Colin Fletcher - author

Biography of Colin Fletcher,
Author of The Worst Class in the School

1945

I was born in Aldeburgh on the Suffolk coast in a different age! Our house was lit by gas-lamps and candles. We had to go outside for water or to use the lavatory. And there was no electricity..or television.

But this dark age was good for the imagination. There were bogeymen in every shadowy corner of our cottage. The North Sea growled day and night around us and we threw stones into its foamy mouth. As pirates, we sailed the lonely marshes on oil-drum boats. And the five of us sat round the fire listening to stories of bombs on the roof and drownings at sea.

This was when I began to write. Poems to perform in back-yard 'shows'. Reports on adventures. Fantasies of fame and fabulous deeds. Instant poems on request for kids in our seagull-squawking playground.

1960

Fifteen years old. All acne and anti!

I left my secondary modern school and followed my father and brothers into a local building firm. I became an apprentice electrician - a bruising job of cut hands and brick-grit in your eyes..and every other aperture!

But in the evenings at the Youth Club we became Brylcremed predators! Our eyes sly and eager for the sight of a high-heel or a mini-skirt.

The poetry kept coming - slightly hormonal! And more concerned with coupling than with couplets! I didn't read it amongst my mates, of course, with our leather jackets and Beatle haircuts! It had become secret. My own concealed pleasure. Written in lunch-breaks behind a stack of bricks. Or in a cobwebby loft amid a re-wiring job.

But electrical work was not for me. I was a writer !

1968

I joined a creative writing group and heard about a wonderful English course at a teacher training college in Norwich. Where people spent their days reading, writing and talking about books! It sounded great..but me? At college? Me? Who spent days hammering sockets into walls and groping under floor-boards for wires? Get real! But I did take a day off work a week to study for some 'O' Levels as a first step.

1969

A big year!...Marriage...A break from my Suffolk working roots...A move to Norwich....And the start of three years at Keswick Hall College of Education - which would help me become a writer, not a teacher!

1972

I now had two daughters, so I needed a job. Teaching was the obvious answer - I could do my writing in my spare time.

I taught for 23 years in Primary and Middle schools but, all time time, I felt I should be somewhere else. I did write several novels for children and lots of poetry at this time but I never sent it off.

1995

Life begins at fifty! I came out! "Im not a teacher -I'm a writer!" I surprised everyone and gave up full time teaching to write.

There were many projects in my head but I decided to concentrate on something marketable. Something child-centred. A book children would grab at! The result was The Worst Class in the School

1998

I've used Worst Class in many classrooms (supply teaching only!) and children love it. They have to read one more. And they craze me for copies of Vulgar Vicky, Exploding Ed etc. I began sending it to well-known publishers in London. They seemed to genuinely like the book and were very encouraging. Although they didn't want to gamble on a new 'poet'. But Poolbeg, those wonderful people in Dublin, did take it. Brilliant !

1999

I have just finished my second 'real' book. An entertaining but powerful (I hope!) novel for 11-year olds, The Wishing Race. The future feels good!