Launch of Terry Taylor's Book About Growing up in Blackpool

Terry Taylor’s novel ‘Kicking Around’ was published on 4 March 1999, which was set in “Southpool”, a thinly disguised version of Blackpool. He wrote it to explore his younger years, including his time at St Joseph’s College in Blackpool. He was born in Blackpool in 1950.

Kicking Around by Terry Taylor follows the life of the protagonist through childhood to adolescence, in a series of hilariously comical vignettes, centred around playgrounds, classrooms and soccer and rugby pitches. The action takes place in the city of Southpool, a soubriquet for Blackpool, a name modification in the style of Thomas Hardy. At St John of The Cross Primary School (St John Vianney’s), soccer is the preferred sport, while at St Michael’s (Joe’s), rugby is taught by Oliver Xavier O’Connell, known to the boys as Oxo, an amalgam character composed of features of several typical teachers at Joe’s. This is the author’s description of Oxo.

‘In youth probably built like a mountain, by middle years Oxo’s figure had suffered major landslides, resulting in a shape not unlike a gargantuan pear-drop. …….. On a rugby pitch, civilisation ceased at his hairline, above which nestled a full head of neatly coiffeured fleece greying to the perfect shade of leaden silver which can complement real looks and mature sophistication. Below Oxo’s scalp squatted two hundred and fifty pounds of raging moo-cow. He was a large flabby animal with a film-star hairdo.’

On a post for the St Joseph’s website he wrote:

‘I wrote a novel about growing up, mainly to get my younger years out of my system. Unsurprisingly, chunks of it were set in thinly disguised and only superficially morphed versions of my former schools, St Joe’s amongst them (experience transformed is the not-very-talented novelist’s mantra). Reading it again, I suppose my fictional rendition was rather kind to the old place.

My dear lost brother Bill (5B 1962-3, RIP 2008) would never hear a word said against it. This despite being a ‘B’ streamer, so unlike us relatively cosseted A-stream lads, subject to the full and solvent force of a St Joseph’s College education, circa 1960 – psychopathic behaviour, venomous sarcasm, religious zealotry and educational incompetence thrown in. But years later he told me he was paying a small fortune to secure for his son the sort of education we got buckshee. Mmm…’