Author Charlie Hill tells Lorne Jackson how his peripatetic youth in Moseley inspired a novel.
For those who aspire to a career in banking, the law or accountancy, there is a regimented route to follow.
Hit the school text books. Hit the university library. Hit the jackpot in the working world by heading home with a plump pay-packet.
Forging a career as a professional novelist is supposed to be different.
Aspiring artists aren’t meant to march along a Roman road; they should stumble down a roaming road.
Regrettably, that’s rarely the case. Most graduate from a decent university – like the clock-punching professionals – then lead a commonplace existence of ambition bolstered by application.
Not Charlie Hill.
The Kings Heath novelist didn’t hit the text books, or a uni library.
He hit the gutter.
Okay, not quite the gutter. However, for many years, Hill was a man of no fixed abode. Drifting on a sea of floorboards.
Like Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire, he depended on the kindness of strangers.
“When I was younger, I had real problems with accommodation, to put it lightly,” he admits.
“I was living with my girlfriend, and that relationship went t**s up, so I was kicked out. I had literally nowhere to go. So I moved into an official squat with some other guys. It was just the three of us and a cold tap.”
He brushes a hand through a tangle of unruly curls, then recalls more of his tangled, unruly youth.
“There are ways of establishing a squat if you’re clued-up about these things. But there was no kind of organisation about ours. It was just more of a kind of ad hoc thing.
“It certainly wasn’t great, but it was the only place I had to go, as I was pretty hapless.
“I didn’t live in the squat long, but it was long enough. About six weeks.
“After that, there was a long period when I was of no fixed abode. I was just going from floor to floor.”
It was a tough time, but Hill has no interest in portraying himself as any sort of victim – even though it would undoubtedly be a crafty PR move and help promote his novel.
“My experience of being vulnerably housed, and of no fixed abode, was pretty grim. But it’s not remotely as grim as other people have it. I don’t want to play on that, and sell myself as the author who was homeless.”
The truth is that he doesn’t need to exploit his past to sell copies of his first novel, The Space Between Things, which has just been released.
The book has already garnered rave reviews from two of Birmingham’s most renowned novelists, Jonathan Coe and Jim Crace.
Coe is quoted on the front cover, proclaiming that The Space Between Things “packs a considerable punch”. Crace, meanwhile, says it’s “intelligent and witty... bursting with generous energy.”
The novel was inspired by Hill’s hand-to-mouth youth, which was largely spent in Birmingham’s bohemian hothouse, Moseley.
Though he was often in dire straights when it came to accommodation, Charlie still managed to hold down a variety of occupations after leaving school at 16 to work in the fish market.
He also became a committed follower of the 90s counterculture, taking an interest in radical politics and immersing himself in the burgeoning dance music scene.
Those rich and raucous experiences seep into the novel, which is about Arch, a less-than-gainfully-employed poet.
Arch meets, then falls in love with an enigmatic girl, Vee, at a Moseley party to celebrate the resignation of Margaret Thatcher.
Vee encourages her lover to become politically engaged, a challenge he accepts with relish.
However, it’s not just Vee’s nudging that turns Arch into a political animal.
The young poet’s head is also turned when he goes to a rave at Castlemorton. The gig in the book is based on real events. The Castlemorton Common Festival was a week long open-air party held in the Malvern Hills in 1992. Between 20,000 and 40, 000 people congregated, jiggling to dance music and imbibing illegal substances.
The party attracted a huge amount of media attention. Questions were asked in Parliament, which eventually led to a law making future raves illegal.
Hill wasn’t at the Castlemorton event; his mind was being expanded elsewhere.
However, he attended similar shindigs, though is keen to point out that the Arch in his book is not Charlie Hill.
“There are elements that are autobiographical, but all of the characters are composites, including the narrator.
“He isn’t really me. He’s me and lots of other people. I’ve drawn on my own experiences to a certain extent, but in some ways the protagonist is a lot more clueless than I am. Though in other ways, he’s a lot more grounded than I was at the time.”
