Wait a minute – SPANISH! My progress had been slow at first, then slightly slower, until eventually it seemed to stop altogether. For the last month I hadn’t even bothered to keep track of it. And yet… I checked my short-term memory. Yes! I’d been speaking Spanish in the taxi all the way to the airport! In fact I’d even checked my short-term memory in Spanish. At last, I had discovered a quantifiable achievement.
I’d made friends too. Some good ones, like Steve sitting next to me (squinting at the carving on his wooden parrot) and Ashley. Some great ones like Toby and Alice both of whom I was resolved to stay close to. I was also leaving behind, for the first time in my life, a potential True Love. Would I ever see Lady again? Hell it would be worth the price of a return ticket just for that!
The idea grew inside me for a few moments. I’d always said I’d be back one day, to see how things were doing and help Toby with his plans for a new release centre. But I was only half serious. It had been tough, sometimes very much so, to work at Santa Martha and I wasn’t sure I wanted to go through it all again. I’d left some vague hints and promises, but had carefully avoided being pinned down on when, if ever, I would return. And now? I flicked through the mental list I’d been making. Hard-won qualities one and all, yet I’d go through it all again in a heartbeat to keep them. Especially this new-found sense of surety, of confidence. The new me would kick the old me’s ass if he tried to chicken out of doing anything. In fact the new me would kick the old me’s ass just for the hell of it! I was a man now. It wasn’t something I felt the need to boast about or prove, it was just something I knew. And I also knew, had known since the thought first occurred to me, that I would be back.
“As soon as I get home, I buy my next ticket away again,” Toby had told me, “it’s the only way I can stay sane.”
A genuine piece of advice, and given before it was needed! That was a rarity indeed. It was Toby’s parting gift to me. I would do as he suggested. Maybe I’d have to get a job, for a bit. There was a good chance I’d have to buy a new phone too. How else would I organise my life? I would save as much as I could, as fast as I could. Research my options and plan the next adventure. Toby would help me if I sent him an email; he’d already done almost everything I wanted to do.
Where had Toby been? Australia. Thailand! He’d studied diving there. I’d always wanted to dive. He’d been very good at it until a boat ran him over. I was reasonably sure my reflexes were faster than his. How fast can a boat really go anyway? Maybe I’d find out. There was a whole world out there waiting to be explored. Beautiful women waiting to be… uh… explored. Oceans and beaches and temples and jungle. And plenty of animals. Maybe there’s a refuge in Thailand, I thought to myself and smiled at the prospect. I would have to look into it. I could tour the world, diving, working with animals and having crazy adventures! And someday soon I would return to Santa Martha, of this I was sure. After all, I’d left my little dog there.
THE END
Hi folks! Tony here…
Thank-you so much for buying and reading my book! I hope you enjoyed it. If you have any questions, or feedback (or want to punch me in the face just for writing it!) I’d love to hear from you. I believe that the best way to grow as an author is by listening to my readers, so don’t be shy!
You can find me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/TonyJamesSlater
or catch me on Facebook: http://facebook.com/TonyJamesSlater
or if you get the urge, you can always email me: [email protected]
Also, please consider leaving a review on Amazon. It only has to be a line or two, and it’s the best way you can help me out (beyond convincing everyone in your Aunt Mabel’s spinning class to buy a copy!). Word of mouth is vital in this game. I love getting reviews – I really appreciate the effort, and I read every single one!
You can find the page by typing this into your internet browser:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0057P6FNO (UK)
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0057P6FNO (US & rest of world)
Or just go to the Amazon website, and search for:
‘That Bear Ate My Pants!’
I promise you there’s only one book called that!
And now, flick over to the next page for a brief excerpt from my second book, called ‘Don’t Need The Whole Dog!’ (because… well, we didn’t!)
PREVIEW OF ‘DON’T NEED THE WHOLE DOG!’
Prologue
You know those moments, when you think you’ll do something really brave? You convince yourself that you’re ready, and screw your courage to the sticking point. You might even say things to yourself, like ‘It can’t be that bad,’ or ‘What’s the worst that can happen?’
I remember those moments. I don’t have many of them any more.
I’m starting to learn my lesson.
The poor dog, sound asleep, was carefully and strategically shaved.
Then a green cloth was draped over the top of him.
