I have to own up to being quite a lazy writer. While some authors invent fabulous fantasy worlds, others seek to inhabit characters very different from themselves, stepping away from their own age or gender, following an unfamiliar career path or living in another time. Much patient research and scholarship is called for, as well as great empathy and imagination.
I haven't, to date, done so much of that. Although the 'Welfare Rights Lit' books have multiple viewpoints, the principal characters lead lives that, at least to some degree, intersect with my own. I housed the Walkers in a town I knew well and in a type house I visited time and again as a housing officer, often to assess the benefit entitlement of people just like them, and not so far removed from our own friends and family. The Solent Welfare Rights Project is a parallel universe version of an advice centre I know and love, staffed by people sufficiently unlike my former colleagues to save embarrassing them but doing the same work in much the same way, with the same commitment, humour and self-sacrifice.
As for Daphne Randall, principal protagonist and narrator of 'Grand Union' and the forthcoming 'Daphne of the Four Counties', I might have made her a Geordie lass with a penchant for strong beer, lively shades of hair dye and a certain Stokie bloke, but I've also made her (another) middle-aged voluntary-sector worker and a narrowboater, settling her into a world I know well.
If that's cheating, I'm afraid I'm a cheat!
Himself and I enjoyed a very Daphne-esque Christmas/New Year, afloat around South Cheshire and North Staffordshire, firstly pottering up to the foot of the Bosley Locks then, on a journey I could picture Daph and Harry making together, through the Harecastle Tunnel to Stoke, crunching through the ice to Etruria en route to Stoke City's home fixture against Watford. Going out, it was quite a fun activity, although the noises from under the hull as slivers of ice rattled and scraped under us, were rather terrifying. As a Southampton native, I tend to work on the principle that boats and ice shouldn't mix! That was certainly the case on our home run, when we found the ice tougher to crack, having been smashed by other boats during the course of the week, only to have refrozen in awkward chunks glued together by a cold rain. At one point, close to the site of the old Burslem Port branch, I feared we would find ourselves stranded, Endurance-style, unable to make further progress and it took some ice-breaking with the boat hook to enable the stern to swing far enough for us to take the turn.
I haven't got a plot lined up for a story where Daph makes a similar trip, though it might make a good 'short'. Plans following on from Four Counties involve a spring voyage through the Black Country, a summery sojourn on the T&M and an autumn on the Llangollen, though not necessarily in that order, with an epic Pennine expedition mapped out in sketchy notes too. Now I've bought a little inverter and should be able to recharge an electronic notebook while afloat, I hopefully can get writing while we're on the move this year, instead of returning home with random thoughts in paper notebooks, so look out for more Daphne Randall adventures soon!
As for Daphne Randall, principal protagonist and narrator of 'Grand Union' and the forthcoming 'Daphne of the Four Counties', I might have made her a Geordie lass with a penchant for strong beer, lively shades of hair dye and a certain Stokie bloke, but I've also made her (another) middle-aged voluntary-sector worker and a narrowboater, settling her into a world I know well.
If that's cheating, I'm afraid I'm a cheat!
I haven't got a plot lined up for a story where Daph makes a similar trip, though it might make a good 'short'. Plans following on from Four Counties involve a spring voyage through the Black Country, a summery sojourn on the T&M and an autumn on the Llangollen, though not necessarily in that order, with an epic Pennine expedition mapped out in sketchy notes too. Now I've bought a little inverter and should be able to recharge an electronic notebook while afloat, I hopefully can get writing while we're on the move this year, instead of returning home with random thoughts in paper notebooks, so look out for more Daphne Randall adventures soon!
