It really is based on true events, even down to the couple next door who hated the chickens!
I enjoyed the book so much that I left a comment on the website about it. To my surprise and delight Tom Honeywood, author, emailed me back to say:
Although the book is a fiction many aspects are inspired by real events.
Certainly the chickens pre-date the roundabout by many years, and there were chickens kept at the gate keepers cottage.
There was an eccentric old lady in the old railway gatekeepers cottage who was placed there by the council because she wouldn't settle into an old peoples home. She was known to hiss at people who walked past!
Of course the building of the bypass over the railway happened in 1983.
There are two individuals living near the roundabout who have been strongly opposed to the chickens and have been (and still are) quite unpleasant to both them and the chicken man, who did indeed appear on an animal champions telly programme.
Locals did indeed stage protests against the council's plans to have the chickens removed.
The maltings was (unsurprisingly) home to a colony of rats and I remember well as a boy being shocked at the size of them.
The maltings caught fire in 1999 and has been a ruin ever since.
There was a house fairly close by that was nearly demolished by a lorry and very close to that a turkey lorry once overturned. There was also a potato lorry that overturned and the side of the roundabout was covered in a huge pile of potatos (I so regret not taking a photo of it).
So as you see there was already the outline of great story waiting to be told!
It also turns out that the profits from the book are going to the local hospital, so it's an even better reason to get a copy!
www.chickenroundabout.co.uk
I enjoyed the book so much that I left a comment on the website about it. To my surprise and delight Tom Honeywood, author, emailed me back to say:
Although the book is a fiction many aspects are inspired by real events.
Certainly the chickens pre-date the roundabout by many years, and there were chickens kept at the gate keepers cottage.
There was an eccentric old lady in the old railway gatekeepers cottage who was placed there by the council because she wouldn't settle into an old peoples home. She was known to hiss at people who walked past!
Of course the building of the bypass over the railway happened in 1983.
There are two individuals living near the roundabout who have been strongly opposed to the chickens and have been (and still are) quite unpleasant to both them and the chicken man, who did indeed appear on an animal champions telly programme.
Locals did indeed stage protests against the council's plans to have the chickens removed.
The maltings was (unsurprisingly) home to a colony of rats and I remember well as a boy being shocked at the size of them.
The maltings caught fire in 1999 and has been a ruin ever since.
There was a house fairly close by that was nearly demolished by a lorry and very close to that a turkey lorry once overturned. There was also a potato lorry that overturned and the side of the roundabout was covered in a huge pile of potatos (I so regret not taking a photo of it).
So as you see there was already the outline of great story waiting to be told!
It also turns out that the profits from the book are going to the local hospital, so it's an even better reason to get a copy!
www.chickenroundabout.co.uk
