me
book

It's now over fourteen years since Platform Souls was published - fifteen years since I actually started writing it. The book had its genesis in a one-off article I wrote for Steam World back in 1993 about me and Adrian 'Bolt' Brown, the junior schoolfriend who introduced me to trainspotting. Sadly Adrian died a few years ago, and I'm reminded of the old WC Fields joke about the woman who drove him to drink and him never having the decency to write and thank her. In the same way, I never got around to thanking Adrian for his contribution to my life. I don't even know if he ever read Platform Souls or if he was aware of his bit of fame. Still, I salute him and like to think that, somewhere in heaven, he remembers those summer holidays of 1964...

Not long after the Steam World piece was published I got to reading Fever Pitch by Nick Hornby. I don't know why, since I'm hardly a footie fan, but I did enjoy it and it occurred to me that if he could make football interesting to a sceptic, maybe I could do the same for trainspotting. I might even be able to change the public's perception of trainspotters, people who were suffering a bad image at the time.

I wrote to Hornby's publishers - Gollancz - with a scrappy five page proposal for a book. A couple of days later I was telephoned by Liz Knights, the editor who had discovered Nick Hornby. She asked me to go down to London for a chat. It looked like my big break!

Not that I got off to the best of starts. After introducing me to the young man she'd picked as my editor - Ian Preece - she told us to find an office and sort out the details. Following him down a corridor I trod on his heel and forced him to stumble, mumbling apologies while he stooped to put his shoe back on! I thought I'd blown it!

I didn't hear anything for months. Then one day, while I was having tea at my Mum's, he rang to say Gollancz liked the idea. But - he sounded apologetic - and I knew there had to be a catch. The catch was, they could only offer me an advance of £4000. £4000! I hadn't been expecting £400.

But it all worked out in the end and with Ian's help I had the typescript of Platform Souls ready by next January. Platform Souls has had a good run for its money, having only recently gone out of print twelve years later. Out of print - but not out of sight. We've had a hardback and two paperback versions, so now it's time to reincarnate the book, like its author, for the digital age! And it gives me chance to include all kinds of new (old!) material - tickets, spotting books, photographs, memorabilia, maybe even sound effects and film eventually, who knows!

For the time being though, it's just the complete original original text with a load of bits and bobs. Just follow the link and enjoy!

READ PLATFORM SOULS