In 1990, with a bestselling book behind him, and spurred on by a marriage to the writer Aileen Armitage, Deric Longden took one of the most momentous decisions of his life and moved to a foreign country. Huddersfield, in Yorkshire, with its distinctive manners and customs and its wealth of remarkable characters, would surely provide him with all the material he needed for the book he was planning, one of the all-time classic of travel literature. But two years later, when he sat down to write it, somehow the major events of everyday life kept intruding: the demands of a houseful of cats, the need to get a gas cooker repaired, the problem of opening a milk carton, the memories stirred to a life by sorting through old clothes in the wardrobe.
Still, ‘I’m a Stranger Here Myself’ is a travel book of a kind, one in which there is no telling where the wandering mind might get to next, where the most hilarious adventures can happen between the kitchen and the bathroom, and where a morning’s shopping can provide enough anecdotes to last a lifetime. Once again Deric Longden demonstrates his genius for taking the most ordinary materials of life and transforming them with inspired but gentle humour.
Still, ‘I’m a Stranger Here Myself’ is a travel book of a kind, one in which there is no telling where the wandering mind might get to next, where the most hilarious adventures can happen between the kitchen and the bathroom, and where a morning’s shopping can provide enough anecdotes to last a lifetime. Once again Deric Longden demonstrates his genius for taking the most ordinary materials of life and transforming them with inspired but gentle humour.
