• Lancaster
Literature Festival
An annual festival of writing events plus community writing projects
throughout the year
• The
Spotlight Club
For details of upcoming events visit our events page
• Local Writers Details of locally-based writers and editors
WELCOME!
Welcome to our latest experiment here at Virtual-Lancaster.net.
Within this site you'll discover a marvellous trip back to Lancaster
of the past by author Bill Jervis, which we plan to
release in weekly segments over the coming year.
Although the story is set in Lancaster the family and most of the characters
within are entirely fictitious -- but this story does chart a way of
life largely lost and which many Lancastrians may recall with equal
horror and affection...
Clicking on the links below will open the chapter in a new window.
ABOUT THE WRITER
Bill Jervis was born in St. Thomas's Place, Lancaster in 1933 but his first
memories are of his home in Edward Street and then Bowland Drive. Schools attended:
St. Anne's, Edward Street; St.Mary's, on The Quay; Ryelands Junior School and
the Grammar School.
Bill Jervis on Heysham Head in 1953
Before leaving the area for National Service, he was employed briefly at Heysham
Towers Holiday Camp as a washer-upper and waiter, as a postman in Lancaster,
as a bus-conductor at Morecambe etc.
Most of his life after National Service and teacher-training, has been spent
in Norfolk, where he lives in retirement pursuing many hobbies and with a very
full social life.
Married, with three children, he and Nancy hope to celebrate their 50th wedding
anniversary, in 2004.
He is an artist who has painted consistently and written, mainly poetry, for
over 50 years and is at present engaged on a many-volumed autobiography, already
more than 2000 pages long, in which he is trying to celebrate the lives of
many friends who have touched his life along the way.
MORE STORIES... FACES AND PHASES Our weekly serial of old
Lancaster by Bill Jervis
SHORT STORIES •
The Devil's
Paradise by Jim Barton A
satirical, cruel but true, view of life in Lancaster in the 1980s... fond memories. • R.A.D.
Do Skerton Bus Stop by Mollie Baxter If only arts funding was
always this much fun! • Tea with
Oolin by Mollie Baxter Alien encounters over a cup of Earl
Grey, hot. • The Miracle
Worker by Charmian Coates Shenangians in a Blackpool pub have
unexpected results. •
Evacuees by Bill Jervis A schoolboys' pitched
battles on Padfields, Lancaster, in 1944 remembered. • Snapshots by
Bill Jervis A chance encounter brings back
memories of wartime Morecambe.
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WELCOME!
