When we launched our inaugural MEN Media real life writing competition we hoped we would find new talent but were amazed both by the level of the response and the quality of entries.

After reading through well over 500 carefully-crafted submissions we arrived at a shortlist of 15 which our judging panel, headed by Professor Brenda Cooper, deliberated over at length.

In the end it was former sign-writer and illustrator, David Holroyd of Swinton, whose work impressed the most. The amazing tale of a sea lion who comes to his keeper’s rescue after a row over a parking space is  a true story. “You couldn’t make it up!” said David, who hopes to get his first book published next year.

David Holroyd, 58, who is now a part time actor, decided to enter our competition after discovering some old newspaper cuttings in his loft about his time as a dolphin trainer in the 1970s, a job he got after seeing an advert in the MEN 40 years ago.

“I was absolutely gobsmacked to win,” said David. “The MEN paved the way to a new career for me in 1971 and I’m hoping, 40 years later, that it might give me the chance to pursue my ambitions as a writer.”

Prof Cooper said: “Deliver Us From Bobby! is an original piece of life writing. It uses the outlandish device of a mal-contented Californian sea lion called Bobby to tell a story of male aggression and territoriality, as played out in a small mining town.

It is told in the first person and demonstrates the level of violence potentially unleashed over a contested parking place. This has the ring of truth as two men, our self-critical narrator being one, are ready to fight to the death over the spot.

The teller is even more culpable, having erased Bobby from his consciousness, so intent is he on combat. What ensues is as hilarious as it is serious. This wonderful piece of life has a beautiful ending, which suggests that a capacity for loyalty and empathy could be the flip side of male aggression.”

Ramon Towers’ memories of growing up in the “mean streets” of Collyhurst in the 1940s are remarkably vivid.

Ramon, who now lives in Failsworth, has already written a book about his father’s experiences, before, during and after the First World War, called Little Apples Will Grow Again, with £3 from the sale of each book going to Help For Heroes.

Judge Ursula Hurley, senior lecturer in English and Creative Writing at Salford University, said: “We all enjoyed the way in which the writing recreates the past so vividly. The descriptions of grinding poverty combine movingly with the imaginative world of a seven-year-old boy, creating a bittersweet account of harsh conditions that still manages to resonate with hope, humour and love.

“All the judges commented upon the skilful structure, which is one of its most impressive features. From the first word, everything leads up to the ending.
Throughout all the vivid detail and childhood distractions, the author’s relationship with his father remains at the heart of this piece. The ending is very well judged: it is both unexpected and emotionally uplifting, and it stays with you long after you’ve finished reading.”

Mary Halliwell, 68, a retired secretary, has fond memories of growing up in Stockport. Now living in north Wales, where she worked as an assistant at Bangor Museum, Mary first started creative writing when she was seven.

Her compelling piece about being adopted in 1944, entitled Change at Crewe, touched the judges with its honesty and poignancy. Judge Peter Kalu, artistic director of Commword, a Manchester-based organisation set up to help aspiring writers in the north west get their work published, said: “This story deals with the issue of adoption sensitively and without mawkishness.

The social pressures on unmarried mothers in the 1940s are succinctly expressed and the particular dilemma of the pregnant girl in this story is convincing and moving.

The story is shot through with a quiet wisdom that makes the decisions each character makes – the birth mother, the adoptive parents, the biological father – understandable and realistically difficult.

The cloak and dagger operation whereby the baby is given by her biological mother to the adoptive parents via a clandestine meeting at Crewe railway station is deftly told, and the narrator’s wordly-wise acceptance of her personal history feels courageous. It is an uplifting story that will be enjoyed by all.”

Below are entries of the top three finalists.

WINNER - David Holroyd

Manchester Evening News 1971 – David lands ‘a dream of a job’.  My first taste of fame: I was the lucky lad chosen to represent a leading company working as a presenter of dolphin shows. Little did I realise that this opportunity would set me on the path of training the Perfect Pair  – Europe’s top performing dolphins. So it seems strange that the first of my many adventures took place, not with a dolphin, but instead with a huge Californian sea lion, named Bobby.

