We ask for your permission before anything is loaded, as they may be using cookies and other technologies. Deborah Ann Orr, 53, of Gulfport, passed away Sept. 13, 2011. I WAS told a totally plausible tale about some of the stones that were all that remained of the well, but which had been ignored over the centuries and lay neglected in the hedgerow. What an unfortunate, unlucky pair: so keen to shore up the other in their mutual horror of something as simple as sex something that should, when they had so much trust and honesty between each other in all other ways, have been a time of physical freedom. This feeling of powerlessness under my parents unflinching belief that Id let them down. On the day they blew Ravenscraig down, Deborah was there with her father, mother and brother David. Orr evidently had a battle on her hands. Full Profile. I was too naive back then to call it what it was, which was rape. But things started going too fast. To plant trees in memory, please visit the. Did I not know that I was ruined? Read about our approach to external linking. Thus the most terrible inquisition of my life began. . Instead, Id go up a lot. Win gave the anguished cry of narcissists the world over: But what about me?. After that, well have to decide what to do next.. The work is not a sociological or historical survey but a deeply introspective autobiography which plays on the overlap between the towns name and the authors references to her mother, who emerges sometimes as mother-well but, more frequently, as mother-unwell, at least in her dealings with her daughter. In an extract from her posthumous memoir, the writer recalls her escape to university and how her mothers disapproval haunted her. No doubt he did, too. There is also in the town a district called Ladywell, the posh area where as boys we were not welcome, but it was once the place where the actual well was positioned. Id love it. In that world, men were never allowed to show emotion, losing your nerve, getting the fears. [2] Early life and education [ edit] Orr was born on 23 September 1962 [3] to Winifred "Win" and John Orr, a factory worker. hen the letters came, that was when it all blew up for ever. If you would like your comment on this piece to be considered for Weekend magazines letters page, please email weekend@theguardian.com, including your name and address (not for publication). Deborah was an avid animal lover and brought many injured birds to the Suncoast Seabird Sanctuary for care. Her route into journalism came through City Limits, a co-operatively run listings magazine in London, where she became deputy editor (1988-90), and as film critic for the New Statesman. And I decided, most dysfunctionally of all, that what I needed was a boyfriend to protect me. In 2018 she joined the i, the newspaper remnant of the now-digital Independent. Information and advice to help you cope with the death of someone important to you. Her smartness, vivid personality, serious edge, willingness to tell it as it is and bravery shone out to the end. We want our comments to be a lively and valuable part of our community - a place where readers can debate and engage with the most important local issues. contact the editor here. DEBORAH Orr was born in 1962, and lived through the upheaval at a social and personal level. Few natives knew, and fewer outsiders cared, that the town has a history that stretches back into the Middle Ages. inaccuracy or intrusion, then please Did I not understand what I had done? The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. You may want to read Twitters cookie policy, external and privacy policy, external before accepting. Indeed, she believes the condition the great poisoner of humankind. That night my mother rounded things off by adding, as some kind of double-edged sweetener, I love you, Deborah. To order a copy go to guardianbookshop.com. I got a job as a typesetter, then a job with a trade magazine for sales directors. She recalls being belted at school, being bullied in the playground by having half-bricks hurled at her and being compelled to go into the town centre wearing a badge marked cheat after her mother had found her peeping at the wrong squares in scrabble. She worked for over 18 years as a librarian and teacher. Maybe what is really amazing is the vastness of . But group identity was shattered too. A good job for a woman. I wandered the streets for hours, thinking about going to the police and how unlikely they were to take my word against his. It did not stop us prowling about the locality. Orrs father had been seen off six years earlier by oesophageal and liver cancer. The people of Motherwell were used to being part of something much bigger than themselves, her daughter writes. By this time he had my arms pinned behind my head and my body pinioned under his. Publications. There was more to it than the economy. Follow us on Facebook, on Twitter @BBCNewsEnts, or on Instagram at bbcnewsents. But that was fine. Our prison service is a series of riots waiting to happen. You