Yob: A Memoir of Mischief, Mayhem, and the Magnificent Austin Maxi

Picture this: three scrawny lads in 1980s working-class Britain, armed with a dodgy air rifle, a bottomless appetite for trouble, and a family car that sounded like it was auditioning for a horror film. That's me, Darren, and Andy? our chaotic trinity, turning a drafty Victorian house into a battlefield of hide-and-seek gone rogue and target practice that nearly started a family feud.

In Yob, I drag you kicking and screaming (mostly from laughter) through the grimy glory of our youth: dodging Mum's "taxation" raids on our newspaper-round pennies, wrestling the perpetually suicidal Austin Maxi back from the brink of roadside doom, and learning life's hard knocks via one accidental ricochet too many. It's a tale of frozen fingers chopping firewood to fend off the miserable winters, epic sibling squabbles over the last sliver of roast, and friendships forged in the fires of shared stupidity?like the time we thought a canal-side shooting range was a brilliant idea.

Wry, raw, and ridiculously funny, Yob isn't some sanitized nostalgia trip. It's a love letter to the unbreakable grit of family (even when they're taxing your soul), the lads who have your back (until they accidentally wing your mum), and an era when "resilience" meant duct-taping your dreams to a rustbucket and flooring it anyway. If you've ever cursed a clapped-out car, hidden from parental fury, or wondered how anyone survived the '80s without therapy, this one's for you. Buckle up?it's a bumpy, hilarious ride.

Owen Croft was forged in the relentless drizzle of Manchester's backstreets, where the Irwell murmurs secrets to the stone warehouses and the city's heartbeat thumps like a faulty piston. Born and raised amid the red-brick sprawl of the North, this unassuming bloke traded the roar of Friday night lock-ins for the hush of forgotten moors, where he could finally hear his own thoughts without the din of the world crashing in.

By day, Owen's a ghost in the machine?tinkering with words in a creaky attic studio overlooking the Pennines, far from the pixelated frenzy of social scrolls and siren calls. He's the sort who brews a pot of builder's tea strong enough to strip paint, cracks open a dog-eared Philip K. Dick or Raymond Chandler, and lets the pages pull him into alternate realities where Manchester's canals twist into wormholes or its cobbled alleys hide syndicate shadows. Writing, for him, is less a craft than a quiet rebellion: a way to wrestle the chaos of cyber-noir heists, gene-spliced grudges, and temporal double-crosses onto the page, all laced with that wry, rain-soaked Northern grit.

When he's not chasing plot twists through the ether, you'll find Owen hiking the wild fringes of the Peak District, notebook in hand, scribbling fragments inspired by the wind-whipped heather or a sudden squall. For Owen Croft, the best stories aren't told; they're unearthed, one sodden boot-print at a time. Escape with him. The world's mad enough as it is.