Bobby and I met by chance after he was stealthily whisked away from his zoo home, following a horrific attack on a member of the public. To avoid destruction, he was transported to the training pool where I was based; and with nothing more than two penguins, aptly named Smelly and Worse, to keep us company, he and I soon became good friends. However, his fearsome reputation always commanded respect.

One morning, I had to pick up a crate of herring from the fishmonger’s, and as the pool was situated near the local colliery, I set out early to dodge the morning traffic. Only one road led from the village to the pit: it ran up a steep hill, passing the pool about three quarters of the way up and, thirty minutes before a shift change, got very busy.

I didn’t fancy lugging heavy slabs of fish any great distance, so instead of parking in my usual place round the side of the pool, I found a more convenient spot on the main road, a short way from the front entrance. After dumping the fish in the sink to defrost, I began to clean up the usual overnight mess left by Smelly and Worse. Filling a bucket with hot water and bleach, I strode into the poolroom, calling cheerfully to Bobby: “Hello, lad, how you doing, my son?”

It was important to greet the big fellah properly: God knows, it must have been a bleak life for him locked up in this place 24 hours a day with nothing but two stinky penguins for company. Bobby, messing in the water, responded to my shout by lifting his massive head, snorting a plume of droplets into the air, and solemnly regarding me with those big, green eyes. A blink of acknowledgement, then he dived to continue his sub aqua meanderings.

I picked up the deck scrubber, walked to the far end of the poolroom, and started to scrub the floor. Smelly and Worse had been particularly productive overnight, leaving a fair number of stinky white pools for me to deal with. Suddenly, the main doors to the poolroom banged open, revealing a miner: early thirties, becapped and dressed in the usual drab garb of the village men.

“Hello, can I help you?” The doors hadn’t even swung shut behind him before he started yelling abuse of the most remarkable colour. A potent Shire accent delivered four-letter words with the efficiency of a machine gun, and as I stood there gaping, I managed to grasp something about... my car... HIS space... and get it shifted NOW!

It seemed the man was aggrieved because I’d parked in his  spot – no small offence in the village, where the ownership of a spot was of paramount importance. The village was so small and intimate that almost every square foot was deemed to belong to someone: be it a parking space, a lamp-post to lean on, a wall to sit on, or a stool in the pub. I’d transgressed seriously, and the man was determined to let me know it.

Like all the miners, he was short in stature, but wide and muscular in build, with a chest that looked solid enough to stop a small nuclear warhead. He rather put me in mind of a vertically-challenged Minotaur. His small, steely eyes flashed beneath his cap, the corners of his mouth twisting grimly downwards, then he pounded towards me across the tiled floor, fists clenched.

“Are yer listenin’ to mi, or what? I said, are yer listenin?” He was very, very angry. But he wasn’t the only one: the training pool was supposed to be a high security facility, strictly out of bounds to the public. It galled me no end that this guy had had the nerve to even breach the main entrance, never mind intrude as far as the poolroom.

“Ay, you – you *******! Get that ******* car out of my space!” Before my eyes, the red mist started to form, and I struggled to steady myself and speak calmly. “You shouldn’t be in here.” “Get that ******* car out of my space!”

“Who do you think you’re talking to?” I demanded, throwing the deck scrubber aside and stepping forward. “I said get that ******* car out of my space!” “Or what?” So enraged was I by his foul-mouthed assault, I could hardly breathe, never mind speak. Everything around me seemed to fade away as all my attention focused on this nasty, bullish man, and my overwhelming desire to pound him into the ground. I launched myself at him, determined, dangerous and blinded by anger.

