Glyn Ridgley was inspired to write a novel of his time spent living in a squat in London. He talks to Jeremy Campbell.

It is an experience shared by many writers, indeed many artists, but few manage to overcome the adversities and vaguaries of a life struggling for recognition, and come out with anything to show for it.

Glyn Ridgley has experience galore, the kind that could weigh heavily on a man, but he has found an artistic outlet in the form of his new book, which is a work inspired by his life on the streets of London in the late 1970s.

He was never destitute, but he was certainly living on the breadline, and his resolution to give a percentage of all the money he earns from sales of The Street School of Music to The Big Issue tells its own story.

The book tells the story of Bod, or Jeremy Boddington, a young man (at "16 and three quarters" barely even that) with no real education who plays the guitar beautifully, and wants, unusually, to be a classical musician. He aims to get into the Royal Academy to study, but meanwhile has to overcome life in Soho's seedy streets, with drugs, prostitutes, and heavies everywhere he turns.

It appears to be a very personal account of an imagined life.

"Bod is a loveable roguish type character. A young person just going for it in life. It's a very comic novel, but there is a social point. I worked in a secondary school for a short while, saw some of the problems that young people sometimes have, and saw that it is not always their fault if they fail. I am trying to say that even if you don't get the right circumstances, you can still push ahead. It is a message of hope."

Glyn has perservered with his dream, in spite of institutional barriers. This surely is a message of hope.

"Even when I was at school I was writing stories, which was never encouraged. This is perhaps where I can identify with a character like Bod, as certain types of careers, or potential careers, if they are not real jobs, they are not encouraged."

He says that writing comes from within, and there are other works ready if this is successful. At this point, Glyn talks of the international sales his book has made, all through self-promotion by virtue of his website (details below). The self-sufficiency that was perhaps learned in the difficult days in London is quickly evident, and although the book has yet to be taken on by a mainstream publisher, he has achieved some success by working hard to promote it.

"I am really happy to come to my home town to talk about it. I was born and bred in High Wycombe, and went to the tech', John Hampden, before it was the grammar school. I didn't study a great deal to be honest, I didn't come out with a load of qualifications.

"It was a love of literature that brought me this far. I have had to slog away, but it's a good start."

While in London he mixed with the great and the good of the burgeoning post punk scene. It was then that The Street School of Music first took shape.

"I was in the doldrums when I started it, at a low point in terms of property ownership. I went up to London, and had a load of artist and musician friends. There were some good squats up there, a lot of creativity. The Clash were up there, The Killing Joke, and The Local Connection. I was mixing with creative people, and I realised it was something I could do as well as anybody. But the squat I was in fell apart, and had to do something on the hoof, so I moved into a B&B, and worked in some clubs in Soho. I was sharing a tiny room which has four bunk beds in it, so I used to go to the central library in Kensington to write. While I was working on another manuscript, I saw this novel in its entirity. I had this vision of Bod sitting there in his jeans and trainers lamenting the fact that he had bought them because he couldn't pay the rent and had just lost his job."

He had a relationship with an agency, but in spite of support and help from a particular agent, the way was blocked.

"I approached various publishers, who came up with various lousy reasons like Not too sure about the punctuation'. I felt I was never getting to the real reason. But I wasn't going to let that put me off. I knew I could write. I wanted to write the philosophy or social view, to pick up the energy and vibrancy of the late 70s. So I have stuck with it.

"It was really a result of going to work as an Engligh teacher at a secondary school in Exeter, when I felt that what I wrote was still relevant today.

"In fact it seems horribly more relevant than it used to be. You think you've moved on in social terms, and it doesn't matter how you speak or where you are from."

He still drew inspiration from the creativity of the late 70s.

"It was so vibrant at that time, and a lot to do with music and fashion, and I would love that to ignite literature, which I see as very dull at the moment.

"I would like to stimulate more of a debate about the current state of literature. I would like people to be inspired by this book, to think that you don't have to go to Oxbridge to become a writer.

Glyn shares his home with his wife, Ann, and their two children, Eamon, 12, and Maddy, nine.

The Street School of Music, by Glyn Ridgley, available from Amazon.co.uk and all bookshops or www.glynridgley.com