He left school at 14, at the end of the Second World War, to become a scavenger for his uncle Nad, and after short spells as a little piecer and a big piecer, he was half-minding at 16 and a shopped spinner before he was 18.
Before National Service brought a temporary halt to his progress, he had been made temporary underman, but when he was demobbed in 1952 the mills were on short time. But although the cotton industry was now in terminal decline, he continued his rise up the ladder, becoming a spinning master by the time he was 27.
With mills closing everywhere, David moved from town to town until, in 1966, his wife told him to get out before he ran out of places to work. So they moved to South Africa, and after a spell in the mills, he took to the road for the next 30 years, selling piece goods.
David's love of that long-lost Lancashire milltown life shines through his writing. There is much that is autobiographical in his works, the first of which, Lancashire Life, was published by Minerva Press.