He had no intention of backing off, either, and if we’d ever reached each other, I dread to think what might have happened. But we didn’t reach each other, because a terrifying thought suddenly popped into my mind and all but paralysed me. Bobby! Where’s Bobby? Distracted, I turned to see him: his massive, black head in the centre of the pool, immobile and watching.

Then, ever so slowly, it swivelled round so that his big green eyes locked onto mine. For the oddest moment, it seemed as though I were looking in a mirror; then I felt all my aggression seeping away, and saw it – actually saw it – filling up in those big green eyes. Bobby’s head snapped back round to look at the man; then he dived. There was nothing left in me now but panic, blind panic. “Run!” I screamed. “The sea lion! Run!”

The man froze in bewilderment, sensing my terror. “What? What do you mean?” “Just get out! The sea lion!” My voice had deteriorated into a shriek. He stood there, jaw dropping foolishly, then whimpered, “Why, does it bite?” By this time, the torpedo which was Bobby had almost reached the deck, a plume of water in its wake.

“Go, go!” I screamed; but the man was already gone, a pair of swinging doors the only evidence that he’d ever been there. Bobby shot from the water like a ball launched in a pinball game, a loud, hoarse bark reverberating off the walls. He hit the tiles with a dull thwack, then slid headlong through the swing doors, sending them crashing off their hinges.

As he disappeared into the dark corridor, I grabbed the deck scrubber and chased after him. “No, Bobby, no... come back!” Down the narrow, winding corridor, he pursued his quarry, galloping clumsily and ineffectively like... well, like a sea lion out of water. By this time, the man had made it out of the building, down the steps and onto the road, and might have believed – mistakenly – that he’d reached safety; but the avenging Bobby motored on.

“Stop, Bobby! You can’t do this!” Still bellowing his ear-shattering war cry, he burst through the main entrance, slid down the steps, and galloped along the pavement, oblivious to the crawling traffic and gaping drivers. But he managed only five or six yards before his rampaging pursuit slowed to a half-hearted slither. His prey had escaped, and Bobby just wasn’t built for manoeuvring along pavements. He flopped to a stop, then lifted his head to regard me apologetically. Sorry, Dave; he got away.

By this time, the traffic had come to a complete halt as the men intended for the early shift stopped to watch. How could this be happening in a tiny, unrecognised backwater like this? A sea lion? Most of them had never seen a sea lion, except in pictures. But this? A sea lion on a road in the middle of the village?

Bobby ignored them. He was dejected, exhausted. I blinked at him kindly, as he had so often blinked at me, then gently manoeuvred him round with the deck scrubber. “Come on, Bobby. We showed him. Now let’s go home.” Bobby sighed heavily, then began the laborious journey back to the pool, hauling himself up the steps and through the entrance, still maintaining an audience of open-mouthed motorists.
As for the aggressive miner, we never saw him again.

RUNNER UP - Ramon Towers

I Don’t think I realised it at the time, but looking back, they must have been pretty mean streets that I grew up on. Yes, I know it’s a cliche but they didn’t call it ‘the bowery’ for nothing, or if you saw a cat with a tail in the district it was a tourist! In Collyhurst we thought everyone in the land had patches on their trousers, bugs in their bods and had to wash at the sink.

We boys never talked about our living conditions, we just didn’t seem to have time for such mundane things. We were in too much of a hurry enjoying life, afraid of missing something on a madcap rush of discovery, dare and a fascination for the macabre. One day while catching tiddlers at a gravel pit, I saw an older boy stick a reed up a frog’s bottom and blow it up like the Michelin tyre advert. I thought that was cruel.

Nine people and a cat lived in our house. I was the youngest. We only had two bedrooms. My mother and four sisters slept in two small beds in the front while my two brothers, Richard and James, plus me, slept in one double bed in the backroom. Oh, I nearly forgot – there was this huge, serious man who slept with us sometimes. He would be in our bed in the morning, but not every morning. He usually spoke in grunts and always seemed to be in a foul mood.

