Drew Payne

Thank you. It was hard to write, as I said because I don't like violence, but I also feel if I am going to write about violence it has to be honest, painful, and messy. No Hollywood violence from me. But something very positive did happen here, and I hope people didn't miss it, Liam got his first kiss.

Thanks for your feedback. Liam is living in a Secure Mental Health hospital and unfortunately, events like this can and do happen. I wanted to show how unordinary his life still is. Liam is also still suffering from PTSD, though he has been hiding/denying it. I need to move Liam on, in himself, I need him to face his daemons. Things will change. It was a hard chapter to write, I do not like violence, but I am pleased with how people are reacting to it.

Dinner that Friday was lasagne and chips. Almost a perfect square of lasagne sitting on his plate, surrounded on two sides by the yellow and crisp chips. The lasagne was rather greasy, a couple of stains of orange oil marking his plate, but Liam liked the lasagne. Even after being kept hot for so long in the trolleys that brought the food to the ward, it still managed to keep its flavour. The minced meat, sandwiched between the sheets of lasagne, still had a tangy taste of tomatoes and herbs; it

I hated Sunday afternoons as a child. It was always the low point of the week, the afternoon when nothing really happened. It was those long hours between Sunday lunch and Sunday tea. My parents would go and garden, leaving me alone with the television. There were only three channels and none of them saved their best programs for Sunday afternoons. I watched a lot of old and often not very good films, black and white war films that were all about the glory of fighting, or equally black and white family dramas were everyone was so buttoned up and corseted that barely any emotion could escape. As a child I wasn’t a discerning viewer, I would watch anything to chase away the boredom, and those long Sunday afternoons I would watch anything the television had to offer. This afternoon Martin and I spent a lazy Sunday afternoon at home, watching television. We have the advantage of streaming TV; we can choose whatever program whenever we want to. There’s no searching through three channels and settling for the least annoying thing on offer. As we watched television, I wrote on my laptop. I find nostalgia fascinating but also a little worrying. The romancing of the past until it almost seems like a paradise. My father and his brothers used to do it. They would look back on the nineteen-forties and nineteen-fifties, especially the Second World War, as an almost perfect time. Even as a child, in the nineteen-seventies and nineteen-eighties, this seemed strange to me, society had moved forward so much, why was the past so wonderful? I don’t want to return to the world of my childhood, technology has made my life so much better, and I don’t see my childhood as some sort of paradise, yet some people are now romancing that time too.

I’ve had problems with the bailiffs, or one particular bailiff company. It’s not what you think, I didn’t owe anyone any money but someone else, who I have never heard of, has been giving out our address as his own, someone who has never lived at our address. For ages I’ve returning letters for him as “Not known at this address.” The three weeks ago we received a hand delivered letter for him, with no return address on it and the envelope was open. Inside was a letter from a firm of bailiffs, saying that over six thousand pounds was owed in fines and court fees. If this sum wasn’t paid within ten days then bailiffs would come to our address and seize property to the value of the amount owed. I was shocked and angry. I rang the bailiff company, straight after reading that letter, but they weren’t helpful. Their attitude was that it was my fault and I had to sort it out, even though it was someone else who had lied. Citizens Advice were very helpful. They told me the documents that I had sent the bailiff company to prove it was only us who live here. They also told me that the bailiff company had to pause the “recovery” until it was all sorted out. They also advised me that I didn’t have to let any bailiffs into my home. I rang the bailiff company back and told them they had to pause the “recovery”. They said they would only do that for ten days, as it was company policy. All the people I spoke to, at that company, had poor interpersonal skills. Nine days later, I received an email from the bailiff company saying that they agreed that the man didn’t live at our address and the matter was closed. No apology or anything for the stress and worry they caused me. The bailiffs were trying to collect a court fine and fees, yet at no point did anyone try and confirm that this man lived at our address. Why didn’t anyone just check that what he said was true? At least I know what to do if it happens again, thanks to Citizens Advice.

On the grass, in front of our house, the crows and seagulls have fallen back into their usual cold war, after all staring at the lorry that came to emptying our rubbish bins. They stand around, glaring at each other, or attacking leftover fast-food wrappers, which the crows always seem better at. Every couple of days the cold war breaks down and they’ll start fighting over something or other, leaving behind the occasional feather on the grass. Before lockdown, the grass was dominated by pigeons, who wondered around in their lost way, with the occasional crow interrupting them. But something changed during lockdown and a flock of crows moved in, driving the pigeons away. Towards the end of lockdown, the crows were joined by the seagulls and the cold war began. The crows are now sitting up on the roofs, of our terrace of houses, glaring down at the street like a scene from Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds, as the seagulls just stand around on the grass. They are back into their cold war.

Last Friday we had a day out. We went to the London Transport Museum Depot, out at Acton (West London), for one of its open days. It was an amazing experience. It is housed in an old London Transport depot and is full of all kinds of old equipment, trains and memorabilia from the London Underground. I have always been fascinated by the London Underground, ever since I moved to London. Taking a train across a city, that travelled only underground, was so new and different. Since then, I have found that the history of the London Underground also ties in with so much of our social history. Then something uncomfortable happened. We were looking at a restored old tube train and a guide was telling us all about it. I realised that I used to travel in that type of tube train when I moved to London. Then I saw they had, preserved, the ticket machines from the same time, the ones I had used almost daily back then. Looking around the museum, I saw serval other exhibits I remembered from when they were in use. I remember things in everyday usage, from when I was an adult, that are now exhibits in a museum. I am old enough to remember museum exhibits when they were in everyday use. When I was a child, exhibits in museums were strange and very old things, things from a different world, an old world that was securely in the past. Now I can go to a museum and find something there that I can remember when it was in everyday usage. Life can be so complicated.

