FORMER COUNTY CRICKETER TURNS AUTHOR TO HELP FAMILY RECOVER FROM EARTHQUAKE TRAUMA Phil Robinson, the former Yorkshire and Leicestershire batsman, has turned children’s author by writing an ebook which he hopes will help his family recover from the effects of the devastating Christchurch earthquake in 2011. The Robinson family lost their home in the earthquake and although they all escaped physically unharmed, they suffered from traumatic stress and several of their friends were among the 185 who were killed. Robinson has now moved to Australia where he works as a talent development officer for Queensland Cricket based in Townsville and has written the newly-published ‘The Adventures of Hector and Boris, Book One: The Power Paint Project’ under the pen name Pip Edwards. The adventure story is based on Robinson’s son, Hector, who was seven when the earthquake struck, and Boris, the family’s old Mercedes car. ” We often went to sit in him in the street after an aftershock, we felt safe in him, nothing was going to fall on him and, if it did, we figured we would be pretty safe. He quickly became one of the family,” Robinson said. ” So they became the heroes of my stories. For four weeks we slept under our solid dining room table and I made up the adventures of our two heroes, Hector and Boris, and their fight against the bad guys of the world. ” The stories lasted for half-an-hour or so, just long enough for my son to fall asleep in his own little dream world away from all his problems. ” It was he who said I should write them down and publish them so that other kids throughout the world could have their parents tell them a great adventure before they went to bed. So here they are. ” I have suffered badly with post-traumatic stress since the Christchurch earthquakes which affected my family severely. ” Writing this book, and the others in the series, has been very therapeutic. I hope other suffering from mental stress for whatever reason may try writing as therapy after hearing my story and how it has and is still helping me through.” Robinson, 53, scored more than 7,600 first-class and almost 4,300 List A runs in a county career between 1984 and 1999. He had a spell in charge of Leicestershire’s Second XI then emigrated to New Zealand to work as a community development co-ordinator in Otago. ‘The Adventures of Hector and Boris’ is available online here.
