From an early age growing up in South Lancashire, I was always aware of the old saying about work, “They could write a book about this place. It would be a best seller”. It was certainly true of the BICC factory at Prescot whose gates I first walked through in 1957. The initials stood for British Insulated Callenders Cables but they could just as easily have stood for the Biggest Individual Collection of Comedians. When I worked there so did seventeen thousand others, but today all traces of its existence have gone. However what remains with me are many good memories of my old work mates and what was once made and done there.

In 1988 I started work in the drawing office of the Central Electricity Generating Board at Harrogate in North Yorkshire. One lunch time, a fellow draughtsman was talking about the Leeds firm Greenwood and Batley where he used to work and he had us all in stitches. As I listened to him, I realised that I could write a novel about many of the places that I had worked at or knew about. By the end of that day I had worked out where and when the novel would be set, some of themain characters, the title and had even written the first page!

I spent the next eight years writing what I first called “Tales of a Northern Draughtsman”. It has a background of romance, rock ‘n’ roll and rugby league and was set during the winter of 1962/63, one of the worst in living memory. I only wrote when I felt like it, often after something had happened at work that day or after a colleague had told me something about his or her life and times. After two years I found a publisher, who changed the title to ‘One Winter’ and since then I have gone on to write three more novels, with the first having now sold over 5,000 copies and am thinking about what will be the next one.

As a draughtsman it was always essential for me to make sure that my drawings were accurate and easy to understand by those who worked on the shop floor or out on site. As a writer of fiction, it is just as important for me to make sure that my material seems realistic and authentic to the reader and that any events in real life that I refer to are true.

I am always keen to get feedback from my readers and particularly from those I have enjoyed working with in the past. You can contact me at wgeofflee@hotmail.com but try and not be too rude.