Oscar Sparrow

Oscar Sparrow was born in Winchester UK in 1949, apparently thanks to the American Marshal Aid programme to re-build Europe after the war. As the colour red leached its way out of the map of the British Empire, Oscar attended a die-hard Church school designed to create noble savages to serve what was left of the savage Nobles. The Eleven Plus exam revealed that he could not even count to eleven and he became a mechanic, labourer, truck driver, boxer and poet. He read Wordsworth and Ford Cortina manuals in a lorry cab near both Oxford and Cambridge universities. He married a kind forgiving woman who eventually forgave herself for that one big mistake. He has several wonderful children and hopes that one day they will all meet.

At the age of 25 he heard the music of Edith Piaf and learned to sing all her songs. A few years later he realised she was French and that he was an ugly swan not a beautiful duckling. The shock propelled him to London where he joined the Metropolitan Police. Car chases and riots followed but he did not take it personally. He spent his spare time touring the Art galleries, singing Piaf and learning Italian. Eventually The Authorities fell for the con and gave him a desk job in the Art department of Interpol London at Scotland Yard.

One day a few years later, the lure of the wild swept him away to the roads of Europe as road gipsy trucker. His love of fried battered fish eventually drew him back to England where he drove sewage tankers and set up a taxi business.

Throughout all this time he was a would be poet, short story writer and novelist. Always scribbling he sent waves of short stories to magazines and published poems via the National Poetry Foundation magazines.