I suppose I must have been “made” in a bungalow on Deneside in Ossett, probably around the time England were winning the World Cup in 1966. My mother used to say they should put a blue plaque on the side of the house; this was long before I had published a book.

Teaching brought my mother to Ossett and marriage has kept her there. My father is Ossett born and bred and has lived there almost every one of his 82 years. I barely managed 18. I couldn’t wait to leave; first to Wakefield, then to Manchester, next to Istanbul, and finally to Tokyo. But I think I would have gone anywhere, just to get away from Ossett. I thought there was nothing there. Or only bad things. But I was wrong, that wasn’t true.

Ossett was the centre of my world, the home I always went back to: after the football in Huddersfield, the cinema in Dewsbury, gigs in Wakefield or exhibitions in Leeds, it was always back to my bedroom in Ossett. This was the place where I first began to write stories. Because of the comics in the paper shop, the books in the local library and the house, and because nearby, on the same street as my grandmother, lived Stan Barstow, the novelist. I never met or even saw him, but his books and his proximity were an inspiration; writing didn’t seem such an unusual thing to do in Ossett. Still, that didn’t stop me having my head turned by the likes of Samuel Beckett and Nick Cave, dreaming of Paris, Berlin and exile.

So as soon as I could, I upped sticks for the bright lights of Wakefield, all of three miles away. The night before I left, I went for a farewell drink in the Red Lion on Dewsbury Road. An old bloke at the bar warned me of “those Wakefield folk with their Wakefield ways”, then he gripped my arm and said, “never forget where you’re from, lad. You’re from Ossett, remember that.”

• David Peace’s Patient X is published in paperback by Faber.