Dave Joy

They say that when you start out in writing you should begin with what you know. Well, in accordance with that saying My Family and Other Scousers is a memoir. Set in the sixties, it tells the story of my childhood spent at Wellington Dairy, the family's horse-drawn milk business in Garston, Liverpool.

Wellington Dairy was something of a time capsule - though change galloped past, the dairy maintained a steady trot. It had not only survived two world wars, but also the coming of the national dairy companies, which had pushed many local dairies into extinction. Despite being overtaken by huge social and technological advances, the family members continued to run the business on traditional lines - while the world marvelled at the race into space, the Joys were still busy delivering milk in a horse-drawn van.

For me, the dairy was a magical place. The smells, sights and sounds of a working dairy were so different from everything else that was happening in the fab, swinging sixties. I've heard it said that boys in the fifties wanted to be their dads, whereas boys in the sixties wanted to be the opposite of their dads. Well, as a boy that did not apply to me; I definitely wanted to be just like my dad. He seemed to be at the heart of everything that was magical about Wellington Dairy.

It was in an attempt to capture that sense of magic and adventure that I decided not to write this memoir as a retrospective, as a fifty-something adult looking back at his childhood, but rather to tell the story through the eyes of that eager-to-grow-up, eleven-year-old boy. However, an inevitable consequence of that decision was the inclusion of my gang of mates - together with all their nose pickin', swearin', fartin', pizzin' and general mischief making. Bearing in mind that content, you can perhaps imagine my trepidation in asking someone as famous as Rita Tushingham if she would be kind enough to read my manuscript and write a foreword.

To my great relief and delight, Rita found the book to be filled with "such charm and innocence" and "a pleasure to read". I can only hope that you find it so too.

While I was waiting for my book to be published, I continued researching my family history and came to realise that although my book marked a very early chapter in my life, it also marked the final chapter of a way of life that stretched back over some 150 years - the way of life in question, was that of the Liverpool Cowkeeper.

I managed to source various articles and unpublished papers on the subject, but was disappointed to find that there was not a published book dealing with this quite unusual aspect of local and social history. I decided to try to rectify that situation. The result was my second book - 'Liverpool Cowkeepers'. In it, I have used my own family history to illustrate the story of the many families who migrated from the countryside to the city in the mid-1800s, in order to make a living by keeping cows in their back yards and selling fresh milk to the people of the burgeoning port that was Liverpool.

I am available to give illustrated talks (in and around northwest England) on the subject of: 'Liverpool Cowkeepers - A Family History'. Most of the groups I talk to welcome visitors, so if I'm appearing somewhere near you, do pop along - it would be lovely to meet you. For more information visit my website: www.davejoy-author.com