ABOUT
Fay Young trained as a newspaper journalist with EMAP in Spalding, Lincolnshire and worked for the Oxford Mail and Times before coming to Scotland with her husband Ray Perman in 1975. Since then – 34 years, 3 sons and an Open University Degree later – she has worked as a freelance writer for newspapers, magazines and public organisations in Scotland.
My career as a journalist has given me the great opportunity to discover that so-called ordinary people are always doing extraordinary things. The cult of celebrity (swallowed so eagerly by much of our media) ignores the rich abnormality of normal people and demeans the incredible triumphs that all of us achieve in our every day lives.
I continue to write for newspapers and magazines on an occasional basis but most recently my work has involved writing about social and environmental issues for a wide range of public bodies including the old Health Education Board for Scotland, the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh and WWF Scotland. My five years as a non-exec director of the former Edinburgh City Centre Management Company has led to a place on the steering group of Poetry in St Andrew Square. I co-ordinate the multicultural voluntary group Leith Open Space, play a supporting role in the environmental charity Greener Leith and (despite many disappointments) am also still a member of the Labour Party, campaigning with others in my branch for a green agenda and an economy that celebrates Scotland’s new diversity.
Somehow it all fits together. My interest in gardens and gardeners goes with a concern that we need to spend less time and money on consuming goods and learn how to get more fun out of making and sharing things. And that is part of a belief that if we look after our environment more sensitively we will help to create a fairer and healthier society where natural resources are more equally spread between all of us. Apart from anything else, in the words of Crispin Tickell, that wonderfully gentlemanly eco-warrior who persuaded Maggie Thatcher that climate change was something to worry about: “The economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the environment.”
All of these interests will make their way into the website my sons created for me as a birthday present in 2005. I hope you will enjoy exploring a world of such ideas with me.