To get us up he would poke each of us and simply grunt ‘up’. No one dared hesitate or plead for five more minutes. One look from him could freeze the blood in your veins. His roar could have awakened the dead. I, not only me, we were all afraid of him. However, I felt comforted in the knowledge that I never saw much of him; he was never there when I got home from school in the evening and that suited me fine.

Talking about school, one morning as James and I were hurrying to the junction of a busy road we found our cat, Joe, dead in the roadway, its poor ginger and white fur, normally immaculately clean, was dirty where it obviously had been hit by some vehicle. I was fond of Joe and it shocked me to see him like this. I had never seen death in real life before. Yes, I’d seen people being shot and struck with spears and arrows at the pictures, but everybody knew it wasn’t for real. This wasn’t the flicks, this was Joe and he wouldn’t be coming home again.

James nudged me: “Come on, we’re going to be late.” “No,” I said, shaking my head. “I’m going to tell mam.” I walked numbly back the way I’d just come. I entered by the back yard, a key not being necessary, just a lift of a door latch. There was no sign of my mam. I climbed the 11 uncarpeted stairs to the bedrooms thinking she perhaps was making the beds.

The rooms were empty except for a huge Egyptian mummy with its head covered in our bed. My legs turned to jelly. Two dead bodies in one morning? My imagination began to whirl and I was ready to bolt for the stairs then I noticed the corpse’s chest rising and falling. The double bed took up most of the space in the bedroom, leaving only a couple of feet on each side.

I had to tell someone of Joe’s death so I crept up one side and gingerly patted the mummy’s shoulder. There was a sudden movement and one red eye glared at me full of menace. This sudden movement made me jump back into the wall. “Whatdoyouwant?” snapped the horror. “Our cat has been killed,” I whimpered. “So what?” snapped the ogre, the eye vanishing under the sheet.

I just stared at him, and then slowly backed away. I couldn’t believe his indifference. I despised him. Like an automaton, I recommenced my journey to school, not caring how late it was, conscious only that I would have to pass poor Joe in the gutter. At school I was shouted at by the teacher for being late. I think she thought I was making the story up about Joe, but my friends believed me. they understood.

Lads of my age may argue and fall out from time to time but agree totally on some things, one of them being that adults are odd. What adults say doesn’t make sense. For example, they say things like ‘I’ll have your guts for garters’, or they threaten beatings to within one inch of your life. Adults make you go to bed in the evening when you are wide awake, then wake you in the morning when you’re dead tired.

At home, the approach of autumn and the colder weather was welcomed. It meant that the bed bugs would soon be in hibernation, allowing the family to get a few months of proper sleep. Sometimes, if I was lucky, I managed to go to the pictures. We boys liked Tarzan and the horror films best. Plenty of murders and vampires.

It didn’t dawn on us at the time that we had our own countless bloodsuckers in the bedrooms at home. We loved being frightened spit-less, eyes as big as saucers but too fascinated to be able to tear them away from the big screen. The walk home after the film was done through the middle of the street to avoid the dark sinister doorways either side.

When it became too dark to play ‘tiggy’ we told ghost stories at the end of the street and delighted in relating gruesome details until one of our gang imagined seeing a huge Frankenstein-like figure stumbling towards us under the nearby street lamps. A sudden shriek of ‘look out’ stampeded us home.

Talk of ghosts and Dracula made me become suspicious of the man in our house. after all, Dracula never came out in the daytime, neither did he. Dracula had big red eyes, so did the man. Dracula didn’t need to eat. Come to think of it, I’d never seen the ogre at the dinner table either. The more I thought about it the more concerned I became, but I didn’t let on. I kept the worries to myself.

Now it was common knowledge that garlic is a protection against vampires but the nearest thing I could find in the kitchen was a jar of pickled onions. So, that night, before going to bed I put one in the pocket of my nightshirt. Over the coming days both my brothers queried the smell but the man didn’t seem to notice. he soon fell asleep, evidence that the vegetable was having its soporific effect.

