Its a real book, honest

I come from a time when schools focussed on the basics of maths and English. Focussing on writing and calculating before getting to much else. It makes sense, of course, because that is the start you need for all the other subjects that school try and fill you up with.

In English lessons we started quite early writing stories and essays, things to get the imagination buzzing. One of my earliest stories was about flying into space, for reasons I don't actually recall the basis of the story was mainly about the snacks I would take for the trip. Maybe the teacher had told us to fill a certain amount of pages so I decided to fill the story with detail.

Another time we had a few days on the nearby Isle of white. We had a booklet to fill in with information of what we did at the hotel. Amazing stuff about having an orange squash in the hotel bar. I know this because I recently found the work, 40 years later.

In the next year we started reading books as a group and then writing reports on them. We wrote what we thought of the story, how well it was told and maybe gave a few quotes. If the book had any historical content we might also work on that as well. Then there was the school holiday where the homework was fairly straight forward, read a book of our choice and review it.

I had the perfect book, I thought, in mind. It had been a present, wasn't too long and seemed a good chance to review it. Over the intervening decades i forget the title, but as you will find that didn't really matter. The problem was that when I read it I couldn't get into the story. Even though I needed to read it I couldn't. So what to do, I know, make a book up.

All I needed was a story line, a title and a plot. It had to be a writer and title the teacher wouldn't know easily. This was many years before the internet so research wouldn't be easy, so I relied on trust. Therefore "cash for blood "was born. Where the title came from is also lost in time, a bit serious for an 11 year old as well.

I reviewed the non-existent book as we had done previous books. Write about the plot, how it was told and use quotes or excerpts from the book. This I did , double checking as I went that I hadn't contradicted myself anywhere. Reading the review through it all seemed to fit together and so it was fit for school.

I handed the work in, crossed my fingers and waited. The teacher checked the work and handed it back a few days later. There were no comments on my deception and in fact I was one of the group who were asked to read their reviews out. I made sure to sit down very quickly after in case there were any questions. With none appearing I decided I had got away with it.

Obviously with the internet I don't think you could repeat this little con any more, just typing a few words in a search bar would bring up the books name. I have always wanted the time and inclination to try and write a book . Maybe I should try turning my fake book into a real one , add a few hundred more pages. For the rest of school I don't recall inventing any further books and believe I actually read the ones I was given to read.

The strange thing in this tale is that within a few years I could read a decent book in a few days. If the time was there I could keep going. In fact on a never ending trip to the South of France I read the same book twice just to fill the time.