My head is full of people… the people I’m writing about, the people I’ve written about, odd people who are just wandering around looking for their story to be told, by me!
Where do my people come from. Let me give you an example; many years ago when we lived in Oldham I went to collect our car which had been serviced in a local garage. I went to the office to do the paper work and the man who dealt with me attracted my attention. He was pleasant and polite but rather restrained. I’m always quite chatty, and this man, although he responded briefly, did not make any effort to engage me in conversation, which I didn’t mind.
I had to wait for a few minutes while the car was finished so I sat and leafed through a magazine but I couldn’t help but glance at the man behind the counter. He was about well-built, about six foot tall, handsome in an ordinary not startling way, slightly receding thinning hair and a full moustache. What struck me about him, though, was an incredible air of sadness. He was staring out of the window across the Pennine Hills and he looked almost bereft; a mixture of yearning, loss, and quiet despair… or so my fanciful imagination decided. He was quite unaware of me looking at him, he seemed lost in a sort of reverie.
The door from the workshop banged open and another man came in. Shorter, wiry, very dark almost blue-black hair, a lively and amused face, full of life and laughter. He and the quiet man were obviously friends as well as colleagues; just the way they chatted seemed to show that they were good mates and the sad man cheered up in his friend’s company. I collected my keys, collected my car and went home, but the sad faced man remained in my thoughts. Why was he sad? The way the other had behaved was quite normal, not as if his friend had been recently bereaved or was suffering some present trauma… it was as if the quiet man, in times of repose, went somewhere else in his mind, to some other place and some other time which had not been a good experience for him.
Some months later this man had became David Sullivan in my head and his story is revealed in ‘Flipside’, another of my novels!
Lois Elsden 