The novel is slight in size, though it pops and fizzles with energy.
Hill’s prose is loaded with impertinent bounce and cocksure swagger. Jagged and jouncy, like a tennis ball ricocheting off corrugated iron.
This first-time author is 40, though there is still something of the teen about him.
It’s present in the body language, a slight awkwardness when meeting my eye. (Though, admittedly, I am interrogating him.)
Then there’s the skateboard loop-de-loops of his prose, which I enjoyed, though at times I felt they were the flourishes of a very young scribe, who had just stumbled upon the marvellous games you can play with the alphabet.
The scribblers who inspired him are from the teen scene, too. The misunderstood, marginalised mob. (By their own reckoning.)
Charles Bukowski is name-checked during our chat. (But of course.) Allen Ginsberg, too. Existentialism takes a bow, courtesy of Jean-Paul Sartre.
Hill vigorously defends his heroes against all the grizzle-bearded cynicism I can muster.
“There is a fundamental misreading of some of those icons,” he says. “Ginsberg and Sartre. Those people were very aware of what was going on in the world. And they were very keen to be politically active. Some people have forgotten about that. And I think, in a way, the people I write about in my book have that same sort of drive and commitment. It was certainly a big part of the Moseley world I was writing about.”
Ah, that Moseley milieu!
In The Space Between Things, Hill successfully gives life to Birmingham’s most bohemian borough. He portrays a lively scene, awash with dabblers, drinkers, semi-stoned thinkers and skint skinner-uppers.
One of the strengths of the book is the author manages to romanticise Moseley, while at the same time subtly satirising its exotic pretensions.
“The community and culture that I’ve written about deserve more than just having the piss ripped out of them. I didn’t want to turn them into some sort of bad joke,” he says. “So it’s true to say that I’ve kind of romanticised it. But, to be honest, I think that’s entirely understandable, because there definitely was a lot of creative energy around at that time.
“And the people I knew were putting a lot of thought into how best you should live your life. How you should go about channelling your creative energies.
“But, equally, that sort of lifestyle does only go so far. There were elements of that world that were a little bit self-indulgent, and hopefully I’ve been pretty honest about that, too.”
Hill clearly has a lot of affection for his yelp of a youth, which is why he wants to return to the 1990s in another book he’s planning, inspired by his time running a restaurant where rave was on the menu.
“This restaurant was in Hockley, and it was an off-shoot of the party scene,” he says.
“We opened it in the mid-nineties, just before Hockley became quite as fashionable as it is now. It was in an art gallery run by the Revolutionary Communist Party.
“However, my lot weren’t revolutionary Communists. We came from the more anarchist side of things, and the Communists just rented it out to us.
“Combat 18 used to come and daub things on the walls of the gallery, and it was all a bit kind of hairy.
“Meanwhile, we’d be running cafes at all-night raves.
“Then, at six in the morning, we’d be taking down all the lights and stuff that we’d been using for the all-nighters, and come back to Hockley, and go straight into running an ordinary restaurant service, where we would be doing nut roasts and playing a bit of Mozart, and having families come in.
“But occasionally there would be overlaps. We’d come back from all-nighters, and some of the party people would come back with us.
“And we’d bring back a sound system, and the sound system would be blaring. Then, before you know it, it’s not seven in the morning, anymore.
“It’s mid-day on a Sunday, and the same people who were there last week, for the nut roast and the Mozart, would turn up with grannie and their children.
“They would open the door and see people sitting in the restaurant, cross-legged, after dancing all night. And the techno would be banging out.
“The customers would be like, “This isn’t the same place! What’s going on here?!”
“That enterprise lasted a year, which was quite long, considering the lack of clarity of our business plan. Still, that time wasn’t put to waste.
“Hopefully it will be the inspiration for a really good story.”
* The Space Between Things By Charlie Hill is published by Indigo Dreams Publishing (£6.99)
