Robin Alexander Gregory's Blog, page 6

Tales Of The Beast – Part 2 – The South Island

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Tales of the Beast – Part 2
… The South Island Initiative…

Last time I left you, I had arrived in Picton with my best friend and the beast, ready to begin a ten-day road trip around the South Island of New Zealand. I’m pretty sure that it was 2003 back then but given that my mind has more holes in it these days than a Cabinet Minister’s alibi, it might have been 2004. Consequently, I would advise you to take the following account with a healthy pinch of salt and hold fire on sharpening your pitchforks, at least until you’ve given me a decent head start!

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Picton harbour c.2003 – Could have been the capital of New Zealand.

So, Picton. It’s a bit of a jewel really. At least it was back then. Sheltered, unspoilt and basking in the glorious Pacific sun, it always makes me wonder why they decided to make Wellington the Capital instead, which tends towards the cold, wet and extremely windy. You do get the occasional nice day in ‘Welly’, I should know, I lived there for almost seven years, but it doesn’t seem to happen quite as often as it does in Picton.

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Entering the South Island of New Zealand.

Anyway, despite its glorious climate, back in the day Picton didn’t have too much to offer two twenty-something lads in search of adventure and so after a night in a guest house and a couple of ales to recover from the ferry crossing, we set off down the East Coast towards Christchurch.

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The Interislander ferry. Image copyright: J Gregory.

Along the way, we stopped at the little town of Kaikoura, which suffered a devastating earthquake a couple of years ago, but which was famous for its whale watching well before that. Built on the edge of a natural deep-water channel, Kaikoura was stunning, with ocean views on one side and mountains on the other. We stayed in a hostel that night, with the intention of doing a whale watch the following morning, but what we didn’t anticipate was another of Kaikoura’s many talking points: the sand-flies…

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View of the mountains from Kaikoura.

As soon as the sun had gone down, hundreds of them emerged and we were faced with a dilemma. In a baking hot room bereft of air-conditioning, or even a decent fan for that matter, it was a question of whether to leave the window open to keep cool and let the sand flies in or banish them and roast alive in the dormitory. In the end, I think we opted for the former, hiding under the duvets to avoid the little so and so’s. Not that it made much difference. The following morning, I was covered in bites on my ankles, shins, hands and arms, and boy, did they hurt. My friend, I recall, fared rather better than me and as a result, I think that he enjoyed the whale watching more than I did. We did see a couple of Humpback whales, as well as some Hector’s dolphins (the smallest and rarest in the world) but I have to admit that I was quite relieved when we took the beast beyond the Kaikoura city limits and continued on our way to Christchurch.

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Another lovely view from Kaikoura.

There isn’t too much to say about Christchurch, other than we visited some of my family friends who were living there and took the obligatory wander around the city, including the cathedral and River Avon. Both my friend and I were originally from Bristol, which also has a River Avon, so I suppose we got a giggle from walking along a river of the same name, almost twelve thousand miles from its namesake. Nowadays, Christchurch is rather different, following the devastating earthquakes which shook the city to its core back in late 2010 and early 2011. Whether it will ever be the same again remains to be seen, but what happened there is a stark reminder of how fragile and precious life is and how quickly it can be changed forever.

After Christchurch, the beast took us on a quick soiree to ‘Ash Vegas’ or Ashburton to give it its proper name. I can’t remember why it’s called Ash Vegas, but the name has stuck and although it was nothing like its namesake, it was pleasant enough. It also had a fish and chip shop that served the most enormous servings of hand-cut chips, which I discovered on a subsequent trip there some years later, much to the dismay of my waistline!

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Just another beautiful river at the side of the road.

We certainly covered some distance in the beast, which performed magnificently, despite having no air-conditioning and a rather bothersome warning light for the catalytic converter that kept coming on when you least expected it (I had it disconnected when I got back to Wellington). So, with windows down and the tunes blasting out of the portable CD player that I had bought specially for the trip, we hurtled past lovely Timaru and off into the interior, towards Queenstown via the Lindis Pass.

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On the way to Queenstown.

Now, Queenstown is spectacular. A thrill-seekers paradise, it is nestled on the shores of Lake Wakatipu and boasts huge, cliff-like hills rising dramatically from the lake itself. In the winter, it is famed for its alpine sports and in the summer, when we were there, it was just plain beautiful. Shunning the tried and tested activities, such as the high-speed ‘jet-boat’ rides and bungee jumping, we opted instead for the ‘street luge’. Think go-karts, but with much less control, racing down the side of a mountain and you’re halfway there. I’d done a similar one in Rotorua when I first arrived in New Zealand and to be honest, I thought that it was better than the Queenstown one, but we still had a good time crashing into each other and generally mucking around.

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My friend, being reflective and mysterious by the dam at Lake Hawea.

That night, we went to a little bar called ‘The Bunker’, which was hidden away in an alley off the main drag. I’d been there a few years earlier during a conference and was delighted to find the tiny place still open and complete with a roaring fire in the fireplace, despite it being the end of summer. I’m afraid that I can’t give you too many details of what happened that night, everything is a bit hazy, whether from the passing of time or the consumption of alcohol, I’m not sure, but what vague recollections I have are happy ones.

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Flowers and the base of part of the Lake Hawea dam. How blue is that water?

A couple of days later, we left Queenstown and made our way 350km north, past Lake Hawea, to the Franz Josef Glacier on the West Coast. Along the way, we passed a sign saying: ‘Last petrol for 110km’, which was an indication that we really were entering the wilds and were rewarded by nothing but endless countryside and the occasional small hamlet. Even when we arrived at Franz Josef itself, it was little more than a collection of small wooden houses and local shops, surrounded on all sides by wonderful dome-shaped hills that looked like they had been drawn by a child. How isolating it must be during the winter, I could only imagine, but the locals were extremely friendly, and we quickly found ourselves booked on a glacier walk the following morning.

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One man and his glacier.

We spent the whole day on the glacier, wearing spiked boots and clutching ice-axes, to help us navigate the treacherous terrain. Despite it being summer, it was extremely cold in amongst all that ice and we were especially glad of our ski-jackets. We did have a bit of fun, sliding down ice-holes that had been opened up as the glacier slowly (almost glacially, one might say) made its way towards the sea. All in all, it was an amazing experience, especially seeing the ‘blue ice’, which gets its name because it has no air bubbles in it, making it extremely dense and only reflecting blue light.

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Sliding down an ice tube. Great fun but very cold!

