Welcome to my website.
Why a Website?
I rekindled a lifelong desire to write when COVID-19 locked us away. Since then, I have spent my time almost exclusively writing and scraping the reaches of an isolated existence to create characters I enjoy working with and plots that find empathetic pathos. Consequently, my world currently holds short stories and projects, some almost unreadable, but many likely to warrant further attention for various reasons. I have managed to produce two books of a planned series of five, centred on a building and characters recalled from my youth growing up in the Hulme district of Manchester in the 1950s. Like any writer, I suppose, the time and effort in writing has no reward unless the work is read and appreciated. However, having stories and adventure files on a hard drive doesn’t cut any mustard, which might make my work read. This website is being constructed for two reasons. One is to keep interesting projects firmly in my view, but the other, which I believe to be the most important of the two, is to provide access for others to read and hopefully enjoy
Books Published on Amazon.
Percy's Pawnshop
Introducing Percy Grove:
Even in the 1950s, being called ‘Percy’ conjured up the image of a penguin; my grandad changed nothing. He was called Percy. He’d strut around, bowler-hatted, with hob-nailed boots and a moustache stiffened to the size of a pencil lead. He was always suited, even though he only wore a collar and tie on Sundays, when he’d be on the bowling green, helping those in the know to fleece illegal bookies. He regaled the adventures of World War One and other battles to anyone who’d listen, of his life as a Regimental Sergeant Major with the Grenadier Guards. He was vertically challenged; he was about 5’8″.
“Don’t you have to be six feet to join the Grenadier Guards?” Someone once asked my dad, outside a pub.“ He had a three-foot busby,” Dad told him.
Percy's Pawnshop
Percy’s Pawnshop is the first of a planned series of novels set in a fictitious junk/Pawn shop on the edge of St. George’s, better known as the ‘Barracks’ Park in Manchester’s Hulme district of the 1950s.
When Percy Grove is asked to clear the deceased Lord McManus’s secret underground cellars, his sixteen-year-old grandson finds love.
However, a treasure trove of erotic artefacts and the missing secret membership list of a murky, manipulative organisation with tentacles piercing the heart of the 1950s Government brought unexpected problems.
Fanny's Farthing
This is the second novel in the Percy’s Pawnshop series, centred on a fictitious building and set in the 1950s, a misogynistic age in which strong women commanded respect beyond challenge. This sequel follows the journeys of two such women, who, in exercising a natural instinct to care for a disenfranchised boy, reveal secrets that contain life-changing circumstances as demolition threatens.
A boy persistently escapes from a children’s home to be close to his terminally ill mother, and frustrated officials turn away compassionately, leaving him to his own devices. Support for the boy arrives via Percy’s Pawnshop and its sleazy night club to threaten livelihoods, and engineer life-changing consequences among Manchester’s slum clearance of the 1950s, which dissolved a community.
Short Stories
Rip van Periwinkle
Inspired by a man in Le Cafe who resembled Gulag management one day, and Joseph, with his coat of colours on another. I love this Dutch Leprechaun, and having written a couple of stories, I managed to include him in the Christmas tale, which will be complete this year… I hope!
Tales of Le Café
Le Café in France is frequented by both French and transitional Ex-Pats, embracing a world of emotional change. Challenge and bravery are shielded by ordinary day-to-day seekers of solace, a break from the day’s anxieties, and a comforting cup of coffee.
Christmas Tale
1942 damaged Alf Naylor beyond his comprehension. Having survived the rigours of the First World War to build a world which draped him with self-respect, love and pride, he was alone at Christmas for the first time in his life. Being the angry, irritable ‘Grumpy old man’ he’d become was understandable, however, when the invasion of evacuee children arrived in his peaceful coastal Village, things were about to change..