Sunday 25 September 2011

The Custard Boys

One of the reasons I wrote "Scholarship" was that I could not recall a book on the same subject, ie love and loss in a prep school.  That sentence is of course an invitation for many to send me numerous titles covering exactly the same ground!

The nearest in feel is "The Custard Boys" by John Rae (former headmaster of Westminster School).


The Custard Boys is not set in a prep school, but it does hint at a relationship between two boys in their early teens set during WWII.  The Custard Boys starts out as if it is some sort of gung ho adventure story.  You soon realise it is not.  Indeed it ends up being a powerful anti-war story.

Now I have awakened your interest, I gently have to break the news that it is out of print.  However, I picked up a version second hand via amazon marketplace.

I found out about the book having seen an amateur film of the book shown on Channel 4 one Christmas.  If you search for "The Custard Boys" on line, you will see various sites offering it for download in various forms.    However, I urge you to support the original maker the Children's Film Unit by buying a copy from them http://www.btinternet.com/~cfu/prods.htm.  Be warned, the quality is not the greatest.

Further research revealed that there was a previous version of the film called "Reach for Glory" http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056397/ starring the iron jawed Harry Andrews as our young hero's father.  This version is my favourite version if only because it maintains the hint of a relationship between the two boys.  Looking on IMDb, I read that the satellite channel "Simply Movies" has shown it in the UK.  Otherwise, http://www.ioffer.com/i/reach-for-glory-1962-dvd-harry-andrews-kay-walsh-145626037  offers copies for sale.  I cannot vouch for the status of this copy and have not used the site.  I would also warn that the cover below is a very inventive re-imagining of the plot, this takes place in Norfolk, not some bombed out inner city!


There are also a couple of classic French novels covering similar ground but these I will come back to at a later date.

Saturday 24 September 2011

Going Nuclear

This is really a specific smashwords post.  the aim in life with an ebook is to get it onto many lists as possible including fusspots apple.  So do that, you have to pass through their autovetting process which is a complete style fascist.  Well for good reasons, bad formatting does look dire.

The problem is you think your formatting is perfect, the machinery does not.  So you are in a "you used a leading paragraph return together with an indented first line" purgatory.

Sigh, I always use a block paragraph at work but decided to conform with the indented first line paragraph style used for fiction.

Back to the drawing board!

Wednesday 21 September 2011

Location, Location, Location

When writing Scholarship, I knew I had to relocate the school, nowhere near where I went to school but instead somewhere I knew.

In the end, that became an easy choice.  I have connections with Cornwall, and used to holiday there each summer as a kid.  In later life I would often drive along the north coast between Sennen and St Ives.  En route, between Zennor and St Ives is a spectacularly lonely stretch of road where there is a very small hamlet with a house on a high promontory over looking the sea.  It is here that I imagined the school to be. In fact all there is, is a farm and some farm buildings.  The design of the school is based on my old school which indeed was a converted farm and a large house built around a quadrangle.  Our gym and dining hall were both in converted barns and the changing room was a dark labyrinth underneath another barn.

Anyway, late last year I braved the six mile Zennor to St Ives walk twice, once along the coast and once along "The Coffin Path" (it does exist).  Six miles and four hours of solid slog.


This stream probably originates on Trendrine hill which lies the other side of the road.



If anywhere is chapel cove, this is it!  In reality, Chapel Cove was based on a cove near Swanage in Dorset.

Wicca does exist as a place, that is closest to the location I chose.  



If you have not already worked out, lots of weirdness takes place in Cornwall.  I was there during the eclipse in 1999, we saw nothing, it was thick black cloud and raining, when the sky darkened, it was the proverbial end of the world to look at.  Didn't stop the local farmer from ploughing though!

Tuesday 20 September 2011

About "Scholarship"

Okay, "Scholarship" is that precious thing, the first novel.   Apparently, so one of my friends tell me, I have been talking and writing this for "quite some time".  Deep breath....

Scholarship is fiction, the school called "The Rocks", does not exist.  Let's get this out of the way first.

However, Scholarship is very much drawn from a series of events that happened in my life when I was at Prep School in England in the 1960s.  This is the British sort of prep school, educating boys aged 8-13.  In the novel, it is an all boarders single sex establishment.  That environment alone is enough to generate lots of material as it is an artificial environment, women and girls are virtually absent, emotions repressed and no escape.

I actually rather enjoyed my prep school, we had a great time, the food was good and I liked most of my teachers.  But in this environment, I found out I was gay.  My body found out sooner than my brain.  I was a bit confused, especially when I fell for a boy (called Sacha in the book) when I was 12.  Sacha was six months younger than me but as soon as I saw him, I realised there was something special there.

That is the basis of Scholarship.  If you read the end notes, you will see that I tell you that many of the incidents that make up the story are true (even the dialogue is based on my memory of things said almost 40 years ago).  Also based on reality are most of the characters, teachers and boys. Names have been changed.  The dates I give are also slightly out.

More to follow.