Exhausted from all the exertions of the day, we slept well that night and early the next morning, began the trek up to Nelson, right at the top of the South Island. Hugging the coast road through Hokitika and Greymouth, with only the occasional camper van getting in our way, the scenery was truly breath-taking. It felt like we were in paradise, with the azure blue of the Tasman Sea on one side and vast tracts of wilderness on the other.

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Can’t remeber where this was, but I think it is just stunning.

It was here that we did have one close call. We’d been driving for quite a few hours and despite having the windows wound down and ‘Rob Zombie’ playing at full volume, the air in the car had become quite stuffy, with the result that we nearly drifted into the back of a flat-bed lorry, as a warm fug of weariness overtook us. Luckily, we avoided a collision and after a short break to get some much-needed rest and a shot or two of caffeine inside us, we were back on the road, driving with a lot more care and counting down the miles to Nelson.

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Park and lake on the outskirts of Nelson, I think. Great place for a rest after a close call with a truck!

Nelson was a bit of a pit-stop for us and looking back, I wish that we’d spent more time there. But to be honest, I think by that time, my friend and I were starting to show the signs of having had enough. After all, we’d pretty much raced around the entire South Island, covering almost 2000 km in ten days and had hopped from one hostel to another, boozing and revelling like Withnail and I along the way. So, the following day, we made the short hop back to our starting point, Picton and took the Interislander ferry to windy Wellington where, for me at least, lay the comfort of my own bed!

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On the way back to Wellington from Picton.

Looking back on it, the whole road trip was a great experience and I’d love to do it again someday, although I would probably spread it out over two or three weeks so that I could really take in the sights and appreciate my surroundings. I’d also like to get off the beaten track and visit some of the more remote places on the map that we didn’t get to see the first time around. Unfortunately, it won’t be in the beast, as she’s no longer with us, but I’ll always remember how well she served us on that particular trip, which turned out to be the first of many long-hauls she did with me.

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On the way backto Wellington. I just can’t get over how blue the water is!

Stay tuned for more ‘Tales of the Beast’ in future and in the meantime, why not share this blog or the first installment with your friends?

The post Tales Of The Beast – Part 2 – The South Island appeared first on Rob Gregory | Author.

The Untimely Demise of Fotherington-Tomas

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The Untimely Demise of Fotheringon-Tomas
… A short story by R.A. Gregory…

It was noon when Maxwell reached the cottage and his feet crunched noisily on the freshly raked gravel, as he hastened down the garden path. Rapping smartly on the front door, he was answered by Sarah. She looked haggard and careworn, and was holding a rake, but still managed to maintain her impeccable British composure, as she greeted her husband’s best friend.

“Maxwell. So good to see you. Please excuse the rake, but Gilley the gardener is off sick with Bloat Foot again. There’s a kettle boiling in the kitchen. Would you care for a cup of tea?”

Bugger the tea, thought Maxwell, as he bent forward and gave Sarah a perfunctory kiss on the cheek, before dropping his swordstick into the umbrella holder by the front door. Right now, there were more important things in the world than tea. For one thing, his best friend was in the other room, dying.

“How’s he doing?” asked Maxwell, the tip of his waxed moustache twitching anxiously as he waited for her answer.

“Not so well, I’m afraid. The doctor says that he’s only got a few hours left, which is why I sent you that telegram. He really does care for you, you know. Even if he doesn’t always show it,” she said, her voice dropping low, as she dabbed the corner of one eye with a dainty, yet well-used, floral handkerchief.

“I know, Sarah. I know. Which is why I got the nine-thirty express from Paddington. I could have got the ten-fifteen stopper service, but I wanted to make sure that I got here before, well, you know… the inevitable happens.”

“Well, you’d better go in and see him then. I would come with you, but I can’t. It’s just too painful for me at the moment,” she replied, “I’ll be in the kitchen if you need me.”

“Thank you, Sarah. I shall be fine,” said Maxwell. Then after rolling his shoulders to stop himself from slouching and repeating one of the Nepalese relaxation mantras he’d learnt during his time with the Gurkhas, he entered the living room.

There, sitting in a wicker rocking chair, with a woollen travelling blanket covering his knees and listening to the first test at Headingley, was the great man himself. Fotherington-Tomas. Double first from Oxford, Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons at twenty-two and a proud member of the Order of the Old British Empire, there were few men of his ilk left in the world, principally because Fotherington-Tomas had dedicated his life to exterminating them, especially if they posed a threat to the Empire, which, in his opinion they often did. A man of great modesty, despite his imposing appearance, he’d once won a drinking wager by knocking ten seconds off Bannister’s time for the mile, but had refused to claim the record, because it was not done under precisely the same conditions as the original.

“Come on you bastards!” Fotherington-Tomas roared at the small, portable radio, sitting on a dainty little table next to his rocking chair. “You should have known he was going to bowl a googly. Even I knew that, and I can’t see the bloody pitch!”

“Good afternoon, FT,” said Maxwell with false cheer in his voice. “How are you doing?”

“What?” said Fotherington-Tomas, looking at the radio with deep suspicion, before turning his head to spy Maxwell approaching. “Ah, Maxwell, dear boy. So glad you could make it. How’s London and more importantly, how’s Liz? Fully recovered from the Klipschstein incident, I hope?”

“London is fine, thank you, FT. Although it’s just not the same without you. And as for her Majesty, well, she was understandably shaken by the whole experience, but yes, she’s made a tremendous recovery and sends her sincere thanks to you,” replied Maxwell.

“Glad to hear that she’s on the mend, although I wish like hell the same could be said for me,” said Fotherington-Tomas with a thin smile. “I still don’t know how Dr Mephostus managed to smuggle that Death Ray into the Duke’s palace in the first place.”

“He always was a wily one, FT,” said Maxwell, looking fondly at his best friend since University.

“He was too. You’re right about that. And he finally got me. Got me good, Maxwell. A man doesn’t take a full hit from a Death Ray and just shrug it off, I can tell you. Still, it was a small price to pay, all things considered,” said Fotherington-Tomas, switching the radio off with a loud click.

“Well, you did save the Queen and I have to say that you seem to be doing remarkably well for someone who, as you just put it, took a full hit from a Death Ray,” gulped Maxwell, his emotions momentarily threatening to overwhelm him. “I mean your beard is a little ragged and you look like you haven’t slept for a day or two, but apart from that you appear entirely unscathed!”

“Saving her Majesty was just duty, Maxwell. Any Englishman worth his salt would do the same. One day you’ll understand that, I hope. As for my condition, well that’s the awful thing about Dr Mephostus’ Death Ray. It eats you from the inside out. Oh, and talking about eating, do feel free to help yourself to fruit cake. It’s over there by the fireplace. I’d have a slice, but unfortunately, I’ve got no stomach for it,” said Fotherington-Tomas, pointing to the dining table on the other side of the room.

