Journalist Judy Theobald is in an enviable position.

After years of working in regional newspapers she’s got the job of her dreams at Lincolnshire Life magazine – but has a little sideline that’s still published each week in the Lincolnshire Echo and Western Morning News.

You may have seen her column – a close look at life through the rhyme and rhythm of poetry. Her work has appeared in the Gloucestershire Citizen, the Wiltshire Times and a whole host of weekly newspaper series over the years.

Her poems are inspired by life – by families, work, holidays, dieting, well-endowed trapeze artists and so on.

“Beware anyone who has a conversation with me! It might end up in print,” she says.

“On the surface the poems are quite trivial but they deal with some quite big issues, which have included death, bereavement and loneliness.

“People have come up to me and said the poem I wrote summed up exactly how they felt, some of them revealing they’ve had them in tears because of their impact.

“The readers say they always turn straight to the poem on the night they go in because they say they know at least one thing in the paper will make them smile.

“A lady-in-waiting of the Queen wrote to me after I published a poem about the Royal washing, and I had a man whose cat used to write to me in French.

“I used to reply in English, though, with a sort of ‘a bientot’ at the end…”

She’s been composing one poem each week since November 1984 when the then Lincolnshire Echo editor Colin Davison made the brave decision to take her on.

She said: “I was a company secretary in an engineering business and he didn’t want a poetry column. But he took them home and showed them to his wife, and she said “Why not?”

“I was told to steer clear of current affairs and politics in my original brief and now they concentrate on life.

“They thought it would only last six months but they have been published for the last 16 years.

“That means there are 800 poems so far and my aim is to get to 1,000, then I can retire!”

The verse itself takes just an hour each week, but as Judy says, the inspiration is constantly swirling around and the hour is just the time it takes to get it right on the page.

Southampton-born Judy enjoyed her formative years in London but has spent most of the time since as a writer and sub editor at the Lincolnshire Echo.

She left journalism two years ago because it was “too seedy” and started work at Rampton Hospital – but was contacted by an agency that wanted her to fill the job as executive editor at Lincolnshire Life.

She confessed: “It’s my dream job. There’s a bit of everything doing the sort of work I like.

“Lincolnshire grows on you. You have to remember that when a local comes up to you scowling and challenges with a “Now then?” that it really translates as “Hello, nice to see you – how are you?”

“The people are nice, and the landscape – the Fens, and the Wolds, are such a far cry from the polluted south east.”

Why not read some of Judy’s work:
Top Turkey Tips
A Common Cold

Judy has also published three books, her latest being Judy Theobald’s Load of Old Baubles.

Another is in the pipeline, this time to benefit children’s charities.

They are all available from her at Lincolnshire Life, telephone 01522 527127.

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