can make a complaint by using the report this post link . Anthony Quinn The old town, never a place of beauty, fell victim to the virus of planning which infected all Labour councils in the west of Scotland in the post-war era, and now has a soulless shopping centre at what was the heart of the town and where people once lived and congregated. A good friend of mine and a former journalist of this parish editor of Weekend magazine 1993-98, and later a columnist she has left behind her a non-fiction book for the ages. Quite right too. Deborah Orr's Motherwell: a memoir of family insights and dark asides They're not a map to follow, but simply a description of what people commonly feel. She writes about pathological narcissists that do so much damage be they unthinking blinkered parent or husband. Deborah Orr on leaving home: 'My parents were the jailers I loved' You have funeral questions, we have answers. Everyone wore bottle-thick NHS glasses, cumbersome hearing aids and callipers. I waited until he was deeply enough asleep and crept out. Orr could be savage, thrawn and irrepressible, but she was also a born writer and a born improver of dull situations. She co-created the 2012 play Enquirer, about the paper-to-digital transformation of her beloved profession, which had a successful run for the National Theatre of Scotland at The Hub at Glasgows Pacific Quay. Win was originally from Essex but moved to Motherwell in Lanarkshire where Orr was born in 1963. From there she was invited to join the Guardian as an arts subeditor by Alan Rusbridger, who was then its features editor. David Kessler's top 4 tips for dealing with holiday grief. I see it all, of course, from somewhere on the living room ceiling. None of them even knew how to do a pan of chips, let alone put out a chip-pan fire, which as far as I was concerned were the basic survival skills. It felt like we loved each other, in the simplest and easiest of ways. Deborah Orr who died last October of cancer aged 57, left behind a memoir . This site is part of Newsquest's audited local newspaper network. I had to repeat everything, sometimes many times. Obituary: Deborah Orr, award-winning journalist | HeraldScotland As she led them through an argument to her conclusions, the workings of her mind were visible, and she was not polemical. It is ever thus. Those ads you do see are predominantly from local businesses promoting local services. We talked. The central factory was officially called the Lanarkshire, but was always known locally as Colvilles. The Bookseller - Author Interviews - Deborah Orr | 'The more humble my There I met Tim, with whom I formed the most normal and equal long-term relationship Ive ever had. In 1388, Sir William of Dalzell lost an eye at the Battle of Otterburn, but two years later when peace had been re-established he attended a tournament in England arranged by Richard II. All rights reserved. Its not that her town had any sort of monopoly on that, but Motherwells decline, so spitefully speeded by the Thatcher revolution, got under the skin of many families, manacling them to a sense of waste. [4] She was raised in Motherwell, Scotland. Shed sulk for days if you ate a meal out, as she interpreted this as criticism of her cooking, which in fact was terrible. I explained that the hospice was at the top of a steep hill, that I didnt think I could manage it, that the shops would be closed anyway and that I didnt mind paying for a taxi at all quite the reverse. I didnt set out to do so deliberately. I left on the first train after that night of reckoning, for Edinburgh, and a happier start to 1983 with Crispin. ", Katharine Viner, editor-in-chief of the Guardian, said Orr was "a brilliant, clever, funny writer and editor whose uncompromising and insightful approach to her work brought powerful journalism to the Guardian over many years.". She was happy to be with her daughter, there in New Lanark. The proudest feature of her fathers life, according to him, was that he had never missed a days work in his life, a boast that persisted even after they made him redundant. Deborah Jane Orr, journalist, born 23 September 1962; died 19 October 2019, Editor of the Guardians Weekend magazine who went on to become a trenchant, witty and much admired columnist, Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning, 2023 Guardian News & Media Limited or its affiliated companies. [1] She was also a columnist for The Independent. Maybe it did. Fascinating memoir examines the Do not sell or share my personal information. The gifted Deborah Orr was the latter. Its arguable that the happier ones childhood, the less one recalls of it. Sifting through her memories as she tries to make sense of her life, Orr sees how she was never good enough, how life itself was never good enough, and that John was really a man of bigotry and anger. Read about our approach to external linking. Deborah Orr Profiles | Facebook The crowd was sparse, she writes. READ MORE:Pope Francis to deliver mass by video streaming to avoid crowds. The services