You can't make a writer, you can't make a footballer, the same can be said for every profession we choose to label ourselves with. The facts are that in all of us are the genes that help to map out our chosen paths in life. A family that has grown up surrounded by all that is football will spawn a football loving kid and if lucky one day a professional player, although i have to admit to using the word "lucky" very loosely in the footballers case!.
It is therefore very likely that a writer will be the offspring of parents with a flair for the written word, not necessarily a published and accomplished writer, in fact more likely someone in the family who has the ability to spin a good yarn. This latter description covers my upbringing very well, I am originally from a farming family that expected you to work on a farm when you left school, so the very mention of further education after 15 was out of the question, you got a job and you paid your way.
I can still remember to this day turning up for my first day on a hill farm in the Shropshire hill's feeling so desperately sad that I had to dig ditches, muck out cattle, foot rot sheep (cutting their hoofs with a knife), put up fences etc, it was my living nightmare, but, as I have said in those days you didn't argue, you followed in the footsteps of your parents and their grandparents and did as you were told.
I hated every single day of farm life, the freezing cold mornings, the never ending feeding of stock, the unsociable hours in the summer, in fact when i look back i lost the vast majority of my youth to long hours working through the night to get the harvest in.
I did as i was told and that was that. many teenagers have suffered worse fates but indeed i was imprisoned by the social and financial boundaries that may as well have been a prison wall for all that it mattered at 16 years of age.
Eventually, I managed to leave farming and ended up driving a huge articulated truck to London every day delivering pavior bricks from Blockleys Bricks in Telford to the streets of Wandsworth. I ended up knowing London like the back of my hand, it was nothing to head straight into the City at 6 am and be unloaded and out by 9 as everyone else was queuing to come in. This all opened up a new world for a farm boy from Shropshire, I saw the guts of London, the Good the Bad and the Ugly, I saw back streets High streets and alleyways, building sites, scary sights and all manner of outlandish people and behaviour in my 5 years of driving through London's streets with such a huge truck. This has stayed with me even now, I love London and all it stands for, a vibrant all consuming mixture of all this world we live in stands for and represents.
So for now I remain torn between a life amongst the Shropshire hill's and a longing to once more tread amongst the streets of a City that stole a part of me that can never be returned. I just wish I had been given more opportunity as a youngster to explore all the possibilities life had to offer rather than having to step up to the plate and work at 15.
My Children will never be given such a stark choice even if i have to work night and day to ensure it.
It is therefore very likely that a writer will be the offspring of parents with a flair for the written word, not necessarily a published and accomplished writer, in fact more likely someone in the family who has the ability to spin a good yarn. This latter description covers my upbringing very well, I am originally from a farming family that expected you to work on a farm when you left school, so the very mention of further education after 15 was out of the question, you got a job and you paid your way.
I can still remember to this day turning up for my first day on a hill farm in the Shropshire hill's feeling so desperately sad that I had to dig ditches, muck out cattle, foot rot sheep (cutting their hoofs with a knife), put up fences etc, it was my living nightmare, but, as I have said in those days you didn't argue, you followed in the footsteps of your parents and their grandparents and did as you were told.
I hated every single day of farm life, the freezing cold mornings, the never ending feeding of stock, the unsociable hours in the summer, in fact when i look back i lost the vast majority of my youth to long hours working through the night to get the harvest in.
I did as i was told and that was that. many teenagers have suffered worse fates but indeed i was imprisoned by the social and financial boundaries that may as well have been a prison wall for all that it mattered at 16 years of age.
Eventually, I managed to leave farming and ended up driving a huge articulated truck to London every day delivering pavior bricks from Blockleys Bricks in Telford to the streets of Wandsworth. I ended up knowing London like the back of my hand, it was nothing to head straight into the City at 6 am and be unloaded and out by 9 as everyone else was queuing to come in. This all opened up a new world for a farm boy from Shropshire, I saw the guts of London, the Good the Bad and the Ugly, I saw back streets High streets and alleyways, building sites, scary sights and all manner of outlandish people and behaviour in my 5 years of driving through London's streets with such a huge truck. This has stayed with me even now, I love London and all it stands for, a vibrant all consuming mixture of all this world we live in stands for and represents.
So for now I remain torn between a life amongst the Shropshire hill's and a longing to once more tread amongst the streets of a City that stole a part of me that can never be returned. I just wish I had been given more opportunity as a youngster to explore all the possibilities life had to offer rather than having to step up to the plate and work at 15.
My Children will never be given such a stark choice even if i have to work night and day to ensure it.
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