As an author, I’m more prone than most to reminisce. Indeed, over the last decade of writing novels, I’ve reached into the past for inspiration more times than I care to recall. On my latest stroll down memory lane, it occurred to me that I’ve never given my hometown of Farnham any credit for its influence.
So, if you’ll pardon my indulgence, let me take you back to the village of Upper Hale in Farnham during the seventies and eighties. What was then, what is now, and how some of it found its way into my novels.
Let’s begin with Patel’s newsagent on Sandy Hill Estate: a place I fondly recall from my childhood, buying sweets for pennies and reading comics I couldn’t afford. In fact, I distinctly remember reading Whizzer & Chips and The Beano when I was maybe five or six, and later, BMX Action Bike and Commodore User. To their eternal credit, neither Mr nor Mrs Patel ever complained that I used their shop like a library. I suspect they were just glad that, unlike some of the kids on the estate, I chose not to shoplift my reading material.
I’m not sure when it closed, but when I moved off the estate in 1991, it was still going strong. A version of that newsagent turns up in the first few chapters of my debut novel, The ’86 Fix. On the way home from school in 1986, Craig Pelling stops at that newsagent for a can of Coke, and that single, innocuous decision was the catalyst for the unfulfilling life that followed. Craig’s newsagent sits in a town called Farndale. Farndale doesn’t exist, but Farnham does, and it lent its name to my fictional setting for The ’86 Fix.
I wrote The ’86 Fix in 2016 and, like plenty of first-time novelists, I wrote about the places I knew best. Then, in an act of low-budget espionage, I disguised it. Farnham became Farndale — the literary equivalent of sticking a false moustache on your home town and hoping nobody at the school reunion recognises it.
Six people, three bedrooms
Home meant Eton Place: a three-bed terrace on Sandy Hill, shared by my parents, my three brothers and me. At this moment, please spare a thought for my poor mother, having to share a small house with five males. The topic of the toilet seat position was never far from the dinner-table conversation.
Sandy Hill is, and was, a sprawling network of dead-end roads and alleyways, built in the early seventies. From memory, around six hundred families called it home. It would be a stretch to call it ironic, but several of the roads were named after authors: Swift Road after Jonathan Swift, Barrie Road after J.M. Barrie, and Toplady Place after Augustus Toplady. I couldn’t find any literary reference for the street where I lived, Eton Place, so I’m claiming it. In the highly unlikely event that the local council ever want to rename it Pearson Place, they have my blessing.
Over the long summers, the estate offered a boy two options. Option one: a common which abutted the estate and comprised 2,000+ acres of heathland, much of it designated as a Ministry of Defence training ground, with an Iron Age hillfort thrown in (Caesar’s Camp). The houses on the estate had tiny gardens, concrete yards really, so the common was our playground. Option two: the BMX, and a ride into Farnham town centre with my mates, which involved a total disregard for the Highway Code and occasional anti-social behaviour. Parental tracking in those days consisted of a mum shouting your name out of the back door at teatime.
Heath End
For Craig’s school, I pulled the same trick. I went to Heath End, so Craig went to Heathland Secondary.
Heath End, the village, also had Video City, long since closed, and it became the video shop in The ’86 Fix. Anyone who rented films in the eighties will remember the arrangement. Empty boxes on the shelves, the tapes kept behind the counter, and a 50p fine if you returned one without rewinding it.
Forty years on, I still haven’t finished with video shops. My 2026 novel, The Last Stop Video Shop, puts one at the centre of the story. Some writers find inspiration on a Greek island or windswept moors. Mine never left Heath End.
A Tale of Retail
I left Heath End Secondary in 1988 and stumbled into a retail job with Lord & Farmer, the footwear retailer (an amalgamation of John Farmer and Peter Lord). I spent a year or so in the Farnham branch in The Borough as a trainee manager. The shop still sells shoes, but it’s a Clarks now.
