TAKE a butler, a grand estate in Co Tyrone and a weakness for airborne antics in a fighter plane and writer-cum-wanderer Geoff Hill suddenly had lift-off for another great adventure.
For the Belfast-based columnist and author – best known for his award-winning travel and motorcycle musings – the mix of memories from childhood, a twitchy imagination and leanings towards the path less travelled just pitched up in his head one night and refused to budge.
So he did what any good storyteller would do – he got up in the wee small hours and starting dictating his thoughts into the small dictaphone he now keeps by his bedside for such emergencies.
The result – The Butler's Son – has recently made it into print and is Hill's 11th book and third novel, marking something of a departure from his usual penmanship which comprises a collection of Northern Ireland jokes among other things.
"For a long while I kept getting phone calls from people at all hours who had thought of a good joke for me to include," he says, "so after thinking I would never gather up enough material, I ended up with quite the collection. It's funny to think that The Ulster Joke Book was my first contribution to the world of literature."
Since then, of course, he has compiled an eclectic assortment of titles, from hilarious bike adventure books documenting his travels from Alaska to Australia, to more serious novels – while picking up a few significant awards en route, including accolades for UK and Irish Travel Writer of the Year.
For The Butler's Son, which starts life in Termon, a grand estate in Co Tyrone, where Hill's own grandfather Edward worked as a butler and his wife, Maria, was the housekeeper – Hill took a look over his shoulder at real life and then let his imagination do the rest.
That included forming the character of Max Edwards, son of the novel's butler, who falls in love with the Japanese wife of the estate's owner and then goes off to fight in the Battle of the Somme, later becoming a pilot with the Royal Flying Corps and forming the "strangest of alliances" with German flying ace, Werner Voss.
A tale dipped in degrees of disaster, danger, life-saving heroics and love, Hill has conjured up spies and a beautiful French nurse to push the plot along – all with the aid of Max's womanising best friend, Bentley Priory.
Essentially, the book explores the "unquenchable nature of the human spirit", neatly wrapped up in what the author simply describes as "a good yarn".
"The first line of the book – 'Max Edwards was 18 when he saw the woman he loved and the man he wanted to kill' – came to me out of nowhere and then it pretty much wrote itself in a month or so," Hill says. "I'd wake up in the middle of the night and entire scenes and conversations would appear in my head, fully formed.
"It must have been hibernating in there for years. The fact that I remembered the 'big house' from my childhood, with its stone floor and big black pot over an open fire and potatoes with salt and butter all spread out on newspaper for the servants, must have helped too."
He recently referenced those early Termon days in a moving eulogy to his father, Thomas Robert (Bob) Hill, who passed away last October aged 90.
After "breezing through his 11-plus" Mr Hill senior had his education tragically cut short because his parents couldn't afford uniform and books to send him to the Royal School Dungannon.
"My grandmother actually asked Major Alexander, Termon’s owner, if he could help with a loan, but the answer was no, possibly because if servants starting getting educated, there’d be no servants left," Hill dryly recounted at his father's funeral.
"Instead, Dad left school to work at the Moygashel Linen Mill in Dungannon at £1/10s a week, or £1.50 today, for five days work and a half-day on Saturday."
His father did, however, put his brain to good use in a different way by starting up a motorbike parts and repair shop, igniting a spark in his son who now splits his time between seeing the world from the seat of a motorbike and from the pilot's seat in a small plane.
As you might expect, The Butler's Son includes some passing references to vintage bikes, notably a Royal Enfield which Mr Hill senior "bought for a fiver" and rode up Pomeroy Main Street with a "wide grin on his face".
"I think I just see the romance of motorbikes and not the danger," Hill asserts, "despite the fact my father suffered a life-changing accident on one. I did a tour from Deli to Belfast on a Royal Enfield 19 years ago with friend Paddy Minne and we are now looking at doing it again in reverse, only on modern Enfield bikes."
And there is also the prospect of a new airborne adventure of his own.
"I'm considering flying a microlight to Australia which should be fun. People think it is a deckchair powered by a lawnmower but they are so much more sophisticated that that."
So, what about his long-suffering wife, Cate, who must wave him off on his travels more often than is strictly necessary?
"She's great about it all," he laughs, "It's a running joke between us that I'm just going out to the shops to buy some milk. I just don't return with it immediately –maybe not for a few months..."
:: The Butler's Son book is published by Thunderchild Publishing and is priced £2.25 for Kindle and £6.75 paperback, available from Amazon.
