The twelfth year of this career found me in Stevenage, a ‘new town’ an hour’s drive north of London, and beginning to feel more than a tad restless. And here, as chance would have it, I resumed close acquaintance with a former college friend, Laurence James, who, sadly, was to die all too early, in the year 2000, when not yet 60. Laurence had been assiduously working his way up in the book trade—firstly as a book seller, then as an editor and, finally, as an author. and was living not far from Stevenage, close enough for me to make frequent visits during which I complained about the nature of my present lot and observed with no little envy the comparatively pleasant life of a full-time writer. Laurence, it seemed—I later learned the truth to be both more arduous and demanding—would rise in his own good time and, after a leisurely breakfast, make his way into his office where he would sit behind his desk for an hour or so before pausing for the first of several coffee breaks that would occur throughout the day. And at the end of each of those days two or three thousand words of manuscript would have been created with apparent ease. No bells sounding at forty minute intervals to announce a new class and a change of lesson, no recalcitrant or obstreperous youths to chivvy along or bully into submission: just your own quiet room with a stereo and coffee machine close to hand and, in Lawrence’s case, an intelligent and lovely wife, who, having shipped the kids off to school, was most likely working on a new novel in a room of her own.

My envy must have been evident for all to see and now, providentially, more good fortune came to my aid. Laurence had been writing a series of rollicking biker books under the name of Mick Norman and his publishers wanted another; Laurence, however, was committed elsewhere. “You want to write something,” he said, “here’s your chance.” Except, of course, I hadn’t really wanted to write anything at all: what I wanted was what I saw as the writer’s life—the cottage in the country, the Volvo, the ability to organize one’s own days. Faced with actually producing anything somebody else might want to read, never mind publish, I gibbered and blanched.