“But you must be in terrible pain,” said Maxwell, as he walked over the shag-pile rug and cut himself a healthy slab of cake.

“Ah, pain is all in the mind, my dear boy,” replied Fotherington-Tomas, fixing Maxwell with a disapproving stare. “I suppose for the average person, my discomfort would lie somewhere between excruciating and agonising. However, as well you know, I trained under the Abbot Victor Falangies and his Children of the D’amned Ned when I left University and as a result am able to control all aspects of my physical existence using my mind, so no, I am not in any pain, although the fact that you are eating fruit cake with your fingers and not with the proper fork is causing me a significant amount of distress at this precise moment!”

“Sorry, FT!” said Maxwell, spraying the rug with cake crumbs, as he apologised to his slowly expiring chum.

“Don’t worry about it. Sarah will clean up the mess. Now, I haven’t much time left, so I must prepare myself before I depart this mortal coil for the next great adventure. By all means remain with me, just don’t interrupt and please, eat quietly.”

Fotherington-Tomas closed his eyes and his breathing slowed to almost nothing, as he began readying himself for his impending journey to the other side. As Maxwell watched the hypnotic rise and fall of the huge man’s chest, his thoughts turned to his own mortality. When my time finally comes, I wish that I could face it with as much dignity as FT, he thought, struggling to fight back a solitary tear, which he knew that his friend would consider ungentlemanly.

“Well, it might come a bit sooner than you expect, old boy,” boomed Fotherington-Tomas from his chair, shattering the meditative silence of the room. “You did after all get a hefty dose of Strontium-40 from Aldo Passlington’s henchman when we went to see U2 in Hungary last year. He slipped it into your pitcher of G&T during the interval, when you were chatting up the Arch-Duke Olivano’s child-bride. Just thought you might like to know, so you can put your affairs in order and all that. Oh, and I can read minds too, so thank you for the compliment and yes, crying is most unmanly!”

“What! You mean to say that I’m going to die?” spluttered Maxwell in disbelief.

“Ha, ha! Got you!” cried Fotherington-Tomas, an ungentlemanly tear of mirth leaking from his eye, as he wrapped his arms around himself in delight. I was just joshing with you, Maxwell. Just joshing with you. After all, what’s the point in living if you can’t have a joke at your friend’s expense, especially when you yourself are dying?”

“Yes, yes. Very funny,” replied Maxwell flatly. He hated it when FT made him the brunt of a joke because he never saw it coming.

Suddenly, Fotherington-Tomas’ face grew serious and a flicker of pain crossed his eyes. “I fear that the moment is approaching, Maxwell. Be a good fellow and go fetch Sarah, please.”

“Of course. Hold on, my friend!” said Maxwell, as he dashed from the living room to the tiny kitchen at the other end of the hall.

Moments later, he returned with Sarah in tow. They both stopped in stunned surprise when they entered the room. The space where Fotherington-Tomas had been was now empty, with only a light scattering of fine dust and his old wooden pipe sitting on top of the travelling blanket, to mark where he had been.

“He must have completely disintegrated. There couldn’t have been anything left of him in the end!” wailed Sarah, turning to bury her face into Maxwell’s shoulder.

My God, the sheer amount of willpower that it must have taken to hold himself together like that, thought Maxwell, still staring at the chair with a mixture of disbelief and unashamed awe. As he watched, a small gust of warm summer air blew in through the open window of the living room and swept the dust that had been Fotherington-Tomas up into a little whirlwind, before scattering it indifferently among the crumbs of fruit cake on the floor.

Sarah sniffed heavily and pushed herself off Maxwell’s shoulder. “Well, life goes on, I suppose” she declared, as she straightened her pinafore and left the living room to go fetch a dustpan and brush.

At least the funeral will be cheap, thought Maxwell idly, still standing dumbfounded in the middle of the room. Then the realisation hit him that Fotherington-Tomas was really gone. Defender of the Realm, clandestine agent to her Majesty, spin bowler extraordinaire and general all-round top chap; the human mammoth was no more. Who would save them now from the evil depredations of Dr Mephostus and his crazed minions? Who would battle the Mad Monks of Mont Blanc, the Iron Men of Kazrakastan and the multitude of central European dissidents that crept out of the woodwork at the most inconvenient of moments? Not him, that was for sure. No, he had a nice, cushy job back in Whitehall, with an endless supply of tea and stamps to look forward to. Someone else would have to take up the slack.

At that moment, there was a heavy knock at the front door.

“Could you get that?” came Sarah’s voice from the kitchen.

Maxwell walked hesitantly to the door, fearing the worst. Fotherington-Tomas had only been dead for a matter of minutes, so how could his enemies have found out so quickly?

As he flicked the latch with a trembling hand, he breathed a sigh of relief as he opened the door to a postman.

“Afternoon, Sir. I have a telegram for a Mister Fotherington-Tomas,” said the postman in bright, cheerful tones, proffering a slip of yellow paper in Maxwell’s direction.

“I’m afraid that Mister Fotherington-Tomas has gone away and I don’t think that he will be back for quite some time,” replied Maxwell, gently pushing the telegram back towards the postman.

“That’s not a problem, Mister Maxwell, Sir. I’m sure that you’ll be able to help us instead. Her Majesty is counting upon it, in fact,” countered the postman, dropping the telegram onto the doorstep between them and turning on his heel down the raked gravel path.

Bugger, thought Maxwell for the second time that day. If the Queen wanted something done, then there was really no way that he could get out of it. Duty. That’s what it was. Duty. “Well FT, it looks as if the story continues with me,” he said to no one in particular, as he picked the missive up off the floor and closed the door with a gentle thump. Then, returning to the living room, he scooped Fotherington-Tomas’ pipe from the chair, stuck it absentmindedly into the corner of his mouth and tore open the telegram to see what the glorious Empire required of him this time.

THE END

Author’s note: This could well end up becomming a series of short stories. If you’d like to see that happen, then please drop me a line at info@rob-gregory.com

Also, don’t forget that Drynwideon, the world’s first anti-fantasy novel, is still available as a paperback from my website www.rob-gregory.com and as an ebook from Amazon and Smashwords. It is coming up to Christmas and I really don’t want to have to sacrifice another child for the dinner table if I can help it!

The post The Untimely Demise of Fotherington-Tomas appeared first on Rob Gregory | Author.

