THE STATION MASTER
......explores our responses to the ongoing refugee crisis. Set in contemporary Bulgaria, it traces the personal journeys of railwayman Nikolay Georgiev and young Syrian refugee Sami Farzat and the extraordinary advenure they embark on together.
UPDATE SEPTEMBER 2024:
Inspired by a screenwriting retreat held at the wonderful Le Verger centre in the summer of 2023 and expertly led by Rick Harvey, I began an adaptation of the novel for the big screen.
It's a challenging new direction for me but an exciting one.
Watch this space...
Meanwhile read on for an account of our trip to Bulgaria in spring 2016 - an astonishing seven years ago now! I'm very grateful to my friend Carole Ellison who was the driver for our adventure. Sadly my meeting with Dimiter Georgiev of Neophron BIrd Tours hasn't yet materialised into an autumn visit to see the migration of raptors and other big birds: I blame the Covid pandemic although the escalation of Parkinson's also has something to do with it. However, this time last year I made it to Seville for a short break and in the autumn I managed trains to Landroanec in Brittany so who knows what might be possible in the future?
I'm indebted to Marion Urch of Adventures in Fiction for her exhausitve and encouraging appraisal of the novel and also to author Chris Bailey, whose book 'Railways of Bulgaria' I came upon online. As well as parting with one of his few remaining copies of the book, now sadly out of print, Chris proved tireless in reading and providing feedback on early drafts, patiently correcting my mistakes - turns out he's an expert in all things Bulgarian as well as its rail networks - and coming up with creative solutions to problems in the narrative. I'm beginning to feel that every writer needs a Chris Bailey just an email away!
I'm grateful to early champions of The Station Master, poets Kaddy Benyon and Clare Crossman (very sadly Clare died in 2020) and to reader Denitsa Petkova for her encouragement. The novel was recently considered for publication by Isabelle Kenyon of Fly on the Wall Press, a social enterprise company and not for profit publisher based in Manchester so I was disappointed to receive that 'I am sorry...' email. Isabelle felt that the all-important connection with the main character Nikolay was missing. Any thoughts anyone? I'm feeling perhaps that the early stages, and especially Nikolay's own return journey to Elhovo, are a bit lumbering... Anyway, the drawing board awaits. Meanwhile a special mention is due to new friend and writer the indefatigible Carole Taylor who has read the book several times and is currently pursuing her vision of a film version!
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HARMANLI
 Photo: Veselin Malinov
ELHOVO Elhovo is situated in a river valley between two mountainous areas, 36 kilometres from the border crossing at Lesovo, at the end of the old branch line from Yambol 40 kilometres to the north. Passenger trains stopped running in 2005, and the line closed completely a few years later. I came across Veselin Malinov’s wonderfully atmospheric photos of the derelict station when I first began work on the novel so I’m familiar with the look of the place – or as familiar as you can be in a virtual world – but I’m excited to see the town and the remains of its railway station for real. 
Photo: Veselin Malinov
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'If you find the bridge with the large Soviet woman statue, the refugee camp is on the side of the road…’ It's May 2016 and, as the novel is beginning to take shape, I head for a two-week trip to Bulgaria for a first-hand taste of its setting. I’d read pretty much everything I could find about the country, its history and geography, its politics and its people but there’s no substitute for the real thing. As well as exploring the capital and Bulgaria’s second city, Plovdiv, my long-suffering driver delivers me safely to Harmanli Refugee Camp where I’ve arranged to meet Sadie and Gil, the two Cambridge women whose imagination, hard work and creativity help to transform the lives of traumatised children in its Play School. I spend an amazing morning listening to their stories and sitting with the children as they work and play. One small boy in an Arsenal shirt, one of four brothers, sits beside me copying the days of the week – in English – in careful capitals before donning a multi-coloured wig and heading for the mini-pool table. Another shows me a book which is helping him learn Welsh – he hopes to join his uncle in Wales. I come away excited, moved – and exhausted! Then we set off for the Black Sea coast, stopping on the way to visit Elhovo, where most of the action of The Station Master takes place... It’s bigger than I expected, a sprawl of a place whose centre is difficult to locate. It’s also the first place where we’ve been aware of foreign (that is, British) incursions: the group at the next table are loudly English, their bare limbs reddened by the sun, and we pass a bar which advertises English food. The railway proves more elusive: try asking for a disused station when you don’t know the language – No, no trains now. But the waiter in the café eventually points vaguely down the road opposite and he’s right. Six years since Veselin’s pictures were taken and the buildings have fallen further into disrepair. The weeds have grown, hiding the tracks almost completely in places, but it’s all still there. I feel that tremor of recognition which has been missing as we’ve walked through the town, although our return to the car through the back streets is more promising, and I realise that tourism or second home ownership is perhaps simply another form of migration to be considered. And then we’re off: another 100 miles to go before we’re finished travelling for the day… |
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THE REFUGEE CRISIS
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- Although thr crisis in Syria has dropped out of the spotlight, of course it hasn't gone away. 2022 sees the tenth anniversary of the UN-run Za'atari refugee camp in Jordan, the largest in the Middle East and one of the largest in the world – and home to some 80,000 Syrians. In May this year, a staggering 100 million people were forcibly displaced worldwide, an increase of more than 10 million on the end of 2021. Of these, more than 13 millon were displaced in Syria alone, whlst Ukraine, Afghanistan and Venezuela are among other parts ofthe world with their own refugee crises The UN refugee agency UNHCR reports spiralling hardship in Sudan, caused by a combination of the effects of the war in Ukraine, the aftermath of the Covid19 pandemic and adverse weather conditions due to climate change. Channel crossings in small boats continue to put migrants' lives at risk with 650+ making the crossing in 15 small boats in one 24-hour period in September. Cambridge's Convoy Refugee Action Group is back on the road with a range of fund-raising activities and convoys scheduled to respond to the situation in Calais, where in the region of 2,000 people are still camped in appalling conditions.
Photo: Veselin Malinov
The British response to the Russian invasion and bombardment of Ukraine in providing homes for Ukrainian refugees has been fairly positive; less so the government's bizarre proposal to fly asylum seekers to Rwanda for 'processiing'. Asylum seekers iin the UK are vulnerable to abuse and the fate of unaccompanied children remains a cause for particular concern.
The setting for THE STATION MASTER is chosen for its strategic position. Linked to an old Silk Road, Bulgaria emerged as one of the land routes which migrants from Africa and the Middle East followed as they headed for Western Europe. This ‘Via Balcanica’ is also a major migration route for soaring birds and raptors, the apparent effortlessness of their flight providing a striking contrast to the travails of their earthbound counterparts. Bulgaria’s years under the yoke of Soviet domination and its reputation for repression of Turkish and Roma minorities provide a historical context for its present-day attitudes to refugees whilst the rise and fall in the fortunes of its railway industry act as a mirror of the success and failure, hope and despair inherent in the human condition.
