Written by Alan Fleet
ISBN: 978-1-901253-18-4
188 pages, paperback, 146mm x 208mm.
Price: £ 8.99 Postage and Packing:
Published by Leonie Press, July 2000.
Reprinted December 2000.
It paints a picture of division and prejudice between church and chapel in the communities of Over and Wharton during the pre-war generation, and in the 1960s between native 'Woollybacks' and incoming 'Scousers' from Liverpool who flood in, changing everything.
The author also examines the bad blood between those forever divided by the 11-Plus Examination into a striped-blazer Grammar School elite and secondary modern 'failures'. The situation is seen through the eyes of Joe, a working class boy who passes the exam and is then persecuted by jealous former companions who immediately regard him as a 'snob'.
The whole story is told as a thread running through the moving deathbed reconciliation between the adult Joe and his salt miner father. In spite of a mutual yearning for love and respect, their relationship has been marred by a lifetime of painful misunderstandings and barriers built up on both sides. At last, each is able to set the record straight - but can Joe bear the terrible burden that his dying father unwittingly places upon his shoulders?
"Winsford provides an excellent background to this story of the relationship between a father and his son," said Alan. "Some of the characters are composites of people I knew in my childhood, but most are fictional, with one or two harmless exceptions whom everyone would recognise, like Jasper the shopkeeper in the High Street."
Alan's hero starts as a raw schoolboy and ends as an educated married man with children. The story is told in a series of flashbacks and in each the author enters into the mind of Joe or his father, expressing himself in the way the character would have done at the time.
"I wanted to show how stupid prejudice was and how it can cloud judgement and hinder development. Change in life is inevitable. We simply have to acknowledge change and grow with it, not grow apart because of it," said the author.
Alan Fleet has lived in Mid-Cheshire all his life, apart from three years at Manchester University. He is a consultant geophysicist in the international oil industry and lives in Northwich with his wife Doreen and their children Adam and Danielle.
He and Doreen devote much of their time to the study of Aikido, which he describes as "perhaps the most spiritual of the martial arts".
Much of the conversation in the book is in Cheshire dialect, as spoken by Alan's father and preceding generations, though not so common now. Alan's original version was much closer to how the characters would have sounded, but he decided to water it down because it was hard to read on the page.
"I knew exactly how it all sounded in my head but it could have been off-putting to someone who wasn't familiar with the dialect," he said. "In places the language is a bit rough, but that's how men would talk to one another in the mine or the pub. They didn't speak like that at home."
The cover illustration, showing a number of wellknown Winsford buildings, has been drawn by Hartford artist Patricia Kelsall.
Amazon Customer Review - Rating *****
Fascinating. As soon as opened this book I could not put it down. I was captivated from the first page. My husband tried to get the book from me so I could cook his tea, needless to say he went without. - A reader from England, 17 October, 2000
February 2003
We hear that "Woollyback" is being transformed into a film script.
Thursday, 25th March, 2010
Our author Alan Fleet has been very busy since he wrote "Woollyback" as a novel some years ago. He recreated the book as a screenplay which was selected as a tutored adaptation into a feature film by the UK Film Council at the prestigious Bournemouth Film School. This in turn led to Alan, after a long career in the international oil exploration industry, completing a Masters in Screenwriting in 2006.
His second novel, "North Sea Tigers" was published under the Vanguard Press imprint of Pegusus Publishers in 2009, and he is currently adapting it into a six-part TV drama. It is set in the harsh world of geophyical surveying and, as the blurb says, portrays a story of "what happens when cut-throat competition leads to sabotage and ruthless measures are deemed necessary by those whose very existence is threatened. The line between right and wrong becomes blurred in the heat of exotic locations and even more exotic temptations, and events rapidly spiral out of control with implications for those left at home."
He now has two scripted feature films, with a third in development, a short film "Giri" playing on the festival circuit and a third novel waiting in the wings.
"Giri", which is set in Sefton and explores the controversial topic of euthanasia, has won three awards - Best Actor Short Drama, Best Edited and the Best Sefton-themed Film.
Alan said: "The film takes 400-year-old values from a society considered barbaric and puts them in the present day. The Samurai sociey with its lethal warriors was considered barbaric but they would help someone to die.
"If someone in our society was dying a lingering death we would not help them die - which is more barbaric?"
"Giri", a co-production between Alan's company Woollyback Films Ltd and Lemonace Films Ltd of Cumbria, was shot in Liverpool and Birkenhead and stars martial artists Shihan Terry Ezra, 6th Dan Aikido, and Sensei Terry O'Neill, 7th Dan Shotokan Karate, who also had roles in "Gangs of New York" and "Entrapment".
Alan told the Northwich Guardian in November 2009, “It's great at festival awards ceremonies seeing clips of your film. You hope you'll win an award but it's hard enough getting into festivals and being accepted.”
He added: “Some festivals haven't touched 'Giri' because they don't like the topic - they think it's too contentious. But film is about pushing the boundaries, otherwise everything is safe and films become dull with no real meaning.”
His latest short film, "A Good Slap", was shot recently in Davenham. It features Terry O'Neill again, as the ringleader of a group of old men who take vigilante action after one of them is beaten up by a gang of teenagers who film their attack. Others taking part include actors from Mid-Cheshire College, Davenham and Sandiway Players, and Harlequin Players.
In his Guardian interview, Alan said: “I get my ideas from personal experiences and things you see on the news. This idea came from a news item I saw about six months ago, where an old man was headbutted by a young lad and one of his mates filmed it.
“Years ago my dad, an ex-Second World War soldier, when he was living on his own, was being pestered at night with people knocking on his door. This was at 1am and 2am, because they knew he was an old man living by himself.
“I think it's really sad that old soldiers get picked on like that and mugged - there's been a time when they were young fit fighting men, and now they're being picked on by yobs.”
Léonie Press wishes Alan the best of luck with these ventures.
