildest Dreams... After living in Amsterdam for several years, Francis and I wanted to return to the UK. We had a young son to bring back with us but also found ourselves with the additional responsibility of transporting my older sister, Mary Yoe, and her two children. Having split from her partner, Mary was anxious to start a new life in England and I did not have the heart to turn her down. The physical reality of moving three adults and three children - instead of just our family unit of three - across the English Channel to a rented house in the Cotswolds was challenging but Francis accomplished it brilliantly.

The first nine months were spent living in rented houses while we looked for a house to buy in Oxford. Mary and her kids remained with us throughout this period, finding her own accommodation a month after we moved into our Oxford home. By then, I was expecting our second child. We were to have a third child a few years later. Francis worked as an IT technical consultant and, after a period as a full-time mother, I became a teacher specialising in dyslexia and dyscalculia.

Never in our wildest dreams had we ever imagined that we would one day produce an audiobook. But then neither had I dreamt that I would ever become the owner of a boutique in Amsterdam and design clothes. It was thanks to my sister, Mary Yoe, that things took such a bizarre turn many years ago. Francis and I were living in Amsterdam when Mary arrived from England with partner and child, requesting help with sorting out their lives. Tony was broke and had worked as a street trader; Mary could sew. We surmised the solution was to get a shop for Tony to run while Mary looked after baby and made clothes to sell. I would help Tony in the shop as I was doing voluntary work for Amnesty at the time. Setting up the shop took all our meagre savings before Tony decided our offer of 50% of the profits was not enough. He walked out and, to our dismay, Mary followed him. I started the shop on my own and never worked so hard. In time, a seamstress was employed and I began designing clothes for our Libra Boutique label. A lucky break came when a Dutch popstar was featured in a magazine wearing one of our dresses; she went on to appear on Holland's Top of the Pops in other Libra Boutique creations. When we left Amsterdam, we sold Libra Boutique to two Dutch women, one of whom was a Libran like me.

We enjoy living in Oxford. Oxford was a fantastic place for bringing up our children. If we had chosen to live anywhere other than Oxford, our Alice in Wonderland audiobook would never have come into being. It is to Oxford that we owe the inspiration for our first audiobook. We are both fans of audiobooks - the spoken word has entranced and entertained us for hundreds of hours whether on long, boring journeys or while doing household chores. We have learned to appreciate the specific skills needed to bring an audiobook to life. It is not simply about enunciation and being able to decode words on the page. The best audiobook readers are 'narrators': they tell the story as though it were their own. That is why it was imperative that we found those skills in our own narrators in order to capture the essence of the book's idiosyncratic humour. I am delighted with the results and it has been gratifying to receive such positive comments from Lewis Carroll fans and the Times' audiobook reviewer. If we had not moved to Oxford from Amsterdam, we would have missed out on rediscovering the joys of this great classic and the unique experience of recording it as an audiobook with a talented bunch of Oxfordshire actors. Definitely a case of 'Never in our Wildest Dreams'...

Liz Ainley
LifeStoryPods Blog