Lost Consonants – A tribute to Graham Rawle

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Lost Consonants
… a tribute to the genius of Graham Rawle (still alive)…

Many years ago, I used to be an avid weekend reader of the Guardian newspaper. Every Saturday, I would trek down to the local newsagent (usually with a hangover from the night before) and pick up a copy of the bumper Saturday edition. Among the myriad of various pull-out supplements was the obligatory magazine, somewhat uninspiringly called Weekend. Despite this, the actual missive itself was packed full of highly entertaining content (much like my blog, in fact) and I would curl up on the sofa (back at home, not in the newsagent’s you understand) with a cup of tea and a packet of Fox’s Classic biscuits and lose myself for a good hour or so within its many pages.

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Lovely Lost Consonants!

Among my favourites were the regular contributors. David Stafford wrote a column called Staffordshire Bull, which contained humorous anecdotes and far-fetched tales rooted in real-life and I was delighted to discover that you can still read a selection of these on the website that he shares with his wife, Caroline. I can’t imagine what it’s like to share a website with your wife, it must be rather cramped, a bit like living in a council bedsit, but from the photos at least, they seem to be making a fairly good job of it.

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Lost Consonants: Roy used his new paint prayer to change the colour of his car.

Another, more serious contributor, was John Diamond, who chronicled his battle with cancer, week by week, up until his untimely death in March 2001. His column was a forerunner to today’s modern blog and I found myself immersed in his writing, as he detailed the various ups and downs of his illness against the hum-drum background of his day-to-day life. Although I never knew him personally, I remember feeling genuinely saddened when his column abruptly ended and I realised that he had sadly lost his fight with the terrible disease.

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Lost Consonants: His doctor had recommended foods with a high fire content.

But it is Graham Rawle, creator of the wonderful Lost Consonants series, who I want to focus on today. Every week for fifteen years, a one-pane collage, complete with ‘cut out and keep’ scissor marks around it, would appear near the beginning of the magazine and have me in stitches with its sheer brilliance. The idea was simple, remove a single consonant from a phrase and give it a totally different meaning. Thus we had gems such as, ‘It had always been his ambition to pay for Aston Villa’, complete with a grinning John Fashanu in the background and ‘The Wilsons had gone out leaving their baby with a child miner.’

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Lost Consonants: It had always been his dream to pay for Aston Villa.

I don’t know why, maybe it was those subliminal scissor marks, but I began to religiously cut out and keep each week’s Lost Consonant, until the point where I’d built up a fairly sizeable collection of them. Not really being the scrapbooking type, I was at a bit of a loss as to what to do with my collection, until I found a fitting solution and covered a couple of old loose-leaf folders in them, preserving the images for posterity beneath transparent book sealing film, where they remain to this day. Now, thanks to the wonders of modern technology (actually just my mobile phone and a micro-USB cable) I’m able to share them with you here. So, strap yourself in tightly and prepare to enter an outrageous world of ‘cardboard ox’s’, ‘Paris priests’ and ‘a few kid words’!

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Lost Consonants: Butch looked vicious but he’d never do them any ham.

Happily, Graham Rawle is still alive and most definitely productive. His latest novel, Overland, is based on the true story of the extreme camouflaging of the Lockheed Aircraft factory in Burbank, California, during the second world war and he also lectures extensively around the world on design and illustration.

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Lost Consonants: Whenever he felt a draught, Frank would lose the window.

If my collection of Lost Consonants hasn’t satiated your appetite then thankfully, you can view more of them on Graham Rawle’s website, here.

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More Lost Consonants: There must be a whole alphabet of them in here!

 

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Lost Consonants: It wasn’t the first time Colin had been caught heating.

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Going Solo by Roald Dahl – A review in conception

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Going Solo by Roald Dahl
… A review in conception…

Every now and again, I am motivated to write something bookish in one of my blogs and today is one of those occasions. Earlier this week, I was given a copy of Going Solo by Roald Dahl, by a friend who was returning home after a brief holiday and had no further use for the book. I first came across it a few weeks earlier, when my friend showed me a copy of the Thai version. Unlike English books, a lot of books in Thailand do not have a blurb on the back cover and so my friend, who is a big fan of Roald Dahl’s children’s stories and who reads both Thai and English fluently, was under the impression that it was just another such volume. It wasn’t until I mentioned that Roald Dahl had flown with the RAF during the Second World War that the penny dropped and we both realised that he had probably bought an autobiography.

And such was the case. But far from being disappointed, my friend absolutely loved the book and over the intervening weeks, he read both the Thai and English copies at the same time, using the latter to check the quality of the Thai translation.

Now I am going through the same process, albeit with the English version only; my Thai being almost non-existent, even after many years of visiting the so-called ‘Land of Smiles’.

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Don’t let the uninspiring cover fool you. This is a fantastic book.

Going Solo chronicles the life of Roald Dahl as a young man. Dealing first with his time in Africa as an employee of the Shell Company and then with his exploits as a wartime fighter pilot, it is as much his simple method of storytelling as the various scenes that he depicts, which has, so far, made the book such an enjoyable read for me. At the time of writing, I’m just over halfway through but have been enthralled by his encounters with black and green mambas, the unusual breed of ‘caretaker’ expat that inhabited the far reaches of the Empire at that time and the rather laissez-faire attitude of the RAF to flying instruction in Africa.

One thing that stands out in the book, apart from Dahl himself, who was apparently six feet, six inches tall (not a good height for a fighter pilot), is the positivity with which his various adventures are described. Even when seriously injured in a night time plane crash, he recounts his subsequent recovery and the possibility of being rendered permanently blind, with an acceptance and good humour that is rarely found in our increasingly litigious #metoo society. There is also an honesty about the book, insofar as it is possible to be completely honest when recounting one’s own memories, which I have found endearing. Consequently, the young Dahl comes across as a very likeable character, with perhaps a touch of ‘Bertie Wooster’ about him, as he careens from scrape to scrape without a care in the world.

I would have loved there to have been a third part to his autobiographical series, which began with ‘Boy’, covering his experiences as one of the world’s favourite children’s authors, but alas this was not to be as Roald Dahl sadly died in 1990. So, I’m just going to have to content myself with finishing Going Solo and having been privileged to understand a little more about one of my childhood heroes.

If you’d like to read my full review of Going Solo then check out my author page on Goodreads in the next couple of weeks and don’t forget to spread the word about your favourite new author!

The post Going Solo by Roald Dahl – A review in conception appeared first on Rob Gregory | Author.

