When I Were a Meerkat

Book excerpt: A spinoff of When I Were a Lad featuring sad and adorable images of meerkats as they do their best to escape grinding poverty and make a better life for themselves Already it has generated spin-offs--When I Were a School Lad and When I Were a Nipper. Here, instead of ragged trousered children scrabbling around the streets, getting put in perilous positions--the stock in trade of the previous books--the north of England is populated with a small number of meerkats. Meerkats get put to work down the mines, go to seaside for their holidays, and mess about on trams. The meerkat world and the human world easily intermingle in a reworking of many of the photos first used in When I Were a Lad.