Beside the Towpath

Name: Beside the Towpath
Author: Steve Pepper

There is really no beginning nor end to this book, no hero or villain to cheer or dislike, just simple folk living each day as it came, getting through life as best as they could in a black and white world. Beside the Towpath is a collection of bite sized stories about three young lads growing up in a small town in Yorkshire in the 1960s.

Genre: Comedy, Fiction/Bio episodic novel in Yorkshire Dialect
Structure: Collection of short "bit" stories, poems and pics
Rights available: World English / Translation / Film & TV
Audience: General Trade
Word count: 52,000 approx
Timeline: The 1960s
Setting: South Yorkshire, UK
Narrative Perspective: Steve narrates his own story in past tense

Synopsis

Steve Pepper tells each story based on childhood memories of his family and especially with his two friends Tony and Nigel.

Each tale explores friendships and the innocence of a time gone by, with the Yorkshire dialect prominent throughout, giving a true taste of a little northern town. They tell of the love in a small community, its laughter and, sometimes tears, memories of a culture which is slowly fading into the past.

Each one is written in a way to evoke those fading memories, to bring back to life for the reader those which they thought were lost, but should never be lost, and to help blow the dust off the years that separate us from our childhood innocence.

Some tales often look back through an adults eyes, now seeing those times as they really were, hard, but full of wonder, and the love of three friends as they share their exploits together on the fields and by the canal which formed their own, magical world.

Teaser

Two things amazed me as a kid, one was the Apollo 11 moon landing, and the other was my uncle Len. Mind you, Neil Armstrong only walked on the moon, uncle Len could eat bacon without his teeth in.
Uncle Len was a REAL uncle, not just one of me mam and dads friends, and he lived next door with my grandma. I used to nip round to grandma’s and he always seemed to be sat at the table eating boiled spuds and bacon.
“Ha... come on in bobo and sit thisen down” (he always called me bobo and I never found out why) “ere... ‘ave a tatter…”
He would stick a fork into one and hand it to me. I would sit there, fork in hand, staring at the contortions his face could achieve when eating his bacon. It was like watching a cow grinding its cud, and a bulldog chewing a toffee at the same time and I used to be scared that his lower lip would at some point reach his forehead... and his face would disappear..!
After seeing this horrific display of facial dexterity... I never fancied my spud. I soon learned a lesson though... I used to stand at grandmas’ door sniffing... and if I could smell bacon I'd think... I'll come back later..!

Beside the Towpath

Synopsis

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