MY WRITING.

I believe my writing began as an attempt to distance myself from the reality of home life and escape into a never land world. I started writing when I was in the Merchant Navy, but always on the pessimistic, the depressive and the esoteric side of life. I wrote, essentially to escape the reality of depression; at that time, together with my two sisters, I had been diagnosed as a clinical depressive. No doubt, had my father survived, I would have stayed for quite a while in the Merchant Navy, enjoying the sense of freedom. As it happened, and mentioned in my work experience, I took a number of jobs, until the offer presented itself to join the Company of Gaytours as a minor clerk.

The Travel Business opened up for me a world of tremendous excitement; I was young, full of energy, and I had a wife who most of all, understood my needs and allowed me the freedom to travel. The Package Tour describes my life throughout those years as dangerous, nomadic, and incredibly exhilarating. My life was spent wandering the tourist resorts of the Mediterranean, eating when it was convenient, more often than not, ignoring my appetite, and sleepless nights spent on decrepit aircraft that were always threatening to fall out of the sky, and smoking up to sixty cigarettes a day. But I lived, and it was these adventures that enriched my life and formed the basis of my first book, The Package Tour Industry.

I spent more than thirty-years in the Industry, moving to Thomsons when they bought us out in 1965 and I was given a sizeable sum of money from my old boss. This followed by Thomsons entering me onto a variety of management training courses where I acquired the skill of senior management. I moved, with the family, to London in 1971, becoming eventually the Joint Managing Director of Thomsons, and I left at the end of the seventies to but into a tiny moribund company called Club 18-30. I recruited some of the personnel from Thomsons, including a Finance Manager and a Marketing Director and between us we transformed the Company into a vibrant, highly profitable enterprise, with a strong identity in the Marketplace.

I sold the Company in the mid-eighties and then became the Chairman of a Public Company engaged in the leisure business. At the time we owned and operated Neilsons, the Ski Company. We were taken over in the late 80’s and I then went on to become a Consultant in the leisure business.

In 2001 I was approached by a Stephen Humphries, a Director of Testimony Films, who were recording some episodes for the major ITV Network, and asked if I would like to appear. I was interviewed for what must have been more than three hours and appeared for probably less than that on a nine-o’clock feature special called, Sun, Sex and Sangria. However, Stephen suggested to me that my stories were so varied and interesting it might make the genesis for a book. So I began writing and discovered a long forgotten memory, that I enjoyed it. During the course of writing I fell ill with heart problems and had to endure a bypass operation; the period of convalescence following this enabled me to refine the book, and also to consider the possibility of continuing my writing in the future.

Having published the Package Tour, I concentrated my attentions on writing about my early years – the truthful comment would be that I wanted to get my own back on my parents for their violent and indifferent abuses. I did at first consider whether or not I should concentrate on my personal story, but having decided this was not terribly interesting, and having written the Package Tour book, I decided I would treat the novel on the basis of my early years and then ‘fantasise’ as to what might have happened to the victim of such a violent upbringing. Hence was born Leave a Light on for Jesus. The title of the story is also based upon fact, and that was that whenever I was ill, which was frequent, she always told me to leave a light on at night in case Jesus came looking for me and she wouldn’t want Him to get lost in the dark.

My next book, Nemesis, is a correlation springing from childhood abuse of youngsters: What would happen had my father been a psychopath motivated by different impulses, where he indulged in sexual rather than physical abuses? What would happen to the dependent victim of such abuses? What if she deliberately went into a psychological denial and protected herself from her father? What if she continually had visions of what her ‘father’ was doing?

And so on: The moral, now I have examined this more closely, is still a method of retribution in getting my own back on my parents. I have continued the moral through the next book, called, CONTRITION, where a serial rapist involves the attention of Angela Crossley, the heroine from Nemesis, who pursues him. More of that later.

OTHER WRITERS WHO HAVE INFLUENCED ME OVER THE YEARS ARE:

Neville Shute, Victor Hugo, Edgar Alan Poe, Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck; a story I enjoyed most was Alistair MacLean’s, HMS Ulysses, a frigate whose crew were suffering from T.B. and was despatched on a convoy mission as a punishment during the second world war. I also enjoyed the Ballad of Reading Jail by Oscar Wilde and some of the plays by J.B.Priestley and Alan Bennett.

Hope this is enough although to be truthful these days I read nearly all of the contemporary writers to gain experience.

MY ASPIRATIONS AS A WRITER.

I believe all of the demons you outline would satisfy my inspirational writing. A best-selling novelist (Some hope) To shed Light on a subject that fascinates me, to exorcise my personal demons, and hopefully, although this is not germane, to tell a story that needs to be told. I have no real expectations for my writing other than it gives me personal satisfaction.

MY TOP 5 FILMS/RECORDINGS/ TV PROGRAMMES, are not really worth commenting upon as they probably are consistent with other people and some of them are mentioned earlier.

Finally, as I said before this interview began, my life has not been terribly exciting, I doubt it would warrant an interview, much less invoke a novel about my background. Having now resurrected my early upbringing, and compared it to the many who lived in the neighbourhood on the Council Estate, I doubt it would prove exceptional. The only comment I could make, against the background of violence, is that the perpetrators who abused their children, who battered their wives, always escaped the consequences: As I was once told, after complaining to the police about the injury my father had visited on my older brother’s eye.