Why I Wrote A Curious Chemistry. A Comic Rom-Com.

A Curious Chemistry book cover

Hello Book lovers, and welcome to my next "Why I wrote" blog entry...

Want a comic rom-com featuring leather bars, bikers, a dilapidated town, and eco-warriors? Look no further!

When people around the world think of England, they conjure up images of the Lake District with its glorious mountains, walking trails, Lake Windermere, and tea shops. Or Stratford-Upon-Avon with its beautiful half-timbered houses and Shakespeare’s legacy. Or Windsor Castle with its majestic grounds and the Queen in a carriage. Beautiful places to stir the senses and revitalise the mind.

The town I was born and grew up in is not one of those places.

One hundred years ago, it was filled with chemical factories belching black smoke, had dead trees, and workers suffering from terrible diseases. Even by the 1970s, factories and crumbling industry were everywhere. I remember playing beside a canal that was putrid yellow and smelt like a sulphur pit. The animal bone rendering factory had a particularly pungent odour. But not all smells were awful. The crisp factory emitted something into the atmosphere, which meant that when it was about to rain, you got a strong whiff of synthetic, smoky bacon flavours.

By the 1990s, most of the factories had disappeared, and the old sites had been landscaped over. But even then, there were problems. The golf course was closed forever when arsenic was discovered seeping out of the ground. The supermarket was expensive because millions of pounds had to be spent on decontaminating the car park. A nature trail was avoided by dog owners when their dogs’ paws became inexplicably sore.

People tried to fight against the tide. When a phosgene gas plant was proposed for the town, a petition was circulated door-to-door to try to stop it. This potential monstrosity raised alarm after the massive deaths in the Indian Bhopal disaster. But the petition was quietly dropped when it was discovered we already had a phosgene gas plant a few miles away, and we were all within its blast radius.

These memories of growing up may explain why I am today a committed environmentalist who believes in recycling, renewable energy, and cleaning up the plastic in our oceans. But with global warming looking inevitable, the crazy ethics of my hometown now seem set to go global.

I hope that when you read my novel, you will laugh at the fanciful ways of Grimes Chemicals and feel glad that this is merely a work of fiction. But I must point out that what’s inside this book is partly based on fact. Enjoy!

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