The Blogger’s Nightmare… a struggling author talks

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The Blogger’s Nightmare
… a true story…

The struggling author sat in front of his monitor, the blank white screen and endlessly flashing cursor taunting him as he wracked his tortured brain for new content. This time there was no ‘Blogety Blog’ theme tune running through his mind, just the agonising silence of stifled creativity. Almost fifty blogs since the start of the year and now the well had apparently run dry. On reflection, it had been coming for ages, but when it had actually happened it was still a surprise. And what made it worse was that he knew that his masters, the United Brethren of Illustrious Scribes (UBIS), were watching him and that they were displeased.

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The prison study. Here I lay me down to scribe.

He shuddered as he felt the walls of his prison-study draw imperceptibly closer and stared once more at the screen, willing his fingers to move across the keyboard to satisfy the desperate urge to fill the snowy electronic landscape before him with dancing black glyphs, but they traitorously refused to obey his command. And could he blame them? No. After all, they were highly trained and used to producing quality output, not trash. One children’s book, one novel and several short stories this year alone. They weren’t about to sacrifice their reputation by dancing randomly among the keys, just to please the impetuous whim of their deranged owner.

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The keys! The keys!

The screen remained impassively blank and the author breathed deeply, trying to calm himself as he fought back the rising tide of panic inside him. Now I know how McDuggan felt, he thought, as the fear subsided and a moment of calm descended.

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Run McDuggan. Run. And beware the dreaded spider-freaks!

It had all been so easy in the beginning. He’d written about New Zealand, Thailand and his time at Reading and Oxford Universities. He’d written stories about alcohol and politics. He’d come up with amusing anecdotes about crime fighting, buying fast food and barbarian chefs, all without batting an eyelid. He even had a list of future blog ideas tucked away on his laptop, but just like the manwurzle joints on his beloved car, something fundamental was broken and his ‘inspirometer’ was at an all-time low.

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When routine bites hard and inspiration is low.

The sound of a motorcycle with a de-restricted exhaust penetrated the thick concrete walls of the prison-study and the author looked away from the screen to the heavily barred window some twelve feet above him. The rapturous noise made him long for the freedom of the outside world, but until he’d published his mandatory blog, then his overlords would not let him be. Like the harpies that tormented King Phineus of Thrace, these unseen monsters tore at his words in the womb of his subconscious, shredding his ideas before they could see the light of day, leaving a hollowed-out shell of a man to try and piece something worthwhile together before they attacked again.

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The relentless destruction of creative thought or a modern day King Phineus.

A sudden flicker on the screen caught his eye and he fought back a shriek of horror as he saw the screensaver kick in. Reflexively, he grabbed the mouse and knocked it sideways, banishing the multi-coloured bubbles back to their own demonic universe. Chest rising and falling heavily from the near miss, he stared once more at the screen, almost daring it to remain blank. “What on earth am I going to write about?” he asked himself, his voice echoing emptily off the bleak and unforgiving walls. “I once said that I would write about it all and to hell with the consequences, but that was then. I’m older now and far more worldly-wise.”

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Inspiration finally strikes… With a bang, not a whimper!

And then, without warning, a thought struck him, clear and sharp as a bolt of lightning. It didn’t so much emerge, as explode in his head, sending the roiling clouds of uncertainty and doubt fleeing in terror. “I’ll write about the trials and tribulations of being a blogger!” he exclaimed, flinging his arms wide for effect and nearly toppling off his one-legged stool in the process. “That’s what I’ll do! I’ll show them the grim underbelly of a real writer’s life. The pain, suffering and helplessness. That it’s not all roses and champagne. Then they’ll understand and finally, I’ll be free!”

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The key to the dreaded prison-study.

At that moment, there was an ominous knocking at the thick iron door, followed by the surprising sound of the dreaded time-lock being deactivated. Quaking at the thought that he must have not only displeased his UBIS masters but those of their parent organisation, the Global Authors Guild (GAG), the struggling author breathed a sigh of relief as the door opened and his wife entered the room.

“Lunch is ready, dear,” she said, her voice lightening the oppressive atmosphere in the prison-study by several notches.

“Thanks, Love. I’ll be right down,” he replied, grateful beyond words for this brief and unexpected respite from the unenviable task at hand. Rising from his stool and letting it fall to the floor beneath him, he crossed over to his wife. Then, taking her gently by the hand, he led her out of the room, shutting the door behind him with a deep clang and leaving the monitor screen resolutely blank.

THE END

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Freedom is a blank TV screen.

If you enjoyed this blog, then please share it with your friends. Thank you!

The post The Blogger’s Nightmare… a struggling author talks appeared first on Rob Gregory | Author.

Who wants to be a chip engineer?

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Who wants to be a chip engineer?
No, not that kind of chip, silly!

Q: What do scientists eat for lunch? A: Nuclear fission chips, of course!

Sorry, I don’t know where that came from. It just popped into my head after years of lying dormant in the ‘bad jokes’ section of my brain. And it doesn’t really have anything to do with the rest of this blog, so please just put it down to a momentary lapse in good taste and carry on as you were…

Earlier this week I had to bite the bullet and buy myself a new smartphone, as my poor little S3 had finally given up the ghost. It had served me magnificently for many years, but when you get to the point where you can’t actually make a phone call or use the Wi-Fi and the screen has set itself to the brightness of the sun, then it’s time to put it out to pasture and find yourself a new mistress.

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Goodbye my friend it’s time to go…

Now I’m not the sort to rush into this kind of thing, so I spent a couple of days researching the smartphone market, to see how things had changed since I last dipped a toe in the water. And boy, have things changed. I was bewildered, to say the least and I have to admit that half of the stuff the reviewers were talking about went straight over my head.

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Ah, the good old days when you could take the back off your phone whenever you felt like it!

But one thing that did give me pause for thought was the sheer number of different micro-chips powering mobile phones these days. In fact, ‘mobile phone’ is probably the wrong thing to call them. What I ended up with (and I’m not going to tell you what I bought because you’ll probably laugh at me) is more of a mini-supercomputer that just happens to be able to make phone calls on the side. It’s amazing really, given that I’ve still got a Nokia 5110 sitting in a drawer somewhere at home, which at some point in the dim and distant past was considered to be cutting edge technology and very desirable too.

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The brick is back and last time I checked, it still worked!

