Owen Carey Jones - My Yorkshire Weekend

Born in Belize (British Honduras at the time) and raised in Kenya, I came to Yorkshire as a teenager when my father got a job as director of development administration at Leeds University.

I arrived in the city for the first time on a cold, damp, grey day and was driven by my father from the railway station along Kirkstall Road, which in those days was lined with blackened stone buildings. As I looked around at my new surroundings, I thought to myself, why on earth have we come here?

As someone who loves the sea and isn’t really into walking, the Yorkshire countryside did little to alleviate my concerns. But something else did – Yorkshire people. The first one I remember meeting was Cecil, our gardener. I couldn’t understand a word he said for about a year, but I had no difficulty understanding his warmth and friendship which shone through the smoke rising from his Capstan full strength cigarettes.

Soon after arriving in Leeds, I went to Aireborough Grammar School in Guiseley to try for a second time to pass my A levels, and that’s where I met the most amazing 16-year-old Yorkshire girl, who captured my heart and became my lifelong companion.

My weekends are not usually desperately exciting. I’m self-employed so Saturday is just another working day. I usually go for a walk – my doctor says it’s good for me – up Yeadon High Street and round Yeadon Tarn for a natter with the ducks.

Sundays tend to follow a set routine as I’m a creature of habit. Church in the morning followed by a game of patience accompanied by a whisky and soda and a bowl of cheese and onion crisps. Next comes a traditional Sunday lunch with Yorkshire pudding if we have visitors or something less exotic if we’re on our own. In the afternoon, if we have no guests, I might write a little, or not depending on my mood, and then it’s off to South Parade Baptist Church in Headingley in the evening.

Despite not being a walker at heart, there is one place in Yorkshire where I can happily walk all day. I would dearly like to live and spend all my Yorkshire weekends at Runswick Bay. I shot a short film there a few years ago called Love is Forever about a couple living in a house on the beach.

If the Runswick Bay Sailing Club would sell me their clubhouse, which we used as one of the locations, I’d move there in an instant. What could be better than to step out of your front door onto the beach? That’s my idea of heaven. Owen Carey Jones’ new novel, Rough Cut, a crime fiction thriller about synthetic diamonds set mostly on the French Riviera, is available from Waterstones and online book sellers priced £7.99.

For more information, visit roughcut-thenovel.com

The print version of this article appeared in the February 2012  issue of Yorkshire Life 

We can deliver a copy direct to your door – order online here 

Members Comments

There are no comments for this article.

Add a Comment

Please log in to post a comment.