of food banks have never been more in demand. Ive had anxiety dreams about squandering my university years for all of my life since then until 2016, when they stopped. As Orr would have been quick to say, all lives, looked at from a certain not un-Scottish perspective, are experiments that fail. Your father and I forbid you, and thats that.. "When I first started writing she invited me round to hers, we got merry together, she was so witty, sardonic, clever, bright. Angela Rippon, for example, was mocked and questioned for lacking the gravitas and authority to read the news bulletins. Projects. Professor Deborah Orr is an Associate Professor in the Division of Humanities and the Humanities Graduate Program and in the Graduate Program in Humanities, Religion, Values and Culture Field. I told my parents, Win and John, that Id been offered a place at St Andrews university, they warned me that Id be out of my depth, mixing with people who had very different lives to me more money, posh, snobs. When I turned up the next day though, the Sunday, Win said she didnt want to go in the taxi again because it was too expensive. I had met Crispin in my first year. But there are miracles too in the world of hard knocks, and Orr, by a kind of genius, finds the kernel of the towns former existence, and locates the mother in its name. We exchanged banter and soul-baring. For a mother., We just think that your place is at home with us, until youre married. (There can be few better accounts of how the postwar working-class strove so complicatedly for betterness.) The latter wanted her to stay in the domestic orbit, to get a man and be a housewife. The Dalzell estate, dominated by a grand, Scottish-baronial mansion now divided into flats, is now more accessible now than it used to be. Her always fiercely intelligent point of view," she added. It was obvious to them, Win said, like St Peter for the prosecution on Judgement Day, that I was sleeping with this man. She was predeceased by her granddaughter, Aliyah; her brother, Richard; and her sister, Maureen.Funeral services for Deborah are private and will be held at the convenience of the family. ITALY?, What? The total change in his character, the full engagement of biker culture, the calculated nastiness and horror, was like a blow. (modern). She wasnt from the slums herself, she was from Essex, but her husband was local and she loved their new house for being much more than a house, initially feeling they were renting a big new idea as much as a dwelling. It turned out, as we all walked home, that his flat was just along the road from Deborahs, and he asked us both to come up, meet his flatmates and have a joint or two. Deborah Orr, award-winning journalist. If Id been told then that Id never live in Scotland again, Id have assumed that I was conversing with a lunatic. Id laughed it off. She was closer to her father, but here too Deborah emerges as a Cinderella with no fairy-godmother. She moved to Weekend magazine and in 1993 succeeded Roger Alton as editor. Facebook gives people the power to. We still hadnt had the talk, the one I always longed for, that would straighten everything out. Just as Orrs descriptions of her oh-so-average childhood of aunties and holiday trips and hiding behind the sofa when Doctor Who was on threatens to take over she indulges in exciting, insightful riffs on how the personal is all too political. Motherwell review: The late Deborah Orr's girlhood memoir is excellent AI chatbots 'may soon be more intelligent than us', Russia troop deaths hit 20,000 in five months - US, France May Day protests leave dozens of police injured, 'My wife and six children joined Kenya starvation cult', On board the worlds last surviving turntable ferry. (modern), Deborah Orr: I was powerless before the relentless refusal of my parents to allow me to live in the world as the world was, to let me make my mistakes.. Opening letters that I was intending to send, though this was new. Not at all.. Writer John Niven was given an early copy and predicted it will be "a huge hit". Our prison service is a series of riots waiting to happen. And more recently: Brexit is like deciding you are going to cure cancer by giving up membership of your golf club., In the offices of The Guardian and The Independent, she knew how to put or keep male colleagues in their place. ORR, Deborah Ann 53, of Gulfport, passed away Sept. 13, 2011. This man has lied to you and tricked you. A mystery from the book Motherwell by Deborah Orr : r/Scotland - Reddit The self-loathing of it. But its Orrs mother who Deborah sees most clearly, remembering her quirks and the scars left behind and how this controlling woman very nearly blighted the child. Here was another one. I feared her. [2] From 1993 to 1998, Orr was editor of the Guardian Weekend magazine. I passed the resits and asked Mum and Dad if I could go to Edinburgh to meet a friend also Deborah who was living there, and spend the weekend with her as a little reward.
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