Final Commentary

I've finished writing my story now, and it will be launched, along with the others, at a special event on the 28th July 2010. Watch this space for details.

In the meantime, I've written a short commentary piece about my thoughts and what inspired me while I was putting the stories together. It will probably, like my story, some of my pictures and film etc, be used on the final website - but until then, I thought you'd like to look at it here.

If anyone has any questions for me you can put them in the comments section of this blog and I'll get to them as soon as I can. See you at the launch!!


I wrote four flash fictions that linked together in a kind of journey, as well as linking or alluding to the stories written by the other participants in the project. I knew from the beginning that I didn’t want to write a story that was too plotted – I wanted my tale to act as the mortar that linked everyone else’s stories together – I wanted to convey atmosphere, evoke a place, a feeling, a mood.

As a long-time blogger I know that people like their screen-fiction in short bursts – and as a novelist the discipline of flash – the shortest of prose forms – appeals to me as a way to stretch my muscles, force myself to be picky – to choose. So I opted for four linked flash fictions. I had a structure. Now, what to write?

The ingredients for these stories are not my own – they make up the ‘chorus’ element of the piece, as I wanted to capture as much as I could from the workshop discussions, internet research, conversations with Wirral residents, field trips and photography excursions that I experienced during the span of this project. And how to do this in such a short space?

Constructing a voice that was a composite of voices – a moving blend of mine, a writer who’d never visited the Wirral before this project begun – along with the voices of the project participants – all to eager to tell autobiographical and second-hand stories that described the Wirral and its history from Lord Lever to the present day - and weave these words stolen from others along with the facts of my research.

Some of the words and phrases were plucked directly from workshop conversations about the area – you’ll find the shoe-tree in a few of the other stories, and this is a remnant from Doreen’s input into a discussion we had during the second workshop. The comment about the best view of Liverpool being from Tranmere belongs to Louise. Billy Jones was a recurring character, although no-one can quite remember where he came from – and Barbara shared my interest in derelict buildings, and one of my stories takes place next door to an old chemist that forms the setting of hers. Keith, like me, constructed a journey through an area he knows like the back of his hand, and Dot, Margaret and Louise are interested in history, the changing faces of houses, of things they can remember and want to capture and share with others.

I didn’t write about the Ferry or the river because other participants do it so well, although water is never far away from any of these stories. The couple feeding squirrels in Birkenhead Park really exist, and might recognise themselves. Their loyalty and quite pride in their area touched me. The wedding dress mystery and Lord Lever’s bubble bath river come from Wirralpedia – another project that captures facts, fictions and voices in the Wirral. Locals assure me both these tales are true – I’m not so sure, but they’re in here, as solid as the climbing rocks in Birkenhead park, as improbable as a planetarium at Seacombe.

My stories aren’t just rag-bag collections of the things people have told me though. They’ve all been shaped by my own experiences of travelling into the Wirral – the long train journeys through the early spring and into the early summer – imagining the water over my head as the Merseyrail chugged into the darkness and never quite getting over the fear that it would all come crashing down on me.

The idea of home, of being isolated, out on a limb, or of belonging, is prevalent in many of these stories – the train was important to me, as it shaped my experience of the Wirral – a suicide on the line between Preston and Wigan stopped me coming from one of the workshops – delays in Lime Street, Ormskirk and Rock Ferry gave me time to think, a man who had a seizure on the bus outside Birkenhead brought me into contact with his cousins and aunt and reminded me of how special tight knit communities can be. Doreen finds correspondences between Turkey and Birkenhead and Dot told me about the night watchman who waits in the booth on the Wirral side of the Queen’s Tunnel in the dark hours, guarding the way in. Although he never found his way into my story, I thought about him often and I’m glad he’s there.

An early trip around the area with Elaine resulted in my interest, through hers, of the derelict and abandoned houses in Tranmere, the regeneration in some these housing renewal areas (also an interest of Louise's) and the way that everywhere the old and the new jostled together, until the past was superimposed on the present like ghosts.

Ghosts? History? A composite voice? I started to think – who was this narrator? And the ghostly, embodied presence of the memories trapped in the empty houses I’d seen on my walks started to appear to me. I wonder if that works.