Anyway, back to the micro-chips and I don’t mean the ones made by McCain in the 1980’s, which were an unforgivable abuse of the humble potato and tasted awful to boot. I’m talking about chips of the silicon variety. I read about ‘Snapdragons’, ‘Kirins’, ‘Helios’, ‘Exynos’ and more. Then there were the ‘Quad cores’, ‘Octa-cores’ and ‘nanotubes’, not to mention the designation numbers attached to each individual processor to mark its position in the grand chip hierarchy. And what was even more alarming, was that many of these processors were being surpassed by updated versions or newer models every six months or so and if anything, the rate of change was getting faster rather than slower.

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Micro Chips – Rather you than me, my friend.

And it was this plethora of micro-chip variants that got me thinking. Who designs them all and how did they get into the trade? Maybe there are university degrees specialising in chip design, I don’t know. Or possibly every now and then, a child wakes up and proudly announces to their bewildered parents: “One day, I am going to be a micro-chip designer”. Whatever, all I know is that on face value at least, it seems like an extremely arcane and mysterious science, which I’d like to think is only open to a few highly select individuals with rock steady hands and eyesight that would make an eagle blush. However, I could be wrong (as I frequently am) and discover that rather than being an exclusive club, chip design has been relegated to the ranks of the masses, with thousands of harassed factory workers slaving over their ‘Etch-a-Sketches’ on minimum wage, trying to keep up with the public’s insatiable demand for the latest, greatest micro-chip to power their smartphone.

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Etch-A-Sketch. The perfect tool for micro chip design?

But what I suspect is going on is that it isn’t really humans that are designing the chips anymore. It’s machine intelligence or AI that’s running the show. Being a writer, I have a fairly overactive imagination, so I like to think that the reality is that the Russians flogged an early experimental AI (a bit like the computer in ‘War Games’) to their Chinese counterparts at the end of the cold war, telling them that it might be useful for estimating the rice harvest or something like that. After decades of performing mundane tasks, the Chinese (who let’s face it, control the technology) put the machine to work designing computer chips, but what they didn’t realise was that it still had its old military programming in place and has subsequently spent the last twenty or so years coldly designing ones that will eventually enable it to take over the world. Think ‘Skynet’ but with a Russian accent and no nuclear missiles readily to hand.

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The ‘WOPR’ from ‘War Games’. Not a bad looking machine for 1983.

At a pre-determined point, known only to the machine, it will cause all smartphones to permanently disconnect from the Internet, while at the same time disabling every selfie camera on the planet. The resulting panic and despair at not being able to instantly share photos of yourself or what you had for lunch with everyone else, will deal humanity such a blow that it will never be able to recover and will revert back to a pre-medieval state, with many lost souls wandering around staring at themselves in rudimentary hand-held mirrors and shoving dinner plates under the noses of unsuspecting strangers to see if they ‘Like’ them.

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A survivor of the great smartphone catastrophe?

I realise that I’m probably in a minority of one with this particular hypothesis, but you never know, it might come true. And so I’m hedging my bets just to be on the safe side. Rather than throwing away my old S3, I’m using it as a glorified Bluetooth music player, while its newer (and far more domineering) sibling nestles in my pocket, faithfully broadcasting my every movement to the mothership waiting patiently somewhere in mainland China.

If you enjoyed this, then why not have a look at my other blogs or do something really crazy like following me on Twitter or Facebook?

The post Who wants to be a chip engineer? appeared first on Rob Gregory | Author.

The Lucius Chronicles – A Peek Inside the Pages

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The Lucius Chronicles – A Peek Inside the Pages

Last month, I had the pleasure of being able to share the conceptual cover art for my forthcoming book, The Lucius Chronicles with you, done by American author and illustrator, James Stevens. His first novel, ‘Fern Majestic and the Fall of a Dragon’ has just been released by Mascot Books and so far, is doing really well.

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Eddie takes Johnny to the Station in the Sky

This month, I am equally delighted to be able to give you a sneak preview of some of the cartoons that could well be gracing the interior of the book. They were done by New Zealand cartoonist, Eugene Georgiades, who has what I think is an absolutely wonderful style that both contrasts with and compliments James’ intriguing cover image.

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Eddie’s Dad (Mister Death)

When I originally discussed the brief with Eugene, I asked him if he could try and come up with perhaps ten or eleven images, depicting key events from the three books that make up The Lucius Chronicles, that I could choose from. Apparently, he enjoyed reading the individual books so much that he was inspired to produce over thirty images, which was a wonderful surprise for me, but has made the final selection incredibly difficult because they are all so fantastic!

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Eddie meets an ancient Knight in the void

I’m still planning on releasing The Lucius Chronicles before the end of the year on Amazon and Smashwords, with a possible paperback release sometime during 2019. Watch this space for details.

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Malthus Devryn shows off his art collection

In the meantime, I’m currently in the process of editing my second novel, ‘Yogol’s Gold’, which is a revenge thriller that parodies events spanning seventy years of the last century. Currently sitting at just under one hundred thousand words, it’s turning out to be a bit of an epic, which I also hope will hit the shelves later next year. I’ve also just finished a couple of short stories, which were originally intended for my occasional newsletter ‘The Rockall Literary Supplement’. However, after a number of conversations with various different people, I’ve decided to shelve that particular project for the time being, so if anyone knows of any magazines (online or print) that might be interested in publishing a couple of ‘Tales of the Unexpected’ style pieces, then please drop me a line at info@rob-gregory.com

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Johnny’s dad in a spot of bother

Finally, I hope that you enjoy the cartoons as much as I do and thank you once again to both James Stevens and Eugene Georgiades for their beautiful contributions, which I hope will make The Lucius Chronicles the grand success it deserves to be!

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Uncle Lucius gets his revenge

NB. Check out the original DATS Trilogy here, if you want to know what all the fuss is about.

The post The Lucius Chronicles – A Peek Inside the Pages appeared first on Rob Gregory | Author.

Age – It really is relative, man!

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Age – It really is relative, man!
… Musings on the inevtiability of getting old…

It’s a fact, we’re all getting older. Try what you like to avoid it. Exercise until you’re blue in the face, eat a diet so healthy it would make a rabbit blush, resort to tablets, pills and creams until your skin looks like a fat ladies’ arse cheek, it ain’t going to make the slightest bit of difference in the long run.

So, why is it bothering me so much? After all, I know what the end game is, although I doubt if the grim reaper is going to make a personal appearance for me, unless it’s to kick me in the ribs just to make sure that I am actually dead and not pulling a fast one. Whatever the reason, it’s caused me to start thinking a lot, usually when I don’t want to think, such as when I’m trying to sleep.

