The birth of an idea
Winter 2015/16
I’d spent the previous summer sailing around the western Med and climbing in the French Alps. My plan was to do the same again the following summer; meanwhile I had to earn some cash.
While catching up with an old friend from my days in the photographic business, he mentioned they needed a rep. Within 48 hours, I was that rep, back in a suit after fifteen years of building playgrounds in school around south Yorkshire.
So that’s why I’m talking with my sales manager, Paul Holmes. I’ve come back from a trip to Scotland and my last task of the week is a debriefing with him. We sit in the conference room come demonstration area. We sell telescopes and binoculars.
After the business stuff, we get around to talking about writing. I mentioned that I’d written some disconnected memoir. Paul told me about his own desire to write.
Pauls Grandad’s, both of whom, it turned out, fought in the First World War, had told him tales of their wartime adventures throughout his childhood.
‘I’ve got all these stories in my head,’ he said, ‘but I just don’t know what to do with them.’ He got very emotional and told me how much he loved his grandads. Although we’d met each other over the previous two decades, through the mutual friend we both now worked for, I felt honoured that he could be so open with someone who he didn’t really know.
Warming to the subject, as it was the same problem I was facing. I didn’t want to write an autobiography; I was stuck. Although I hadn’t known either of my grandfathers, they had both died before I was born. I had been brought up by my maternal Grandmother Lily Busfield.
‘What you need,’ I proposed, ‘is some kind of framework to hang the stories on.’
‘How do you mean?’ he asked.
‘A fiction tale that you can integrate your stories into.’
And just like that, the idea popped into my head.
‘Airfix models! what about, a Grandad telling stories to his Grandson, while they made Airfix models?’
Paul didn’t get it, which was good, because it meant I could use it. Paul still claims that the entire idea was his, and I pinched it from him, but of course that is just him having a joke with me… I think.
As a tribute and payment in full for any contribution he may have made, although he certainly didn’t. In the first draft, I called my hero Paul.
Now, the problem with Paul as a name is, well, it’s just a little bit weedy. Sorry. I particularly apologise to any Paul’s who may have bought the book, as for the rest, well, whatever.
Jack Manning was a real man, my first wife’s uncle. He’d spent his entire working life in the Navy and looked just like Captain Birdseye. My youngest daughter, Rosie, formed a close bond with him and exchange letters right until his death in 2012.
My hero had to have a name of equal grittiness. I didn’t have to look far. Just two generations back and there he was, Harry Busfield, a great uncle. So that’s how Paul Holmes became Harry Manning.