The cloth had a small square hole in it, which came to rest precisely over the dog’s nut-sack, leaving his balls protruding from the middle of it.
I winced when the nurse gave them a forceful prod with one finger.
That would have woken me up, regardless of the anaesthetic.
But the nurse was just warming up.
Deciding everything was ready, she deftly grasped one testicle between fingers and thumb, and tugged it slightly away from the body.
I nearly dropped to the floor in sympathy when she squeezed the scrotum, tightening the sack to make its delicate contents more prominent.
Then she reached for the scalpel I was holding. She took it, raised it, aimed it and lowered…
And that was as much as I could take. Something about the coldness of the razor-sharp steel, the way it slid through that ball-sack, opening it up like a zipper – affected me deeply.
I had no choice.
I dropped my implements on the table, sprinted out of the back door and threw up in the washing machine.
Well, there are worse things to be sick into…
I’d seen a lot since my arrival in Thailand. Some of it beautiful; some, slightly less so. And then there were the things I could never un-see – like my first ever castration. Oh yes, I was living the dream, alright – even though bits of it seemed more like a nightmare.
But all that was nothing compared to what it had taken me to get this far…
Buy ‘Don’t Need The Whole Dog!’ now on Amazon:
Amazon UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00AP3R2Z8
Amazon US: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00AP3R2Z8
About Tony James Slater
Tony James Slater is a very, very strange man. He believes himself to be indestructible, despite considerable evidence to the contrary. He is often to be found making strange faces whilst pretending to be attacked by inanimate objects. And sometimes – not always, but often enough to be of concern – his testicles hang out of the holes in his trousers.
It is for this reason (amongst others) that he chooses to spend his life far from mainstream civilization, tackling ridiculous challenges and subjecting himself to constant danger. He gets hurt quite a lot.
To see pictures of the animals, read Tony’s blog, or complain about his shameless self promotion, please visit:
www.TonyJamesSlater.com
But BE WARNED! Some of the writing is in red.
BOOK THREE
MORE KETCHUP
THAN SALSA
JOE CAWLEY
Also available in Paperback
‘More Ketchup’ Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
An extract from the sequel
More Books by this author
Joe Cawley
CHAPTER 1
It was whilst holding aloft a not altogether pleasant-smelling mackerel that the decision was made. Blood dripping from a rabbit dangling overhead tinted the cold water from the fish and rolled down a white sleeve. The March rain hammered on the rotting tin roof high above the stall and where there was more rot than metal columns of water plunged onto the shuffling shoppers below. Their faces were drawn and bleak like a funeral cortege following the last remains of hope. From life they expected nothing – save a nice piece of cod at a knockdown price. Northern England in March. Northern England for most of the year, in fact. I was 28. There had to be more. I lowered the fish to eye level, ‘Is this my life?’
The fish said nothing but I already knew the answer.
I had worked on Bolton market for six months forcing myself out of bed at 3.30 every morning to spend 11 hours knee-deep in guts and giblets, selling trays of dubious fish and chicken at three for a fiver. The freezing cold and the smell I had grown used to but the pinched expressions of fellow passengers on the bus journey home still brought about a great deal of embarrassment. It couldn’t be denied, in the inverted language of market traders I was lemsy (smelly) from deelo (old) fish.
Word inversion was useful when you didn’t want customers to understand. ‘Tar attack!’ would have all the workers scuttling for higher ground onto splintered pallets or battered boxes of chicken thighs stacked at the back of the stall as a rat the size of a bulldog decided it was time for mayhem.
Originally dubbed the poor man’s market in what was a working man’s town built on the prosperity of the local cotton mills, Bolton market was subsidised by the council to provide cheap food and clothing for low-income workers. (In a flourish of affluent delusion it has since been completely refurbished and modernised. The rats get to scamper around on fitted nylon carpets amid designer lighting franchises. An elegant coffee shop offering vanilla slices on dainty china now occupies the spot where once the best meat and potato pie butties in Lancashire were messily consumed by fishy-fingered stall workers like me.)
It was an undemanding job both physically and mentally, which suited me fine. Stress was for the rich and hardworking, characteristics that were never going to be heading my way. That’s not to say that I was content. A string of menial jobs had taught me that contentment is not always found on the path of least resistance but I had found myself meandering towards that monotone British lifestyle of school-job-pension-coffin and something needed to be done, fast.