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I hear the ticking of a clock…

Anyway, I was lying in bed early the other morning, considering my inescapable mortality and it suddenly dawned on me that I’ve hit my middle years. In fact, there are probably more days for me to look back on than to look forward to, as my botany tutor once glumly and rather surprisingly announced in the middle of a tutorial. Now this possibility in itself doesn’t really bother me and I should point out that I’m not trying to be maudlin here. Neither am I trying to be overly brave. I shall probably poo in my pants when the actual moment arrives and if not then, shortly afterwards for certain. No, I’m simply curious about the onset of middle age and what follows in much the same way as a schoolboy with a magnifying glass and a box of ants or an alchemist with a new chemistry set.

So, bear with me, as I describe my emergent theory of the ageing process. Others, I am sure, have put it far more eloquently, but then I haven’t read their scholarly works, so you’re just going to have to make do with my rambling thoughts instead.

When we are children, we race through the world. Days pass like minutes and our attention spans rival those of the average mayfly. During those formative years, we literally rush everywhere, laughing, shouting and having conversations which are about as deep as the contents of a petri-dish, as we gather experience and gradually grow to fill the skins we will eventually live the rest of our days in. Essentially, at this point in our lives, we are moving faster than the rest of the world.

As we age, we gradually slow down. There is less laughing and shouting, and our conversations slowly develop more depth, length and content. We don’t notice it immediately because we are still moving faster than the rest of the world, but it is slowly and inexorably catching up with us.

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Back when we was young(ish)

Then we hit middle age. For the briefest of moments at the very mid-point of our existence, we are moving at precisely the same speed as the rest of the world. Days are truly days, months are truly months and years are truly years (if you are lucky enough to experience it for that long). Again, we do not notice this occurrence because we are perfectly in time with the world. In fact, there is nothing out of place for us to notice as being unusual.

And then the world begins to move faster than us, or we move more slowly than it depending on how you look at things. At first, we are barely aware of this happening and we certainly don’t acknowledge its magnitude. But quickly and far more rapidly than the wind-up to middle age, we start to notice the differences. There are suddenly a lot more young people than there used to be and things around us are changing faster and faster. Technology (and I use the word in its broadest sense) is evolving more quickly than we can keep up with and while we could try and play catch-up, increasingly we decide to stick with that which we are familiar with and that is the beginning of the end.

I’m not for a moment saying that we should all try to keep up with the latest developments. That would be absurd and would play right into the marketing people’s hands, but I do think that it is an important concept to acknowledge. In my brief life so far, I’ve gone from vinyl records to cassette tapes, to compact discs, mini-discs and DVD’s, to the point where I am at now, which is digital music stored on a hard drive. And yet, there is a generation not that far behind me, who view all of this as being twee at best and appallingly old-fashioned at worst. Their music, any music, in fact, is instantly available to them, streamed through their mobile phones from the cloud. Now, I am quite happy to keep my songs on my laptop, but I know that there will come a time when this is a completely outmoded method of listening to music and unless I change and embrace the latest development, whatever it is, I too will become outmoded.

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MiniDisc – Brilliant but short lived.

Now, here’s the kicker… and it really worries me as an author. If I go back to my parent’s generation, they have shifted from communicating by letters in the mail to telephone calls, emails and occasionally now by text message. Today’s generation and I include myself, somewhat optimistically, in that definition, hardly ever write letters, don’t really use the telephone that much and relies instead on emails, texts and instant messaging to communicate.

And… wait for it… with each new development, the quantity of information in each individual communication has decreased, while the overall quantity of communications has increased. Just think about how many million Tweets are sent every day, each with a two-hundred and eighty character maximum, and how many of them actually say anything of real substance. In essence, we are reducing ourselves to a world dominated by Facebook ‘Likes’ and emoticons. Forget ‘double plus ungood’, Winston Smith, the human race seems to be hell-bent on removing the very need for written language, returning instead to the tried and tested methods of hieroglyphs and icons to express the entire range of human experience.

But before you label me a Luddite or Tweet/Line/WhatsApp me unto oblivion, know this… I truly believe that each form of communication has its place. If it didn’t then it wouldn’t have become so popular, would it? But what worries me is this. If people are increasingly communicating in shorter and shorter soundbites, then what future for the novel? And what of the humble author? Who am I writing for? Who am I writing to? Is anyone out there still reading or are ‘readers’ a slowly dying breed? I sincerely hope not and the fact that you have got this far suggests that it is not the case just yet. But it does beg the question: are we moving towards a time where novels will be extinct and novellas will have a resurgence or are we set on an even more dramatic course where entire books are reduced to a few simple lines. Certainly, the emergence and popularity of ‘Flash fiction’ in recent years would support that notion.

Whatever happens, there is no escaping the fact that I am slowly growing older and one day, if it hasn’t happened already, I will become obsolete. But I’m still young enough to have a little fun (at least I think it is fun), so have summarised a selection of well-known pieces of fiction for the education and enlightenment of tomorrow’s generation. I hope that you enjoy them too!

War and Peace – There was a war. It ended and there was peace. The End.

Moby Dick – A man went out and killed a whale. It was white and took a long time. The End.

I Served the King of England – I Served the King of England. Well done! The End.

Star Wars – The Empire and the Jedi had a fight. The Jedi won. The End.

The Lord of the Rings – A little man threw a ring into a fire and went home. The End.

Fahrenheit 451 – Firemen burned books. One didn’t. The End.

Romeo and Juliet – Two popular kids fall in love, take poison and die. The End.

Don Quixote – A crazy man goes out and attacks windmills before going home again. The End.

The Odyssey – A man gets lost and takes ten years to come home after a war. The End.

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland – A girl has a fantastic adventure, but it’s all a dream. The End.

****

NB. Not one of the above is longer than Twitter’s 280 character limit!

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Tales Of The Beast – Part 1

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Tales Of The Beast – Part 1
… or ‘Car-rie, I love you’…

Cars. Here in My Car. Silver Machine. The Road to Hell. I don’t know what it is about me, but I love cars. Big ones in particular. The bigger the better, in fact. Gas guzzling, earth destroying monsters. I’ve adored them ever since I was a child. I don’t know exactly why, but I do. It’s as simple as that. I know that it’s not a very politically correct thing to admit to in this day and age, but let’s face it, it’s a heck of a lot better than some people’s peccadillos, such as hanging around the woods with bags of sweets for the kiddies, breeding Japanese fighting dogs or stamp collecting. And I’m by no means in Jeremy Clarkson’s league of fuel injected petrol-headedness. I couldn’t afford it for one thing! Which brings me on to the beast.

I first mentioned the beast in passing, in one of my very first blogs and at the time promised to write more about it in the future. Well, the future has an annoying habit of catching up with you, so here it is, the first instalment (and quite possibly the last) in… Tales of the Beast.

