Tuesday Topic, with Christine Rutter

YOU can cover a lot of ground with Benita Moore in under an hour.

Tired and exhausted from her latest bout of chemotherapy but willing for her need to enshrine the past and keep busy, she takes on the challenge of yet another interview.

"This one will make you smile," she says, hardly pausing for breath, as she steamrollers through yet another anecdote from bygone days, this one about a rag-and-bone man.

The mind of authoress and historian Benita is crammed with a rich mine of tales from the tin bath era and she sees it as her one-woman vocation to record the past before it is lost in time.

She has spent over a decade recording the memories, experiences, thoughts and feelings of old folk for future generations. And in her quest to capture the past she has spent 4,800 hours interviewing over 1,200 people.

The fruits of her labour have been 10 books and poetry volumes about the days of cloth caps and horse-drawn carts in Lancashire.

But during her latest project, a much-planned journal for the millennium, she was struck down by cancer.

She underwent two mastectomies but the breast cancer spread to her lymph system and could reappear at any time. She describes it as the "Sword of Damocles" hanging over her head but faces the future with courage and even humour.

Benita, 59, speaks of the hair-loss she has suffered because of her treatment.

"People call me Mother Teresa and Mystic Meg with the head scarves I wear," she laughed, though she had "dreaded" losing her dark, lustrous locks. But she admits: "I was very angry at having cancer at first. I have never smoked or drank. I work extremely hard, then this happens. But it isn't going to beat me. I don't sit around waiting for the cancer to return."

And despite the effects of chemotherapy, her spirit and sense of purpose remain intact.

She forces herself to get out of bed every morning to write her journal, as well as compiling her next book about walking days and rose queens.

Benita, who has appeared on TV and radio and has won a prestigious heritage award for her work, said: "The journal is about local and national events, my own experiences and natural history. It is something different for the millennium."

She has dedicated the journal to her granddaughter Melissa.

Benita said: "When she gets bigger she will see what I was doing in the last century. I need to get it down. Maybe in the future I will not be able to do this any more."

The compelling journal will be buried in a time capsule, along with two of her Lancashire Lives books, at the Royal Mail's new rail terminal in Warrington.

Benita, of Rising Bridge Road, Haslingden, said: "In years to come I hope the journal will be of interest to future generations and explain to them what their relatives were doing years ago."

As a winner of the Royal Mail contest, she was given £1,000 prize money which she is donating to the Lancashire SuperScan appeal. Benita, who works in the local studies department of Accrington Library, has been a librarian for 42 years.

But it was not until 1985 that she contributed to the library shelves herself by coaxing tales out of people.

A member of Accrington Cine Club and Oswaldtwistle Civic Society, she said: "People spend their life doing nothing but hard work and we shouldn't forget it. I hope my work is entertaining and has given old folk some recognition and status as well as retaining our history."

Her witty, down-to-earth style contains few "fancy words." What you see is what you get - the measure of the woman as well as the work.

Her friends call her "Mrs Interpol" for her fascination with human nature, traditions and customs.

Benita, married to Gordon with two daughters, said: "Cancer does make you review your life.

"Things that were important like a nice car mean nothing.

"You make the most of every day and opportunity."

Her priority is her books and her family as well as her resolve not to be consumed by this terrible illness.

She is a role model for other sufferers but the description does not sit comfortably on Benita.

"I'm nothing special. I just get on with life," she said.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.