A man standing on a wintery beach

I was born in Ulverston, the same town as Stan Laurel, and grew up in a small row of houses called Paradise which overlooked the Irish Sea. It was a beautiful place to grow up in. We spent a lot of time on our bikes, damming  streams and walking the fell. Although that said, it was also quite draughty and there were only two buses a day and when you got on one of those, it took you to Barrow-in-Furness.

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A Sentimental education

 I lived in Liverpool for ten years or so where I got myself a PhD with a thesis improbably titled 'Shelley and Laughter'. Here's a link to an essay which was published at Romanticism on the Net, in case you think I'm making this up. 
I loved being a student. I loved reading books and going to the old 051 Cinema. 
I've written ever since I decided that comic strips might work better in prose.  I've never knowingly killed anyone, but I have written poetry and some of it not very good. In Liverpool, we ran a series of poetry evenings. First there was the Kitchen Club, then there was Live Strip Poetry and we ended up with Poetry Boy at the Egg Cafe. I got published in some small magazines and we even published an anthology called Tricycle, but I'm not sure that it is still available. 

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The Italian Job

Moving to Italy was one of those enormous decisions that seemed to require no thought of all. At least, I can't really remember thinking deeply about it. After first visiting Italy, I decided I would love living here. The country is great for all the obvious reasons, but leaving was important as well. 

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