Rosemary was born in Huddersfield in 1950, but moved to Penistone with her parents when she was 2 years old. She has a brother Mark who is 9 years younger than her.
Rosemary attended St. John’s Junior and Infant School, then Penistone Grammar School. She later went on to study secretarial subjects at Stocksbridge College, Sheffield, and also Barnsley College. After working in secretarial jobs and the textile industry, she went on to qualify as a lecturer and taught at several colleges in the Yorkshire area. She has two children of her own, a daughter Donna, and a son Russell, and is now a grandmother.
Rosemary has always been a keen writer and poet taking after her mother Doreen, and her grandfather Albert Edward Ellam, her mother’s father who Rosemary never knew, as he died before she was born, and has said that she will always be eternally grateful to them for passing on to her their love of writing.
GRANDAD ALBERT'S CLOGS
A true story about my step-grandfather.
and echoed up hill and down dale,
As grandad walked to the mill every morning,
In sunshine, snow and in hail.
Grandad was always so punctual,
and was never a minute behind,
His neighbours set their clocks by his movements,
Which all could be accurately timed.
He was a textile weaver at Shires,
Where he worked through the darkness and light,
He was also a very keen bandsman,
And blew a euphonium at night.
Now one week his neighbours slept over,
and no one could understand why.
Why were the cobble stones silent,
Yet the sun was high in the sky?
A friend of my grandma's came chatting,
and asked her if all was okay,
"We've not heard anything of Albert
When he walks to his work every day.
We've been oversleeping each morning,
The street has been quiet and still,
We've not heard the clogs which awake us,
Is your Albert in bed feeling ill?"
My gran found this every so funny,
as she laughed the the enquirer bemused.
"Oh no - his clogs are being mended", said grandma,
"He's been going to work in his shoes!"
Rosemary Gay
