Invitation from Kerry raises a cheer in Lewisham

IN THE winter of 1989, I was living in south-east London, in the not entirely lovely suburb of Lewisham.

It was a tough district that had escaped bombing in the Second World War, mainly (so it was said by some of the locals) because the Luftwaffe had looked down from their passing-by airplanes and assumed it had been bombed already.

For some years I had been trying to write, but it was not going well. Writing was like trying to juggle with mud. I would send out short stories to the literary magazines. They would come back in an unstoppable stream.