Thank you.

Thank you. Thanks to the people at my writers' group, I have been working on characters' internal emotions and monologues. Liam at this age is still difficult to write, I can't wait until he's older and has more insight.

That Friday afternoon, Liam returned to the Common Room after his lessons in the Education Centre were finished for that day. He took his place at the end of the long table there and started to do his homework. But, unlike the other times, he sat there alone. Halfway through his maths homework, equations that he found functional but not exciting, he looked up from his notebook and across the table, but there was no Jared sat opposite to him. Jared always joined him there, sitting opposite t

Thank you for noticing this. It is a theme that I found creeping up on me, how so many of the adults from Liam's life, well his life before Nurton Cross, feel guilty about what happened to him. Leanne James was so guilty that she had a breakdown, she is one of the many off-stage characters in this story. Unfortunately, the character who should really feel guilty about the way they treated Liam does not feel a moment of guilt, his mother.

I am setting up something that will happen later, something that Liam doesn't want but will give an unexpected outcome. The professionals in his care couldn't make any other choice but to reject the request for an interview, especially with Liam's age. But, after the previous chapter, where Liam said he felt safe at Nurton Cross, this is the outside world trying to creep inside the hospital walls.

Professionally, I've been part of so many different MDT meetings, in the past. Unfortunately, this story is told totally from Liam's point of view, so I couldn't show the workings of an MDT meeting. But I wanted to show the professionals, in Liam's life, working his good and that these people all care about him. It was also a chance for Mark and Mrs Stewart-Graham to publicly say what a farce his trial was. I wanted to show that Liam isn't just being held in this hospital, there is a whole team of people working towards his rehabilitation.

Liam heard many times talk about MDT meetings ever since he’d come to Nurton Cross. Sometimes they were talked about in almost hushed tones; other times kids on the ward excitedly talked about them, as they heralded their chance of discharge from there. It had been months before he learnt what MDT meant - Multi-Disciplinary Team meeting - though that explanation didn’t tell him what actually happened in one. But he’d never had one. And though they seemed a type of mystery, he didn’t wo

Thank you for such wonderful feedback, you make me blush. There is more to this story. I have a third act to it planned out and I am currently writing it.

Mrs Stewart-Graham is a successful barrister and Liam's case is the one that she feels guilty over. She is trying to relieve/exercise that guilt by visiting Liam, by seeing that he is doing well. Unfortunately, Liam's only fourteen and he doesn't understand what she needs to do, but he likes all the books. I wanted Mr Bear to show how young Liam is, how much he is still a child.

Yes Liam is happy, which is a horrible comment on his life. He lives in an adolescent secure hospital and it is better than his previous life. Mr Bear is one of the few people from that life who still cares about him.

The letter from Mrs Stewart-Graham had arrived on the ward a week and a day before her visit. It was waiting for him when he’d returned from the Education Centre. It had been opened and read before it reached him, but all their letters were - the few letters most people on the ward seemed to receive. The letter was brief, printed on stiff, thick paper, not the cheap printer paper they used in the Education Centre, but heavy paper that cried out that it was expensive. At the top of the page,

On a July evening, in 1991, three people are each caught in a moment of indecision, not knowing what the next right thing to do is. Helen has cooked a special, surprise meal for her husband, but he still hasn’t returned home. Paul has parked his car at the side of the road, but he doesn’t know where to drive to next. Craig is working late, but his mind isn’t on work. Moving Pictures is my newly published short story. It tells its story from the point-of-view of three different people, all caught in one moment in time, all trying to make the right decision. It is available on Smashwords, as an eBook only, but is free to download, or you can pay whatever you want to. Happy reading Drew

Thank you. I did set up, at the very beginning of this story, what an awful place Liam was in when he was discharged from Nurton Cross, but I also want to show how much Liam is benefitting from being at Nurton Cross. I need to do a balancing act, but I have so much of this story already planned. There is more to come.

Thank you. Liam needs a friend outside of the hospital, an adult to look out for him, and his awful mother won't do that. Having a friendship with Liam is also something positive for Mark. He isn't great at relationships, thanks to his crap parents, and his friendship with Liam is something positive for him, especially as he's in a parental role here.

It was the Saturday between that first Christmas and New Year. Though the ward was still decked out in all its Christmas decorations, it felt subdued. The excitement and activity of Christmas Day had faded away. Since breakfast, Liam had been sitting in the corner of one of the sofas in the Common Room trying to finish Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. He had five new books to read but he had to finish his current one first: it was his personal rule. He was left alone that morning.

Thank you. There's no greater praise, for me, than being able to touch a reader, emotionally, with my writing.

I enjoyed creating her and she will be a good person in his life.

I first read some of Patrick Gale's books back in the 90s and he was different to so much of the books around then. I lost interest in him after reading Facing the Tank, plot wise it was such a mess. I came back to his work with this book and I was so surprised, it is so good. It is a pet hate of mine, historical novels that are full of modern attitudes. If you're going to write a historical novel you have to write about the attitudes then, and doesn't sugar-coat them. Oops, sorry but I climbed onto one of my soap boxes.