I would like to thank Tony Collins, who has been my editor, working on many books with me, for more than forty years. He has been a loyal friend, encourager and inspirer. It was Tony and the team at SPCK who persuaded me to take a handful of these stories, add to them and create Yours Truly. I did not expect to write this book and I am grateful that the wisdom and insight of others have gently but insistently nudged me into sharing some of the parables and stories in my archive and my heart.
I would also like to thank Paul Burbridge and Nigel Forde, my dearest friends and co-founders of Riding Lights Theatre Company. Without their brilliant humour and invention and perseverance over the years, and their positive influence on my life, I doubt if any of these stories would have been created.
My thanks go also to the supporters and trustees of the Wayfarer Trust, the arts charity that has been so central to my life over the past twenty years. The Revd Jock Stein, chairman, is mentioned in my dedication but alongside him, as he has offered his untiring service to the trust, have been trustees Geoffrey Stevenson (and former trustee Judith Stevenson), Luke Walton, Susan Masterton, Nicole Smyth, Simon West and, once again, Paul Burbridge. They have all been great friends, counsellors and advisers, helping me and many artists to keep going, frequently against the odds. My special thanks also to artist Monique Sliedrecht, creative director of the Wayfarer Trust, for the friendship, inspiration and support she has given to myself and many fellow artists through her work for the trust and at Freswick Castle over many years. My thanks too to a former trustee, Helen Davies, my aunt, who celebrates her ninetieth birthday this year and has been a lifelong spiritual guide, mentor and personification of the love of God to me. Writing plays and telling stories was not an expected career for me and I needed visionary relatives and friends, as well as my long-suffering parents, to support me and to believe in me. Thank you to Martin and Colleen Barlow too, for their love and encouragement in recent years.
My gratitude also goes to actor Andrew Harrison, who has memorably performed in plays of mine over the years and has already brought some of these stories to the stage. By the time this book is published, he will be performing a oneman version of Yours Truly around the UK – a show fittingly premiered at the Greenbelt Festival 2019. It is not only his brilliance and great sense of humour that have given so much to me; it is also his loyal friendship.
Above all, thank you to my sons, Fionn and Toby Watts, young film-makers who have wonderfully failed to ‘get a proper job’ and are showing all the courage and risk-taking qualities that are required to survive and flourish in the arts world with all its desperate ups and downs. I was able to develop my story-telling skills with them, when they were little, and now they are telling stories of their own. Their faith, their hope and their humour have made me proud and given me courage to keep going and to keep dreaming.