Guildford, 1989, no disguise
For reasons I’ve never understood, the company promoted me in 1989, and I transferred to the Guildford branch as assistant manager. I loved Guildford with its cobbled High Street, shiny shopping centre, and, back then, a wide choice of pubs, bars, and nightclubs (God, I had some nights in Cinderella’s). I also discovered Guildford Castle, which was only a minute’s walk from the High Street. When I came to write A Page in Your Diary three decades later, the castle became the heart of the book.
The tagline reads: “Sean Hardy is sent back to 1988 with only days to save the first love whose life he helped destroy.” Weightier stuff than Oxford brogues and slingbacks, granted.
You’ll notice Guildford never received a false moustache. By 2020, I’d either grown brave enough to use real places or too lazy to invent new ones. I’ll let you decide which.
Back where I started
I’ve moved around the local area over the years, though never far enough to justify switching football teams… as an Aldershot Town fan, a temptation I’ve resisted for decades. In 2021, I moved back to Farnham.
Some of the Farndale map has gone. Video City closed years ago, and many of my childhood haunts are no more. But beyond the retailers and the one-way system, the single biggest change is the volume of traffic. Some days, I wish I still had my BMX as it’d be a lot bloody quicker riding into town than driving.
The common, I’m pleased to say, has barely changed. It remains the one consistent link to my childhood, and every now and then I’ll take a walk up to Caesar’s Camp and ponder the meaning of life. The view is always welcome; the pondering sometimes isn’t.
The moustache comes off
So, ten years after The ’86 Fix, let’s make it official. Farndale is Farnham. Heathland is Heath End. Craig’s video shop is Video City, and the newsagent where he buys the can of Coke that sets everything in motion is Patel’s, on the estate where six of us shared three bedrooms, and nobody complained. Much.
If you’d like to see my home town in disguise, start with The ’86 Fix. If you’d prefer Guildford with its face showing, try A Page in Your Diary. And if you fancy a look at the rest, the where to start guide will point you in the right direction.
Either way, allow extra time for the traffic.
Questions readers ask about Farndale
Is Farndale a real place?
No. Farndale is the fictional town in The ’86 Fix and Beyond Broadhall. Keith A Pearson based it on Farnham, Surrey, where he was born and still lives, borrowing real places from the town, including Patel’s newsagent on the Sandy Hill estate and the Video City shop in Heath End.
Where is The ’86 Fix set?
The ’86 Fix is set in Farndale, a fictional version of Farnham in Surrey. Craig Pelling attends Heathland Secondary School, named after Heath End School, which Keith A Pearson attended until 1988. The sequel, Beyond Broadhall, returns to the same town.
Which Keith A Pearson novel is set in Guildford?
A Page in Your Diary, published in 2020, is set in Guildford in 1988, and Guildford Castle sits at the centre of the story. Keith A Pearson worked in Guildford in the late 1980s as a trainee manager for the footwear retailer Lord & Farmer.
Where did Keith A Pearson grow up?
Keith A Pearson grew up on the Sandy Hill estate in Farnham, Surrey, in a three-bed terrace in Eton Place with his parents and three brothers. He attended Heath End School, left in 1988, and moved back to Farnham in 2021 after living elsewhere in the local area.
Which authors come from Farnham?
More than you’d expect for a town of forty thousand. William Cobbett, the radical journalist behind Rural Rides, was born at the Jolly Farmer in 1763; the pub now carries his name. Jonathan Swift spent most of a decade at Moor Park as secretary to Sir William Temple and wrote A Tale of a Tub there. George Sturt ran the family wheelwright’s shop in East Street and turned the experience into The Wheelwright’s Shop. J.M. Barrie dreamed up Peter Pan at Black Lake Cottage in Tilford, a couple of miles out of town. And Keith A Pearson grew up on the Sandy Hill estate and set The ’86 Fix in a thinly disguised Farnham called Farndale.