Now an octogenarian it has taken almost forty years to commit my Jimmy Crikey stories to the publication. Jimmy was born on the beach at Great Yarmouth during a family seaside holiday. My five year old son and four of his new found friends had to shelter in our beach tent during a typically heavy summer shower. In order to keep the noise to acceptable levels my wife, Pat, implored me to tell them a story. I had been watching the children at play and their smallest member, and probably the youngest was being instructed to fetch and carry for his older friends. He jus happened to be fair skinned, blue eyed and was crowned with a bright red crop of ginger hair. But he was being bullied! He became the hero of my fantasy story which included witches and magic, wizards in the form of a Weatherman and a bit of tension with one eyed monsters. And over the course of the next few afternoons more adventures were required to keep the youngsters entertained.
Home was, and always will be, Durham where I lived the first forty plus years of my life; where I met my wife-to-be at the age of eleven but my family moved home a year later and we lost contact. We met again at the age of seventeen and have never been parted since, although our parents made us wait until we were twenty one. After I qualified at the age of twenty three I became involved in the sales and marketing of scientific instrumentation. A decade later my family were about to emigrate to South Africa but the company changed its mind, promoted me to Sales Manager and moved my family to its Sussex HQ. After a decade in Sussex and a decade in Hampshire we relocated to Lancashire where we now live on the outskirts of a beautiful rural town overlooking green fields.
