92: Penny Bernard

<div>My guest this week is Penny Bernard who gets to wallow in heritage and nostalgia as part of her job translating archaeology for school audiences.<br> <br> </div> <div>We discover that one silver lining in what has been a challenging year for everybody is that Penny has been able to follow her dream of going to art college. We also learn about her family Tudor dinner party and how she finds that children are better at following Covid guidelines than adults.<br> <br> </div> <div>Penny talks about how her family defines itself by its myths and histories, but she explains why this can be suffocating. She can trace her ancestry back to Somerset, and we learn that she was once kidnapped in Albania. Her earliest memory involves forget-me-nots and a traumatic memory involving wet hair, and she tells me why she thinks memory is an artful lie.<br> <br> </div> <div>Penny talks about what happened when she found her younger diaries and how myopic they could be, and she reflects on how there are dangers with relying on Facebook to tell us what we did in the past when that functions as a shop front. <br> <br> </div> <div>Penny grew up in Bermuda and loved being in the water, and she explains that she has reservations about going back as it might spoil her memories from the time. England when she returned was not like a Ladybird book as she was expecting, and she tells me why she hated Surrey and likes the notion of the glamorous outsider.<br> <br> </div> <div>We talk about her panto group and her motivations and passion for writing and performing that every year, giving old fairy tales a new twist. Penny reveals that at school she played Mrs. Danvers from <em>Rebecca</em> and she talks about how she was cross with the Mills &amp; Boon pastiche element of the latest Netflix version.<br> <br> </div> <div>We learn why Penny looks back on her time at St. Andrews with horror and she find out about the nightmare she had the night before she met her husband (previous guest Simon Kirchin) and why friends and family were con