In no time autumn had become winter and as I’d not noticed any puncture marks on my own or my brothers’ necks, my concern over the man receded, being replaced by more pleasant thoughts of Christmas. Christmas, that magical time when everywhere is festooned with decorations, Christmas trees, holly, presents, everyone in good humour, plenty to eat, a gorging time. Christmas couldn’t come quickly enough.

On the eve of the big day my mother let James and I take a night light to bed with us. a night light was a small, squat candle which burned for about two hours in a saucer of water. Despite my excitement, the flame of the candle made my eyes heavy and an hour later I fell asleep. I was awakened in the early hours of Christmas morning by voices. The man was there and my two brothers were getting dressed. I could hear my mother’s voice and the squeals of delight from my sisters below stairs.

I started to get dressed. “Not you,” said the man. “You’ll have to get back into bed to keep me warm.” I knew better than to argue. I did as I was told but positioned myself on the very edge of the big mattress, hoping as little as possible of my body warmth would convect to him. It was my only weapon.
I was bitterly disappointed and frustrated at being denied the one occasion in the year when everyone was euphoric.

I lay there wishing I was in Bethlehem or some other land. then, after perhaps half an hour, the man said in a quiet, rather tired, voice, “Alright then, go downstairs if you want to.” I was out of the bed and onto the icy cold oilcloth in an instant. I stood looking at the prone form in the bed. I was seven years old and a strange uncomfortable feeling came over me, a feeling I’d never felt towards him before.

I suddenly felt sorry for the man and didn’t want to leave him alone in that cold dark bedroom while everyone was downstairs enjoying themselves. I did go downstairs and join in the merrymaking with the rest of my family, but looking back, I know now that was when I began to love my father, the nightshift worker.

THIRD PLACE - Mary Halliwell

Maybe it was the incessant crying. Maybe it was the startling mop of carroty red hair. Or maybe I just looked too much like my father. Whatever the reason, when I was 10 weeks old my mother had me adopted. Much later, I was told that my father was an American soldier. This simple fact immediately conjured up in my girlish imagination a Madam Butterfly scenario, all cherry blossom and One Fine Day and death before dishonour; but the truth was a little more mundane, a little more sordid.

The Americans joined combat fairly late in World War II. Some of them still believe that we couldn’t have coped without them. American troops were stationed in Britain, to the disgust of many British lads, who resented their wealth and their arrogance. “Over-paid, over-sexed and over here” was the popular description of our gallant allies.

As well as charm and confidence they had generous supplies of all kinds of commodities which had become impossible luxuries in ration-book Britain. It appears that my mother, a Stockport girl, fell under the spell of the swagger and the cheap stockings and had a whirlwind romance with one Sergeant Joe.

They must have had lots of fun, jitterbugging on a Saturday night, dodging the blackout to see a film at the Davenport or the Wellington, or maybe just having a drink at the local pub. It was when my mother told Joe the glad tidings of a baby on the way that the fun abruptly stopped. At that point Joe suddenly remembered he had a wife back home in the USA.

My irate grandparents took their pregnant daughter to the army camp and confronted Joe’s commanding officer, but were met with a laugh and a shrug. Joe had already been transferred elsewhere and no further information could, or would, be given. What was to be done? In 1943 the world was a cold place for an unmarried mother. Bombs might be falling but moral standards had to be upheld. Any woman having a child out of wedlock was committing a social misdemeanour. She would be avoided, gossiped about – and, of course, it was all her own fault.

There were practical problems too: no state benefit or council flats for single mothers then. Without financial support from family or the child’s father it could be tough going. Some families braved the disgrace, fronted it out and supported their daughter, passing it off as the grandmother’s own child. (The child might never learn that his “big sister” was really his mother.) For my mother’s family, however, it was evidently unthinkable that an illegitimate grandchild could be welcomed into their home. Whatever would the neighbours say?

