Sample from my book

Born in Birkenhead just after the Second World War. The house that we lived in was a condemned, three-storey Victorian terrace, with no bathroom or electricity, but we did have the luxury of an outside toilet. This house was rented by an elderly widower, Tom Cairns, due to his kindness, or it may have been the pity, he allowed my mother to pay rent for a couple of the rooms in the house. My mother’s name was Mary, I had two brothers and a sister, John was my older brother, I was next in line, Thomas was my younger brother, and our sister Valerie completed the line-up.

As a single parent, my mother worked tirelessly to keep her children fed and clothed, she worked from dawn till dusk and always had two or three jobs on the go at the same time, and I will be eternally grateful for the work at ethic that she instilled into us as children. We did not have a lot, but we did not go cold or hungry, and we were all able to achieve a high degree of independence.

I have very distinct memories of receiving my first book, it was a Christmas present from my auntie Betty, she was our classy relative, she lived in Pensby on the Wirral, with my uncle John, they had two children, John and Carol. As well as being my first proper book, it was also the first book that I had read from cover to cover. This book was Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson, to say that it made an impression on me will be the classic understatement, I was absolutely immersed, I became Jim Hawkins, and I was convinced that given the opportunity I would opt for piracy as my career choice. My childhood memories are all excellent bearing in mind that we were all part of a dysfunctional family long before it achieved the current fashionable status that it holds today. 

Mike