Take a deep breath. Stop shitting yourself.
Wipe, flush, fire, clear. The wait is finally over. Neil Randall’s latest novel
Three Days with Adrianna is out TODAY!
From his padded cell in Belgrade’s Институт за ментално здравље, the sadly ailing author had this to say about the inspiration behind the book:
“There is an old saying about tatty,
rundown coastal towns – or, more specifically, about the dregs of humanity who
invariably end up there – ‘With the sea, they can go no further.’
“I never really understood what that meant until
I was much older. My childhood in a small coastal town was particularly idyllic
– endless summers on the beach, football and cricket down the park with my
friends, adventure, excitement, and new discoveries around every corner.
“Back then, the town was a popular tourist
destination. The beaches and caravan sites were packed, all day, every day from
June through to September – and sometimes beyond. The cafes, restaurants, and pubs
were mad busy. Queues formed halfway round the town for the fish and chip
shops. But more than that, there was a real sense of fun and laughter in the
air. I remember feeling very lucky to live in a town like this.
“But in what felt like a very short period,
everything changed. Maybe the fact that overseas travel – Spain, France, Greece
– became more affordable and accessible played a big part. Maybe the economic
downturn, how ordinary working people seemed to get squeezed harder and harder
each year, how everything got that little bit more expensive, but wages didn’t
reflect those rises in any way, shape, or form. Big businesses got greedier and
greedier.
“As a result, the same cafes, restaurants,
and pubs that had thrived in years gone by started to close down at an alarming
rate. There was a marked and steady decline in the number of holidaymakers who visited
the area. Jobs, even during the summer season, became hard to find. The town
was no longer such a nice place to live.
“Drink, drugs, a genuine lack of hope and
opportunity. Kids in gangs with vicious fighting dogs straining at their leashes
jostled with a cavalcade of pram-pushing single mums for high street
superiority. There was a dark, almost seedy underbelly to the town now. In a handful
of years, barely a generation, it had gone from being a tranquil holiday
destination (the gem of the Norfolk coast) to the armpit and arsehole of the
world combined – and whether that is an anatomical impossibility, I make no apologies
for conjuring such an image.
“Regardless, a lot of my stories - including Three Days with Adrianna - are set in
the town. For reasons not altogether clear to me, I’ve become a chronicler of
the slow, sad decline of the English seaside resort, and all the people that
have (and are) going down with it.”
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