Adoption was the only solution, if adoptive parents could be found. This was wartime, after all, and life was already hard enough for most families. In the end, a deal was brokered by the family doctor. He knew of a childless couple, patients of his, who were desperate for a baby. They were both 40, the same age as my biological grandmother, and they lived nearby.

It wouldn’t happen nowadays, of course. A team of social workers would interfere and they’d be disqualified as too old and too local. But a private meeting was set up between the two families, they interviewed each other, and an arrangement was made. And that is how my lovely Mum and Dad came into my life and I into theirs.

Clearly, my mother would have to leave the area for a while, and so she was sent to her aunt’s house in Bristol. What a long and anxious journey that must have been, and what a strange pregnancy. Meanwhile, two Stockport couples waited, one longing to hold a baby, the other longing to be rid of it.

I was born in my great-aunt’s house during an air-raid. It was my great-aunt who registered my birth, with the chilling phrase “father unknown”. This inexplicable untruth had two unfortunate effects: it let Joe off the hook and at the same time created the impression that her niece was a promiscuous tart who had no idea which of her lovers ought to be named. Great-aunt seems to have been a kindly soul, though: she made me a dress.

Weeks passed, during which time my mother fed, bathed, dressed and even photographed me. Then she and I returned to Stockport. Mum and Dad took the train from Stockport to Crewe to meet the north-bound train from Bristol. I can imagine Dad, tall and dignified in the trilby he always wore. Mum, trying to control her excitement, would be neat and ladylike in hat, gloves and handbag, and the winter coat which would have to last her for a few more years yet. As the second-eldest of a large family, Mum knew a thing or two about make-do-and-mend.

Having helped to bring up her younger brother and sisters, and seen them all marry and have children, she must now have almost given up hope of having a child of her own. Now, she and Dad had finished furnishing the little front bedroom as a nursery and were on their way to collect its occupant. I find it more difficult to imagine the mother and daughter who boarded the train at Bristol.

“The baby” is no longer an abstract but a person – me. My mother, back in normal clothes, must have been looking forward to a return to a normal life, as the green countryside slipped past and wisps of steam floated in the air. But surely there must have been many other thoughts to fill her mind as well. Did she sit quietly in a corner of the carriage, gazing out of a soot-flecked window? I, in my smart new dress, probably slept for most of the journey.

The cloak-and-dagger business was concluded when I was handed over at Crewe Station. Which platform was it? Maybe it was in one of the waiting rooms, or the ladies toilets – did they have baby-changing rooms in those days? Crewe is a busy and not very attractive railway junction, a place where paths cross briefly, lines merge and diverge, where mundane journeys start and end and sometimes little dramas are played out. Travelling through Crewe always makes me smile.

In January 1944 I appeared before Stockport Juvenile Court and was formally adopted. It’s an odd thing, adoption. Even when, like me, you’ve had a happy childhood with great parents, there is always some sense of dislocation, of rootlessness. And to know that you were unwanted by both “natural” parents, by both sets of grandparents, that not one of your blood relatives was willing to take you on – well, that must do something to your self-esteem.

Nowadays, I watch “Who Do You Think You Are”? with great interest and a little envy, for I have only a shadowy history. There are strangers on both sides of the Atlantic who are close relatives of mine. If we passed each other in the street – or on a railway station, there would be no recognition. When I was small, Mum often took me shopping on Stockport market.

Occasionally we would bump into a plump middle-aged woman who would exchange polite greetings with Mum. I didn’t know then that she was my grandmother. But by then I’d acquired a lovely Gran whom I adored. I’ll probably never know where I got my love of music and animals, my interest in languages or that carroty hair.

So – who do I think I am? Well, I’m just me and I’m content with that. The nature-versus-nurture debate continues, but I think it’s pretty certain that I am who I am because, all those year ago, I changed at Crewe.

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