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Tii-G
About the AuthorI learned to read and appreciate fiction at an early age and indeed started Infants School already literate. My father however was very strict and felt that I should not waste time ...view moreAbout the AuthorI learned to read and appreciate fiction at an early age and indeed started Infants School already literate. My father however was very strict and felt that I should not waste time reading fiction, believing that the time wasted on that would be better spent studying. My mother on the other hand understood that leisure time was as important as work and supplied a torch and batteries so I could read my books in secret under the blankets at night.It was my wish to become a ‘Product Designer’ but as there was no degree in this endeavour at the time. to achieve my goal I would have needed to acquire an ‘Art Degree’ as a starting point and this was a source of friction with my father, who felt that all artists were ‘Spivs’ or ‘Beatniks’. I would have studied Architecture as an alternative but that too proved too artistic for my father who was an engineer, so I plumped for ‘Construction Technology’ instead.I can’t say I didn’t enjoy my career in construction as it did involve the interpretation of the Architects creative concepts into the detail designs and technical specifications required to turn them into reality. It was therefore always challenging and often stretched my creativity to the limit, but I always harboured an underlying desire to be truly creative.As a youngster I spent a lot of time sketching mad creations which ranged from space ships to hydraulically stabilised brassieres and over time realised that behind each of these drawings was a story and so I attempted to write one. My first attempt just after leaving school was only half a foolscap page and the second about one and a half (we hadn’t gone metric then) and there it would have ended had it not been for the invention of the ‘Computer’, ‘Word Processor Software’ and latterly ‘Voice Recognition Technology’.While the idea of the written word fascinated me the unenviable experience of being forced to change from left to right handedness at the age of eight made writing a nightmare, but with the arrival of the lightweight digital typewriter and the concurrent opportunity to work in Sudan my horizons changed. I found myself in a foreign country with very little to do with my spare time but read and watch videos, and soon reached the ‘Video Event Horizon’ (that point at which you know that if you are forced to watch one more repeated movie you would have to kill!).Now it so happened that at the time I left a young four year old named Darren had become used to me reading him a bedtime story whenever I visited, and on my return from the first of several trips abroad he made it clear that he was not happy about my sudden unannounced disappearance. To appease both Darren and the ‘Wrathful God of Unhappy Children’ I made a promise that I would write a book and send a chapter back every month (and here I must apologise to his parents for the fact that every time the postman arrived it was accompanied by Darren demanding ‘Is that my story!).For the first time I had both the time and the tools to pursue my dream of authorship and fulfilled my promise, delivering over the next twenty four months a complete book (which I will soon have to dust off and publish – because the children for whom I wrote now have their own little ‘Ankle Biters’).And so by degrees we come to Vicki and Obsbobs daughters of another friend who demanded I regale them with my inane bed time stories whenever they ran out of new books for me to read, and then insisted I write them down because, ”You said it different last time!”. At the grand old age of fourteen Vicki said to me “Now that I’m grown up you should write an adult story for me.” and so I crafted this story to fulfil that request. Vicki is now the mother of two and I can finally say to her after sixteen patient years it’s finished!The only problem is that writing is like an avalanche, once you start its hard to stop, so my second book is already almost complete and it only took a year!view less