Where my writing comes from As the blurb says: born in South Yorkshire, educated in Durham and Leeds, living in Greater Manchester, working on Merseyside. So, a Northern Lad then, a Northern Hero, even. I've moved around the north of England quite a bit, and at the age of twenty I'd already lost count of the number of addresses I'd had in County Durham alone. When I add that my wife is from Middlesex and her sister lives in Wiltshire, you'll begin to see that my loyalties can be rather promiscuous. I've actually got a Norwegian cousin whose wife is Lithuanian. When they lived in Scotland I wrote to them during the World Cup asking what it was like to have three nationalities and not one team to support! I find every place interesting, and I get very annoyed when people from fashionable towns like Dorchester or Skipton make fun of less glamorous places like Barnsley or Milton Keynes or Stoke. Actually, knocking Stoke is fine by me. I once went to Stoke and really couldn't get on with the place, but on the whole I find regional rivalry infuriating. I once asked my mother-in-law for a piece of cheese to go with a slice of apple pie. "Of course," she said, "they do that up north, don't they." "No," I snapped, "I just like cheese with apple pie, that's all!" Up North! Dontcha just hate that! But I also hate Down South, and they way some people think that London covers the entire south eastern part of the country, thereby reducing Canterbury, Cambridge, St Albans and all those lovely places in the Chilterns to mere London suburbs. I can imagine some people stopping a policeman in Marlowe or somewhere (do they have policemen in Marlowe?) and asking for the nearest tube station! So then, quite a bit of my writing comes from places I've visited or stayed in or passed through, but hardly ever places I've actually lived in. You won't find any harrowing pit stories, or tales featuring rain glistening on cobblestones, you can read Stan Barstow or D.H. Lawrence for that. However I do have a number of short stories set in the imaginary North Yorkshire seaside town of 'Whitborough'. Yes, you've spotted it: it's Scarborough and Whitby combined! Very clever. Well, if David Lodge can get away with 'Rummidge' I can have Whitborough, so there! Have a look at one of my Whitborough Tales. But I also get ideas from travelling abroad. Elsewhere on this website you can find out about my book Gernika! based on the events surrounding the creation of Picasso's great painting. However, I have to admit that I'm no Marco Polo or Michael Palin - more Bill Brydon I suppose. As I'm really a small town sort of chap, my writing set in foreign places tends to remain on a small scale. Thus, watching a tourist from the Far East take a photograph of the departure lounge of Barcelona airport is a big deal for me. Have a look at my sketch Mr. Lee (see below). My more exotic tales tend to be rooted in my student days when I hitch hiked round Europe and came across all sorts of oddities. These days I just enjoy making up stories wherever I am - a bus station tapas bar, fifteen guys with tiny shovels mending a pot hole in a Portuguese road. 'Why did they pick that one to fill?' I always ask myself, "There are pot holes as far as the eye can see! Why couldn't they use a lorry load of tar instead of a barrow?" The answers to these questions lie of course in the economic structure of rural Portugal, but you'll have to wait till I've written the story to find out more. Portugal features pretty large in my sources, and I've been visiting the place for years. We tend to stick to the Algarve these days, but in the nineties my wife and I toured the west coast and the hinterland quite a lot. In those days it was a bit rough and ready but very cheap, and the people very... well, Portuguese. You have to get to know the place a bit before you understand just how Portuguese the Portuguese are. They sort of try to have fun and be extrovert, but they're crap at it. They much prefer a sort of gentle contentment, preferably in a family context, and don't really get the hale and hearty school of pleasure found in northern Europe. Unlike the Spaniards - they get it alright and, I'm sure, secretly despise us for it... You learn a lot about cultural trends watching people abroad. Anyway, you'll find a selection of my travel poems and stories in A Ship of Fools.   Mr. Lee I was finding it difficult to walk but it's impossible to stroll in an airport terminal, so I was limping purposefully, if painfully down the hundred mile concourse. I passed the usual airport detritus - a café-bar, a sweet stall, shops selling luggage. Surely anyone who finds himself at an airport already has luggage. Certainly Mr. Lee had. On his back he carried a trim and tidy rucksack with pockets and pouches and straps; and slung over his shoulder was a matching bag with buckles and rings. I don't know if he was really called Mr Lee but, as he seemed to be Chinese, the law of probability says that such was his name. Of course, he could have been Korean, in which case it was likely, if not probable, that he was called Kim. Odd that. All those dictators and secret policemen with the same name as a twelve year girl with pigtails. Or her best friend. Or indeed, her pony. It's a bit like having a General Hayley, or a Reichsfeuhrer Tina. Or President Sharon. You'll have guessed I never actually spoke to Mr Lee, I just gave him a name to remember him by. As I pointed out, I was walking with difficulty as I do increasingly these days, But as I always say, I'll keep walking and travelling till I stop. I had to stop on this occasion, just to rest my legs and get my breath. Not that there's anything wrong with my lungs or heart. It's just that limping is very hard work. I saw one of those moulded plastic seats and slid into it. It wasn't very comfortable, but I think they make them that way to discourage you from sitting in them for long, so you'll go and spend money in the shops. Buy another suitcase or something. The seat was one of a row of about twenty four, facing away from the huge picture window, (why do they do that, I wonder?) and towards a bank of video screens displaying details of departing flights - Seattle, Larnaca, Glasgow, Helsinki. Some places I've visited, some I'd like to and some I wouldn't. I sometimes play a silly game with them: I look at the destinations on the screen and give them points out of ten for desirability - Boston 8, Amsterdam 6, Fort Lauderdale 3 etc. I compare these points with delays. If lower scoring places get long delays then there is a God, or Newcastle will win the Premiership. Something like that. I was celebrating the appearance of a four hour delay on Malaga, when my view of the screens was blocked by Mr Lee. I wasn't annoyed, I was only playing a stupid game, and he probably actually needed the information. Then he did an extraordinary thing. From his shoulder bag, he drew a small matt metallic video camera. Neat, compact and probably very costly. To my amazement he pointed the camera at the bank of screens and began to film them. After a couple of minutes he stopped, folded the contraption with a series of satisfying clicks and turned, smiling to walk away. I wondered then, and still wonder, why he was smiling. I like to think he had some sort of accumulator on the delays to Stuttgart, Glasgow, Tangiers and, of course, Malaga, and was recording proof for his bookmaker back home.   © Ian Gray Back to Who?