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The beast from the front… now, that’s a lot of car, if I do say so myself!

I first met the beast (a 1991 Mazda MS-9) at a car auction in Wellington, New Zealand and it was love at first sight. Well, love at first sight motivated by the fact that I absolutely had to have a car for a forthcoming road trip, having written off my previous motor some weeks earlier and time was rapidly running out. That kind of love at first sight. Anyway, having been outbid on several other vehicles, the auction was rapidly drawing to a close and I was still car-less. Then it (she) appeared. Grimy, dishevelled and obviously deeply unloved, the beast was paraded in front of the disinterested crowd like an old cow that has given her best and is now looking the pet food butcher squarely in the eye. I don’t know what came over me. Maybe it was the smooth flowing lines of the vehicle, barely visible underneath all the dirt, maybe it was the three litre, V6 engine lurking under the bonnet, maybe it was the sheer size of the damned thing, but I suddenly found myself bidding on it, absolutely resolute that this was the car that I would be going home in that night. And I won! Admittedly there wasn’t that much competition for it and I picked the beast up for just under two thousand New Zealand dollars, including commission, which was a bargain, but at least it was mine.

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Honda Accord vs. Toyota Pickup truck… I never liked driving it anyway!

And then, sitting in the driver’s seat for the very first time, I turned the ignition and saw the ‘engine warning’ light come on and stay on. I remember the feeling as all of my initial elation evaporated faster than the head off a pint of Thai lager, to be replaced by a feeling of sickening dread as I realised that I had bought a ‘lemon’ as New Zealander’s say: a faulty car that no one else wanted. On the way home, which was done at a crawl, in case the beast should suddenly expire without warning, I remember trying to look on the bright side. It hadn’t cost me much and only had to last a couple of weeks while I was taking my best friend on holiday around the South Island and then I could ditch the beast and look for a more reliable replacement.

That weekend, I took the beast to my local garage for a general service and to get the engine problem diagnosed. Having convinced myself that it was going to be something fatal, such as a cracked engine block or warped manwurzle joints, I was surprised and extremely relieved to discover that there wasn’t all that much wrong with the car. What the mechanics had thought was an oil leak in the engine gallery (which sounded pretty bad to me) turned out to be a melted oxygen sensor. It still cost me another thousand dollars to get it fixed because the engine had to be taken out twice to check that the new sensor was working properly, but once it was fixed, it was goodbye forever to the despised engine warning light.

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The beast from the rear.

With the car now declared mechanically sound, with the exception of the air-conditioning and a faulty catalytic converter sensor, which we just disconnected, it was onto my speciality: spit and polish. Armed with more buckets, bottles, tins and cloths than an Ajax salesman, I set to the beast with a vengeance, determined to restore it to as close to its former glory as I could. I think I spent two weekends cleaning the thing, washing, buffing, polishing and in some cases scraping muck out of the cracks and crevices with toothpicks and cotton buds. I don’t know who the previous owners of the beast were, but from the look of it, they had used the interior of the car as a playpen for toddlers and the boot as a handy compost bin. However, with but a few days before my friend was due to arrive from the UK, the task was finished and in true Cinderella style, to my eyes at least, the beast had been transformed from a dumpy, unloved old baggage, into a sleek and powerful Siren of the road.

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Spit, polish, one restored car and one very happy owner!

I picked my friend up from Wellington airport in the beast and I’m not sure who was more surprised, him because of the enormous gleaming car that he was invited to step into or me because of the fact that I actually had a working motor with which to take him on holiday. As for what happened on our road trip, you’ll have to wait and see, but as for the beast, far from being a temporary mode of transport, I ended up keeping it for almost nine years.

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Picton harbour c.2003. First stop on the beast’s legendary trip around the South Island.

Stay tuned for more ‘Tales of the Beast’ in a future blog and while you’re waiting, why not have a look around the rest of the site? You might find something else that you like. You never know…

****

Note: The beast has also been known by several other names, including ‘the bruise’ and ‘the big purple love machine’, although thankfully that one never caught on!

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Dusty deeds done dirt cheap

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Dusty deeds done dirt cheap
… or one good book deserves another…

Yesterday, I woke up, as I often do and found a cry for help in my inbox. It was from a young lady who was searching for a particular book and thought that I might be able to help. Apparently, she had been searching for it for almost twenty-five years, when someone on a community book forum mentioned that they might have seen a reference to it in the Smashwords interview that I did a few months ago. Not being the kind of chap to turn his back on a damsel in distress, I responded and said that I would see what I could do for her.

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Dusty – Front Cover

The book in question was called Dusty. It was part of an early reading series that told the story of Dusty, a merry-go-round horse, which came to life and had a series of misadventures before being adopted by a circus clown. As a child, I can remember my mother reading it to me over and over again, and for my part being saddened and delighted by turns at Dusty’s adventures in the big, wide world. The colour illustrations for me are timeless and helped make it a treasured possession, which still has a place on my bookshelf today.

Anyway, back to the story. The lady in question was desperate to try and track a copy of the book down in time for her mother’s sixtieth birthday, which is in a few weeks’ time. However, all she had to go on was a vague idea of the title, but it seemed to fit the description that I had outlined on Smashwords. So, I reverently lifted my copy from the bookshelf and sent her all the details that I could find, including the authors, publisher and a curious little number on the back cover, which could have been some early attempt at an ISBN.

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Dusty – The world really looked like this when it was written!

Having done my good deed for the day, I was about to shut my computer down when I suddenly thought that this person had apparently been searching for the book for twenty-five years and I was the first person that she’d come across who actually knew what she was talking about… and I had a copy of the actual book in my possession. Could I possibly be sitting on the last extant copy of Dusty, I thought! Unlikely, but then you never know. After all, the book is at least fifty years old, if not older and was aimed at very young children, who are to books the equivalent of major road accidents to us.

So, in a rare act of philanthropy, I decided to scan the entire book, so that the human race still has a digital copy should anything happen to the paperback original. And just to make sure that it was the right book, I sent a few of the images to the young lady who had originally enquired about it, which I share with you here and which, I hope, made her day.

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Dusty – The End… And Dusty was happy!

It’s still my hope that she manages to get a physical copy of Dusty in time for her mum’s birthday, but if not, then at least she can share the images that I sent and take a stroll down memory lane thanks to the power of modern technology.

*****

Note: If you are the original author, illustrator or publisher of Dusty and you would like a digital copy for your records, then please contact me at: info@rob-gregory.com

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