The whole suggests an inverted bowl that the characters the author describes are trying to crawl out of. They are stuck, for the most part, in dead-end jobs, dead-end lives. But in what could be described as cheerful stoicism, they embrace their fates. Even those who manage to escape are somehow tethered by the umbilical cord of remembrance; the tug of home; the familiar. Some of the tales are complementary. Characters in one appear in another. They may even travel to exotic places (Thailand) but still return.

A lot of the references are unfamiliar to me. I do not know what “Dubstep music” is. But I know these boys and girls, these men and women. They speak with somewhat of a thicker accent than mine — they are North Lancashire, I am South Lancashire — and use words larded with Americanisms and the latest telly-speak, which I do not always understand. But for the most part, I understand them. The dialect is familiar. They are my class, my background, my folk. I’ve worked with them, spoken to them on a daily basis, interacted on many levels.