The Synopsis for Tollesbury Time Forever

Prologue:
A psychiatric nurse enters a house in Tollesbury with the police. The occupant has been reported missing. The walls of the house are covered in words from floor to ceiling. It is stated that the novel is a transcription of those words. The house belongs to Simon Gregory, a Beatles-obsessed alcoholic with a diagnosis of schizophrenia and a love of cricket. The psychiatric nurse states that Simon is, and always will be, his hero.

Part One:
Simon in a pub in Tollesbury listening to a tale told by one of the locals of a man known as the Child Killer who was rumoured to have murdered a young  boy long ago in one of the nearby fields. Drunk and despondent, Simon tries to drown himself in the Tollesbury Salt Marshes. He does not die however, but awakes believing he is no longer in 2008 but in Tollesbury in the year 1836.

Simon explores the village and meets Zachariah Leonard, a sinister beast of a man who intimates that he knows Simon. The following morning, Penny Shoraton, a local girl from the village approaches Simon and something about her resonates with him. Two men, introducing themselves as Weepy and Nardy claim to ‘pull all the strings’ and have a great interest in his welfare.

Encouraged by the paranoid Zachariah Leonard, Simon flees Tollesbury and discovers a nearby field. Under the guidance of a man known as The Walrus,  nine children then proceed to recount stories, recite poems, and sing songs to their one-man-audience. Each of these performances are lessons for Simon in the way he should lead his life. A sullen boy who is not part of the show, named WG, reminds Simon of the son he abandoned twenty four years ago. Simon tries to befriend WG. As he feels he is getting somewhere, WG batters one of the young children to death. Simon, as a way of making amends for abandoning his own son, takes responsibility for the murder and is denounced as The Child Killer. He is then hanged. As he is hung, all the children sing:

‘Tollesbury time
Nothing is real
And nothing to get hung about
Tollesbury time
Forever.’

Part Two:
The second part of the novel begins in a psychiatric hospital in 2008. It is made clear that Simon Gregory is an inpatient who has tried to hang himself following a period of psychosis and that the first part of the novel is Simon’s interpretation of reality. Penny Shoraton is a staff nurse on the ward. Weepy and Nardy are psychiatrists. Zachariah Leonard is a representation of Simon’s mental illness.

Simon is eventually released from hospital and returns home to Tollesbury. He then proceeds to put into practice the lessons he has learned from the show put on by the children in the field. These lessons each have headings that spell out the acronym FRUGALITY:

Forgive everybody everything
Recognise beauty wherever it be
Understand the nature of loss
Give love wherever you go
Anger devours the soul
Look deep or do not look at all
Imagination is Life
Trust everyone for people, are at heart, good
You are wonderful

The practical application of these lessons in which Simon confronts all the issues in his life such as his alcohol problem, schizophrenia and his childhood abuse, lead him back into contact with his wife and with her help he is eventually re-united with his son. During this process, he also manages to forgive Paul McCartney for We All Stand Together. No mean feat.

Tollesbury Time Forever is a novel about mental illness, alcohol, confusion and courage. But most of all it is about love - the losing of it, the searching for it and the understanding of it.