The Vernham Chronicles – It’s just about as original as you can get!

The Vernham Chronicles – It’s just about as original as you can get!

On 15^th October 2012, my novel The VernhamChronicles will be enjoying its 2^nd birthday!

In those 2 years, The Vernham Chronicles has received mixed reviews and comments, and gladly, none of them(so far) bad!

Some readers have likened or compared The Vernham Chronicles to Spike Milligan, and one reader thought there was an element of Gormenghastabout it. While these observations are complimentary, they aren’t really anywhere close to the mark.

I suppose that the brilliant Spike Milligan is used as a yardstick for wacky British comedy and quite rightly so, but I don’t think you will find anything like The Vernham Chronicles in his great body of work. In addition, the only connection that The Vernham Chronicles has with Gormenghast is a flood during a rainstorm.

Indeed, the closest description I have seen is ‘BBC’s TheLeague of Gentlemen before it gets nasty!’

In a radio interview at Marlow FM 97.5, DJ Paul Mansell asked me what inspired my writing of The Vernham Chronicles and its characters. The novel’s inspiration goes back to just a little over 40 years ago when I was a schoolboy.

I used to walk down a little high street everyday on my way to school, some of the buildings dated as far back as the 16^th Century and other cottages built into the gaps afterwards.

Some of the characters in The Vernham Chronicles were inspired from people that I saw regularly going about their daily business in that little high street, and some characters inspired from those I have had the uncertain pleasure to meet.

The Vernham Chronicles’ characters are of course a complete exaggeration or distortion of those people; they are purely literary caricatures.

One of my favourite characters, and indeed it would seem many of readers’ favourites, is Mr Robson the Counterfeit Scotsman and a character that I had to be careful not to over indulge myself. A little old man that wore plaid inspired this lovely old fellow, he was most likely Scottish but it amused me to think that he might just be a Scottish fanatic and very English. I remember my mother buying me a second hand Oor Wullie (Our William) annual when we went to a local muscular dystrophy charity fete. This comic book and its little lad called Wullie and his pals Fat Bob, Wee Eck and Soapy Soutar fascinated me with its use of strange language in the speech bubbles. The language of course was a way of adding a phonetic accent to otherwise English text.

I found inspiration in Wullie, so much so that I tried to be Wullie right down to wearing dungarees and boots with tacks in (tackety boots) and I would sit on an upturned metal bucket just to be like him.

All this role-play was typical adolescent behaviour and I’m certain we have all pretended to be someone else at sometime or another. This of course made me the original Counterfeit Scotsman, but the thought that somebody could carry on this façade until late in life because of their fanaticism tickles me in all the right places.

I incidentally adore Scotland and love the Scottish way of life!

Mrs Bunkerton, recently widowed 7 years ago as she insists on telling people every day is another favourite. Mrs Bunkerton has an obsession with the accuracy of time and she makes sure she visits the local tearoom ‘Comfytums’ at two minutes past ten o clock every morning; to be too early or miss the exact time would throw her day out completely.

The natives of Vernham village are all obsessed with something or another anyway, and their personalities are all products of their strange neurosis; this is why human beings are an enigma.

Without rewriting the novel here for you, I would like to leave you with a short section of a lovely review by Sue Magee of The Bookbag, which I feel sums up The Vernham Chronicles; you will of course have to read it to maker your own mind up!

“I looked at The Vernham Chronicles for the first time last night and I really had no intention of reading it, but the book had other ideas. Well, just one chapter, then quickly expanded and before I knew it I'd turned the final pages in the early hours of this morning. It's not the plot that keeps you going, because there really isn't one. It would be superfluous. The humour is gentle – from the reason for the villagers having Norman Wisdom to the raunchy page nine glamour model Corrie Nation. She used to be Corrie Nation-Street but her agent told her that it made her sound like a soap opera.
It's said that in times of war people turn to Jane Austen for her gentle humour and a reassurance that all will be well in the world. The Vernham Chronicles had a similar effect on me. The humour tickles you relentlessly and won't let go even when you scream for mercy. It's kindly humour though: you laugh with people rather than at them and you're left with a feeling that you could live in Vernham and know that you might not be accepted, but it would be because you were an outsider and not because you're in any way different. That's their kind of logic.”