PETER Street’s life has been unusual to put it mildly and a quick guided tour would take in his unorthodox upbringing, his myriad jobs, his role as a war poet and his latest book.

It’s also important to chronicle that he was diagnosed as being autistic when he was 66, finally making sense of both his weaknesses and his strengths.

Now 69, Peter was born in Aspull, Wigan, but was brought up in Bolton from the age of three around the Tramways area of Blackburn Road. “My mother had an ‘arrangement’ with my stepfather: she cooked and cleaned and looked after him and he looked after both of us,” explained Peter, matter-of-factly. “To the outside world, they looked like a normal couple but their marriage was far from usual.”

In fact, Peter’s stepfather – a stoker in a cotton mill – ensured that young Peter lacked for nothing even allowing for post-war austerity. He had a good diet of plenty of fresh fruit and veg, and was cared for in a generally happy childhood. “My dad used to barter,” recalled Peter. “He even got me a Lone Ranger watch once!.”

However, this happiness failed to extend to his education at Holy Infants Primary School locally and St Anne’s Secondary School in Harwood where Peter struggled with his written work.

In fact, when he left school he still could not read or write. “I could, though, always talk,” he said. “I could describe things but obviously that didn’t really help with my education.,”

He was, however, good at football and felt a sporting career beckoned – until at 15 he had his first epileptic fit. “I was broken-hearted,” he stated.

He left school at 15 with no qualifications and few prospects. He started a series of basic jobs including at Hampson’s Bakery where the women were “wonderful” to him, then at Belmont Paper Mill, a boning and slaughterhouse and at a Co-op warehouse but the epilepsy regularly put paid to these posts.

When the Job Centre sent him along to a grave-digging job, he came across a group of men who would be influential in his life. “Let’s put it this way,” said Peter, smiling. “I was very naive and they weren’t. But they were great to me and I was really very happy working with them at local cemeteries like Heaton and Tonge.”

The burly group also saved his life – twice – when graves caved in and he was nine-feet down and digging. Peter is full of entertaining if grim anecdotes of this time, like when an underground spring kept pushing the coffin back up past him to the surface... as the Salvation Army band played Shall We Gather At The River!

Work on exhumations and then a stint with Bolton Parks Department followed before Peter returned to college to qualify as an arborist (tree surgeon) - this time able to prove his knowledge and credibility.

Unfortunately, he fell off a wagon ad sustained a spinal injury that disabled him for life. But, in hospital, he befriended an English literature teacher who inspired him to learn to read and write. He finally found his voice in literature when a Liverpool University lecturer, seeing his potential, offered him tuition.

Since then, Peter has been writer-in residence at BBC Greater Manchester Radio and went out to Bosnia as a war poet, returning traumatised by what he had seen. He has toured America giving lectures and written several books. The latest book, Hidden Depths*, is the first of a series of three and, with remarkable clarity and great detail, looks at his early years as a grave-digger.

Peter, happily married to Sandra, is the father of two girls and six grandchildren and is a fascinating person who has never let his disabilities define him or hold him back. At 66 and suffering from PTSD from his Bosnian travels, Peter was finally officially diagnosed as autistic.

Typically, he views this as a positive. “It meant I never really felt fear,” he commented, “and I always felt I could do any task I tried.”

n Hidden Depths is published by PreeTa Press at £5 plus p & p on Amazon