We asked Edward Hogan, author of Daylight Saving, if he had any interesting stories for us; about his inspirations, early writing, that sort of thing. So ... he has written this great little insight into his very first published work, all the way back in 1991 ... give it a read below.
The first piece of writing I had published was an extract from a diary I wrote while on a football tour with Derby Boys, in Germany. I was eleven. The piece appeared in that prestigious literary journal, the ‘Derby Schools Football Association Handbook 1991-92’. I write quite dark books, these days, but the final sentence of that published diary read simply, ‘Hurray!’
To play for Derby Boys was as good as it got. The players were selected from the schools in the city boundaries after rigorous trials, and scouts from all the big clubs came to watch the games. My school had just sneaked into the catchment area; it was a suburban school, really. My status as a ‘villager’ was pretty obvious to the tough city kids. I dressed differently and spoke differently, when I plucked up the courage to speak at all.
There were other reasons why I didn’t quite fit in. I was a pretty average player, but I was also skinny, and uninterested in the physical side of the game. I wimped out of tackles. I never went up for headers. If you follow the history of English football, you’ll know that these were unforgivable sins. This was 1991: the centre-forwards were still big and the shorts were still small. Football was about ‘being a man’, but I used to cross my legs in the changing room, to keep warm.
You feel the distance from home when you go to Germany on a coach. It takes twenty-three hours. My room-mate and travel companion James, the only other ‘villager’, started vomiting as we entered Belgium. I began writing my diary almost immediately, in a WHSmith notebook with a picture of a lorry on the front. Reading the diary now, I can see that I chose to record mostly the happy and amusingly slaptsick parts of the trip, like when Gary Taylor smashed a football over the goal, and it hit the head of an old local man who was peeing in the bushes behind. But looking back, I can read between the lines, and see that I was quite scared when we first arrived in Osnabrück.
It was dark when we finally climbed down off the coach into the throng of waiting host families. As a youngster, I had a few major fears: firearms, facial hair, and giant dogs. The man with the moustache who nodded to us was one of the few Germans we met who didn’t speak English. He gestured to a massive wolfhound at his hip. ‘Lord,’ he said. The name of the dog.
James didn’t mind dogs, and his dad had a moustache. He just didn’t like travelling in motor vehicles. He looked queasy again as we got in the back of the man’s Land Rover. Lord kept an eye on us from the front seat. We were silent, because the driver was silent. After a few miles, I felt James trying to make eye contact. I thought he was getting nauseous, so I looked around for something he could be sick into, but that wasn’t his problem. He lifted the coat that lay between us on the backseat, to reveal a rifle. A real, actual gun. I was pretty sure, at that point, that I was going to die... We will post the rest of his Derby story tomorrow.
Daylight Saving is out now. Watch the trailer below or read a sample chapter.
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