About Me
My Journey
Nowadays, everyone is on ‘a journey’ and we are not talking about going the corner shop or the pub. My writing ‘journey’ is that I have always enjoyed doing-a-bit. At secondary school, my favourite teacher was Mr Cryer, who taught English. At our school, he was the only teacher to wear jeans - crease ironed down the front – and he brought protest records into the classroom. From memory, Mr Cryer did not bother with boring stuff like punctuation. As you may have guessed. Instead, he encouraged people to exercise their creativity and many a time I imagined myself as a cloud.
At Bradford University, I met Carl Grinter and we put together our own magazine (Pigeon Toed Orange Peel). I went on to write for the university magazine (The Fleece) under the editorship of Paul Buck. Paul also encouraged creativity and I reviewed bands plus theatrical productions as Lee Du Bois II. The pretentious name borrowed from John Cooper Clarke. When I moved to Leeds, I continued reviewing events, writing for Jay Rayner at Leeds Student and Tony Woolmer at Leeds Other Paper. Since then, I have had many a letter published in the newspapers that I read (The Yorkshire Evening Post and The Guardian), masquerading as Lee Ingham.
We All Have a Book in Us
It is alleged that everyone has a book in them. In 2017, I started writing mine, after I had to stop playing football as a result of a ‘career-threatening’ injury running The London Marathon. I decided that if I cannot play football (no quips please) then I would write about football. So at 9pm on Monday nights, instead of playing football, I sat at the computer and wrote about football. I also attempted to answer whether football still belongs to us?’ In March 2020, as part of Leeds Lit Fest, ‘Ours: Football’ was officially launched. To a very generous audience of friends and some people I had not met before. People seemed to enjoy themselves.
My Journey Continues
I am now writing four books. ‘Ours: The Pub’; ‘Ours: England’; ‘Ours: Life’ (for my kids) and a second edition of ‘Ours: Football’ (to coincide with the re-start of football). As you may have noticed, there is a theme. As a socialist, I believe that things are ‘ours’. In that ultimately, they belong to ‘us’. I also believe that with ownership, comes rights and responsibilities.
I have also started to write blogs for this website. Encouraged by my Marketing Department (Brett Jacob) at the excellent Present Works. The first blog, ‘So Why Ours?’, provides further background to my ‘journey’.
Lee Du Bois III