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Hello everybody, I was born in Morpeth and grew up in Bedlington where my father was a polis and my mother worked at the dry cleaners at Vulcan Place and then the manageress at the Doctor Pit canteen. I went to Whitley Memorial and Westridge County Secondary Modern and left Bedlington when I was 16 to work at The Evening Chronicle in Newcastle as the editorial office boy and then a reporter. I got into a fair amount of trouble growing up in Bedlington and have indelible memories, good, bad, ridiculous, funny and sometimes outrageous. I often wonder how many of my old school mates are doing. Somewhere along the way I became a real writer. I've written nine books sold in 20 different countries, a couple of which have done quite well. I also wrote the book I always wanted to write - about growing up in Bedlington, growing up Geordie and just surviving growing up. It's called 'The Leek Club' and it's coming out on Amazon Kindle and Amazon print-on-demand, March 15th, 2012. It's an original, full length, no holds barred novel and it seemed to me Bedlington folk old and new would be interested in it. What pushed me to write it, among other things, was wherever I went in the world people would tell me my childhood was so interesting compared to theirs - colourful certainly - and I'd never thought of it that way. I'd thought of growing up in Bedlington during its rough and ready coal mining heyday as something I had to get out of alive. But I also came to appreciate the uniqueness of my 'coming of age' and came to believe it was a story worth telling warts and all. I also came to appreciate the dialect. Whch was funny, because I spent my early years after leaving Bedlington trying to disown it. I was often told I'd never amount to anything if I didn't learn to speak 'properly.' A message that was reinforced after I moved to London in the mid 1960's. But, over the years, even as I lived in other countries, I came to realise that the dialect was not only rich and vivid, it was unique in the world and historically important. Geordie and its sub-dialect, pitmatic, is the only language from the middle ages of British history, still used in daily life by 1.3 million people - not counting those of the worldwide Geordie diaspora. That's an amazing achievement, worth preserving and celebrating. I'd always wanted to write a book in dialect and 'The Leek Club' is it. All the book's dialogue, where it's valid, is written in dialect. The narrative and an extended courtroom scene at Moot Hall in Newcastle is in 'polite Geordie' but the rest is dialect - perhaps another reason why no mainstream publisher was interested in it. As the name suggests, it's about a facet of Geordie life that was once a mainstay of every community in the northeast - leek growing. It's such a powerful metaphor for everything Geordie it struck me as the ideal background for a novel. It's taken me about 20 years to write the bloody book, taking into account interruptions and delays. I returned to Newcastle and Bedlington about 10 years ago to complete my research and had lunch one day at The Wharton. I've lived in the U.S. for many years now and the barmaid picked up on my 'yank' accent and asked where I was from. I nearly said West Lea. The only person I still know from my Bedlington days is Elizabeth Tate, my neighbour at West Lea. After a 40 year interruption, during which we lived our lives, married, had a family etc., we caught up again about 10 years ago. It was Elizabeth and her husband Ian who patiently drove me around all the old places as part of my research - though she now lives near Hexham. Anyway, that's me and that's my story and now it's in a book. I thought it a story worth telling and I hope Bedlington people past and present will think so too. I've been back to the northeast many times over the years and l'll be back again in mid-April to early May to promote the book and talk about it and I expect I'll put in an appearance at Bedlington too - at the risk of being tarred and feathered. But all memories are valid, good and bad, and all have to be acknowledged. It'd be grand to hear from anybody who remembers me and the old days and to reconnect with one another as friends. Paul Mann.