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The next few
years panned out to be the sort of life that anyone
who has arrived in an unknown city, with no friends,
no money and no support can relay to you. A
succession of a poor paying, sometimes abusive jobs,
coupled with expensive, dubious accommodation and
advantage taking landlords. To try and make ends
meet I have worked variously in department stores,
as a waitress, modelling my legs, writing out
airline tickets and claims forms, as a cleaner, a
kiss ‘o’ gram, a counsellor, carrying the numbers
around a boxing ring and clerking in numerous
offices; sometimes holding down three jobs at a
time. I have been made redundant, sacked, set up a
business and lost it along with my house and my car
and the highlight had to be when I needed to be
rescued by three bouncers from being kidnapped from
the ring by a boxer.
As for
writing, as a child I always lived in a dream world,
had a wild imagination and read voraciously,
sometime six books a day. However my desire to
write was born solely with the advent of one Gerald
Hine-Haycock in my life, an English supply teacher
who took my class for one term. Tall, impossibly
handsome with grey eyes and long sinuous fingers, I
couldn’t impress him with my flat-chested, gawky
teenage frame but I could with my short stories. I
spent hours on them, dreaming up fantastical tales,
praying that I would write the one he would choose
to be the best story and get to read it in class,
for him. It worked. I was never off my feet and my
face and heart continuously glowed with his praises.
When he left I was devastated, I couldn’t write for
anyone else so my literary contributions of the next
few years consisted solely of appalling poetry,
silly rhymes and one book, ‘Confessions of a teenage
virgin’, that I wrote to impress my equally
dysfunctional school mates with.
My first
attempt at a ‘real’ book was a depressing science
fiction novel that was so bleak I was practically
suicidal myself whilst writing it. The next was a
‘humorous coming of age’ tale, one that clearly
indicated that I was still bitter and twisted about
my own coming of age. Then I quit smoking and
found that in doing so whatever spark of literary
ability I had went along with the nicotine (I was
puffing 60 a day at one point). I made two more
attempts at adult novels that I never finished, one
a Tom Sharpe style spoof on Harrods, (one of my more
dismal employments) and one set in Africa, this
being the first push towards Angel. Needing still to
write, but floundering for a tale, I decided to
rewrite my childhood and Henry was born, a cute,
furry white hippo, who had adventures and a best
friend called Sean, and most importantly was
confident and loved.
I wrote five
Henry books in quick succession and after two years
of monotonous trying eventually got the first one
published. I was ecstatic a feeling that was short
lived when I discovered that you couldn’t actually
buy the book in the high street, because no one
stocked any books from this publisher. Totally
disenchanted I stopped writing but try as I might I
couldn’t ignore the characters and tales that
constantly assailed me, demanding to be born. Two
years ago I gave up. It was three ‘o’ clock in the
morning, I was unable to sleep - again. My head was
swirling with images so I made myself a hot
chocolate, sat by my computer and Angel was born.
One final
note; the question I have been asked the most is how
much of the tale is real. The answer is an awful lot
of it. I’m just not going to divulge which bits. |
