Amazed to have the name

I have been writing short stories since the beginning of 2011 when I joined a WEA (Workers' Educational Association) writing class in Beeston, on the south-west edge of Nottingham, but I have been a published writer since the early-1970s, almost exclusively about local government and local history. From 1984 until 2006 I was the news editor for Local History Magazine and also The Nottinghamshire Historian (1992–2013). For the past few years I have been writing a monthly column in the Nottingham Post and, occasionally, for Buses magazine.

A family gathering over Christmas 2010 persuaded me to think about writing a memoir of sorts, but despite having read countless memoirs and collections of reminiscences for the two periodicals I have mentioned above, I was not sure how I wanted to write my memoir. I knew it was going to be 'a story' — for that is what all memoirs/autobiographies are — at best they are collections of jumbled 'facts' and morphed memories. A good friend had attended a writing class in Stoke and I decided to follow her example, which is how I came to join the WEA writing class in Beeston, which I attended until the end of 2014.

I left because we had moved from our house in Lenton, Nottingham, to Beeston at the end of November 2014 and we had a lot of sorting to do, having downsized. To date, my memoir is no more than a few postings to a blog I had started in 2013 called My Wembley 1944–1966, but I had got into the habit of writing short stories.

Christmas 2015 found me pondering the future and what I wanted to do. It had been an eventual year. During the summer I had been diagnosed with two serious health conditions: Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis and Aortic Stenosis, yet I have never felt better and had it not been for a x-ray on the day after the 2015 General Election, I would not know of either condition.

In 2014, on reaching seventy, I had decided to give up on committee work and to do what I wanted instead. From the age of sixteen in 1960 until October 2015, I was always doing a political or voluntary job of some kind.

My health has made me a more solitary person, attending fewer meetings, avoiding crowds and, worst of all, minimising my use of buses and trams to reduce the risk of catching a cold or a cough. As a result, my writing has had more attention. I am not a hermit and go into Beeston most days with my shopping trolley and prepare meals, whilst Susan, my wife, does the washing, ironing and, apart from the stairs, the cleaning. I still enjoy visits to my favourite Beeston cafés, eateries, bookshops and galleries.

From 2007 until 2014 I did a Lenton based blog, Parkviews, and since December 2014, a blog called Beestonweek. Both are now pensioned off, still online. Blogs which require weekly attention are time consuming in a way which I do not expect Senior Fiction to be. Together, they give you an idea of who I am.

So I decided over Christmas it was time to come out as a fiction writer, to share my work with a wider audience and to hope that, by word of mouth, I can attract a few readers. I am a member of the Nottingham Writers' Studio and will be telling them about Senior Fiction (seniorfiction.blogspot.co.uk), a web address I did not expect to be available. I am somewhat amazed to have this name for my blog. I hope it will help folk find my blog by chance as well as via word of mouth and online recommendation.

My plan is to publish each story on its own page, which will be listed in the right-hand column, where you can see who I am. Blog postings will be, well, I'm not sure, so please bear with me.

Robert Howard.