The Author
Brian Cummings
Brian Cummings was born in the Hulme area of Manchester and brought up until the age of eleven in a ‘Play Street’ home devoid of electricity and unfit for purpose. Childhood was dismal and without recognisable joy. Although free from a (Woke.) system dictating academic standards, personal choice and adult issues of sexuality that interrupt natural growth to maturity; poverty was a source of shame and the seed of ambition. However, memories of the community and many people who demonstrated care, consideration and respect seemingly beyond the reach of current avaricious lifestyles left their mark indelibly, to be re-visited later in life.
Forced retirement at the age of seventy saw a move to France and a brief dalliance with Art and Crafts until COVID-19 incarcerated him alongside others to a life of isolation. The desire to write returned. Boredom created imaginative possibilities and interesting fictional stories, the reading of which left plenty to be desired. Online courses were found and followed with intense focus until those stories became pleasurable to read. ‘Percy’s Pawnshop’ began life as a short story in which efforts of humour were introduced… then it was a case of the more writing that took place, the better it became, opening a world of fantasy and fiction, previously denied by day-to-day pressures of a demanding life, to create a pathway to new adventures in twilight years.