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author
Bryn Jones
I was born in Hawarden, a village in North Wales, about six miles from Chester and four miles from the Wales/England border. At my birth, I had two brothers, one, Charlie, being twelve years old, t...view moreI was born in Hawarden, a village in North Wales, about six miles from Chester and four miles from the Wales/England border. At my birth, I had two brothers, one, Charlie, being twelve years old, the other, Peter, was fifteen years old. My mother, who had built a successful career, was not pleased at the prospect of a new baby interfering with her stable lifestyle.At the age of three, my mother got divorced and married a man who turned into a rather less than nurturing step-father, to say the least.I was brought up in the nearby village of Sandycroft. During my schooldays, I was known as Brynley Pelling ("Pelling" being my step-father's surname). I was told it was something to do with ration books, but looking back, I think it was some sort of tax dodge. I attended Hawarden Grammar School for period of two years, after which, it was decided that I was more suited to a technical education and was transferred to Deeside Secondary Modern School in Shotton.Meanwhile my home life deteriorated to my being a member of a perfectly normal dysfunctional family. All five of us lived in a two up-two down terraced house; my brothers and I sharing the same bedroom... and a bucket for late night inconveniences.As I grew older, my stepfather became more and more obnoxious until it reached the stage where I avoided being in the house when he was there. He was forever calling me a pest and a nuisance and that I was sure to end up in Borstal. I also have strange recollections and dreams that some rather weird stuff was going on when I was aged between four and seven.The school curriculum finished midway through the year, but I was not yet 15 until the following December, therefore, I wasn't allowed to leave school. I used to hang around doing odd jobs like making sure each class got their allotted quota of milk, and other time filling activities until I was fifteen. I eventually stopped going to school altogether before I was fifteen and used to frequent the billiard halls and juke-box cafes in Shotton where I was introduced to alcohol via the generosity of some of the older boys.Home life, by now, was unbearable. So, at the age of fifteen I applied to join the Royal Navy as a Junior Engineering Mechanic (my mother couldn't sign the forms quick enough) and was sent to HMS Ganges in Shotley, near Ipswich in Suffolk. It was a shore establishment in which they taught the boys how to survive bullying, brutality, and with a little education thrown in. I often thought home-life was better than what I had let myself in for.My first ship was HMS Belfast on which I completed a round the world tour; that was the last tour of duty the Belfast did.HMS Belfast is now a museum ship, permanently moored near Tower Bridge in London (if I haven't given enough clues as to my age already, then, that last paragraph ought to clinch it)After travelling around the globe by the time I was eighteen, By the age of twenty I had met, and married, my brother's baby-sitter. We have two sons, Paul and Graeme and after many ups and downs are still a united family.I left the Royal Navy at the age of thirty two as a Chief Petty officer. I then spent my time working in several small engineering factories waiting for 'something to turn up', I finally ended up spending the last seventeen years of my working life in Trefn Engineering, a firm which did sub-contract work for British Aerospace, situated in Llay, which is near WrexhamI have now settled down back in Hawarden and live about two hundred yards away from the house I was born in. I came a long way to get this far.About the novel, "Out of the Goldfish Bowl".Many years ago, my two lads and I watched a film called "War Games", In which some lads accidently break into a military establishment's war simulator via their own computer and inadvertently nearly cause world war three. After the film, I stood up and said "Right! I'm going to write a book on computers. This computer will be the one that governs the entire universe." My lads didn't laugh, which gave me a first glimmer of encouragement.Over the years, I've gradually added bits, deleted bits, left it gathering dust on a cyber shelf for years, then have a new interest in it, only to lay it to rest again a few days later. After my retirement, and a lot of encouragement from a published writer, I decided to do some serious work on it until I dared to let a professional editor have a look at it. What you see before you now in the novel "Out of the Goldfish Bowl" is the result of half a lifetime's work. Although, it would be more accurate to say that it is the result of an idea that has bounced around my head during the course of half a lifetime.view less