David Almond on Felling: ‘I didn't want to be a northern writer’

The Skellig novelist remembers the din of the shipyards and how he discovered the strangeness and exoticism of Tyneside

I recall a morning in my Felling childhood. I say to my best friend, Tex, that I want to be a writer. We’ve been serving on St Patrick’s altar. Bread and wine’s been turned to flesh and blood. I still taste the Host on my tongue. We’re on the High Street outside Myers pork shop. A severed pig’s head grins out from its window. There’s the distant din of caulkers from the shipyards far below. It’s a hot day and the sky above is eggshell blue.

“A writer?” says Tex. “But you’re just you, Davie. And this is just the Felling. What the hell ye ganna write about?”

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from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2vW4Jfi