Lives of Locals: Stories from the Central Coast

CLIFF LETHBRIDGE

June, 2020.

During the first Coronavirus lockdown, Cliff woke in the middle of the night with an idea. Unable to travel to Sydney to visit his three young granddaughters – Lulu, Nina and Inez – he would send them a letter. But not just any letter: he would send them a story about the adventures of three sisters, who happened to have quite a bit in common with his granddaughters.

Cliff let the idea percolate for a few days, then he started writing. He knew that the girls enjoyed watching Japanese anime, so he set his story on a tiny island off Japan. His lead characters were also 9, 11, and 13 years old and inseparable, ‘Like three sides to a triangle they were very strong and brought different skills to their bond. ’ Each sister had a trait similar to the girls: Lu was charming, Ni had artistic skill, and Nez athletic prowess. Their mother was also a single parent. There were bamboo swords and menacing baddies, mysteries to solve and dangerous journeys to undertake, complete with Cliff’s hand-drawn map of the island.

As soon as he finished part one of The Amazing Adventures of Lu-Ni-Nez, Cliff put it in the mail. ‘I wanted it to arrive as a physical letter, so they would learn to be excited by the post.’

Cliff waited. A week went by and the letter still hadn’t turned up. Then another week passed — the pandemic was playing havoc with the postal system. So he rewrote the first instalment and sent it again.

At last, the letter was delivered. His granddaughters read the story and called him immediately. They had identified with the sisters straight away and loved seeing themselves in the characters. The girls only had one concern.

‘It was great, Granfer — but the baddy got away!’

‘Do you want to know what happened to him?’

‘Oh yes!’

Now, every week, Cliff writes a chapter in the Lu-Ni-Nez saga and posts it down to Sydney. There is great excitement on the day a new story arrives in the letterbox. The girls’ mother insists that they eat their dinner and get into their pyjamas before they are allowed to read it. Then they all call Cliff to discuss the latest instalment and speculate on where the story might be heading.

‘Their feedback has been instrumental, because I know the bits I want to play around with’.

Meanwhile, Cliff’s grandson, 10-year-old Cedar, is also enjoying the tale. A new character, Cousin Sida — a crack shot with a bow and arrow — has been incorporated into the drama, along with more family members on request.

Cliff has always loved stories. Growing up in Cornwall his childhood was blighted by illness and what he most looked forward to was the weekly comics — Wizard and The Hotspur, illustrated adventure stories told in instalments, ‘potboilers for kids’.  As an adult he enjoyed reading fantasy novels, as well as thrillers and noir. When he became a high school teacher, he worked with disabled children and became frustrated by a lack of age-appropriate books for his students. In an effort to engage the teens in literacy, Cliff wrote his own texts for them, tales centred around the kids in his class getting in and out of mischief. His students were delighted to see themselves in print and developed a new interest in reading.

When Cliff first imagined The Amazing Adventures of Lu-Ni-Nez he thought he would write just one story. Last week he finished number eleven, and the project has evolved in ways he hadn’t anticipated. ‘What began as something for the girls has become something really special for me as well.’

Cliff is already onto the next instalment, with an epic twist in mind. He confesses he’s not sure how it will be resolved. But when he writes himself into a corner, Cliff knows he can simply pick up the phone to his grandchildren and they will help him figure out what happens next. 

A.F.