The Hungry Years

Growing up in a poor part of Coventry during the fifties was a hard time, jobs were plentiful, the pay was poor but the air was fresh and clean and the seasons were good, snow at Christmas, rain in April and long hot summer days that never seem to end. At the age of fifteen the Rock and Roll years were almost upon us it was during this time that i fell in love with the most beautiful girl in the world, our eyes met picking juicy big Victoria plums in an over grown garden to a house that had been bombed during the second world war, she smiled and walked away but i hadn't got the courage to go after her, thinking i would never see her again fate smiled upon me and we met again in a cheap cinema on a sunday afternoon, from then on our courting nights were spent on a railway bank where eventually i gladly lost my virginity. But it was only to last a few months, constantly keeping her out late at nights caused her foster parents to send her away to Cheltenham a million miles away for someone who hadn't been out of Coventry. But the night before she left we spent our last time together on the railway bank, we had to walk through an abandoned orchard to get there, people nearby used it as a dumping ground for all kinds of rubbish it was there where i picked up an old oxo tin, this was to be our post box it was the only safe way of communication as i knew my mother would never allow me to read a letter from a girl, especially after she had read it first herself, we buried this little tin on a spot that only she and i knew where. The years passed by but still no word in our little mail box, but the only letter i received was a official one, the call up papers for National service that my mother had opened first. With nine months in England and fifteen months on active service in Aden i never gave up on that little oxo tin that one day might hold all the answers. You must read this story about my time as a National Service man, about my strict home life, about the job that took me away for five years, about the sadness and the sorrow and the laughter, and most of all the secret of the little oxo tin. 65% of this story is true the other 35% is pure fiction i leave the reader to decide witch, but i guarantee you will not put this book down, not intil you have read every single word of. The Hungry Years.