I had grown bored with the same old stallholder banter – ‘We’re losing a lot of money, but we’re making a lot of friends,’ or ‘Oh yes love, it is fresh, it will freeze.’
I was becoming weary of the merciless teasing of old ladies as they stood at the stall with purses wide open, names inadvertently displayed on their bus passes.
‘Hello Mrs Jones. Fancy seeing you here.’
From beneath a crocheted hat the gaunt figure would try to force a vague recollection. ‘I... err...’
‘You remember me, don’t you, Mrs Jones? I used to come round your house for tea every Friday.’
‘I... I think I do. Yes, yes. Now I remember,’ she would say with a weak smile.
Even the daily competition to land a rabbit’s head in Duncan’s hood had lost its appeal. Duncan was a mentally retarded hulk who, although teased mercilessly by the market crew, was also well looked after by them. They gave him pocket money that he spent on Beano comics and Uncle Joe’s Mintballs, and made sure that no harm came to him from occasional gangs of skinheads that, for want of anything more constructive to do, would try to beat him senseless.
At six-foot-four, eighteen-stone, with no neck and an unappealing habit of walking around with his cheeks puffed out and his bottom lip investigating the underside of his nose, he was not what most able-sighted people would term ‘attractive’. If one of the workers did manage to score a rabbit he would charge at the victor, bellow obscenities and curse them with death threats until his attention was distracted by one of the girls. At this point all aggression would dissipate as he embellished the gurning with a damp pout. ‘Give us a kiss,’ he would demand in such a commanding voice that were it not for his spectacular ugliness would have been hard to refuse.
‘Hey, boss,’ I shouted, jerking my head back from the open box of chicken thighs, ‘you can’t sell this. It stinks.’ Pat continued pulling at the innards of a rabbit.
‘Dip it in tandoori and put it out as five for a fiver.’ I looked down at the poultry pieces glowing green.
‘No. I mean it really stinks. You’ll kill somebody with this.’ Pat lifted a red-stained sleeve above his shaved head and breathed in the blend of blood and body odour. His shoulders rose as his round torso filled with the sweet smell.
‘You’ve been here six months. Don’t start getting a jeffin’ conscience on me now,’ he grunted. He pointed the sharp end of a filleting knife towards me. ‘Get it sold. Anyway, the dead can’t complain.’
I dipped each piece in the bucket of rust-coloured spice then chucked them all in the waste bin when Pat turned his back to have a word with one of the girls who had lost a false nail inside the rainbow trout she was gutting.
I decided that I should dispose of his lethal produce more permanently and wheeled the bin outside to the main rubbish collection point. The sky had given up on any attempts of clarity and had slipped into dull grey pyjamas, sucking the last remnants of colour from Ashburner Street. When had life turned grey? I asked myself. Where was the excitement, the glamour, the anticipation of things to come?
A voice answered; ‘Come on Tinkerbell. There’s fourteen rabbits waiting for decapitation in here.’ Pat was poking his ruddy cheeks around the huge sliding doors, an ill-timed intrusion on the meaning of life.
A nine-to-five had never been a burning ambition. Neither for that matter was a five-to-four. I had long aspired to be a musician – well, a drummer at least. I’d answered the ad in my head and spent 14 years in an interminable interview.
Rock Star Wanted
Requirements: The ability to sit on your arse, make a lot of noise and become famous.
Remuneration: Unbelievable.
Perks: Aplenty.
But try as I might, I was always several beats behind stardom. A sporadic booking at Tintwistle Working Men’s Club was the closest I’d got to Wembley Stadium, which was more than 200 miles further up the pop ladder of success.
My battered old Pearl drum kit now gathered dust at the back of a garage in Compstall while my life did the same at the back of a fish stall in Bolton. I desperately needed an out.
‘Hola!’ Two hands covered my eyes from behind.
‘I thought you weren’t back ‘til tonight,’ I said and planted a kiss on Joy’s cheek. She’d just returned from a girls’ week in Tenerife.
‘I got the flight time mixed up so I thought I’d surprise you. You smell nice.’ She peeled a phlegm of chicken skin off my neck.
‘Pat’s trying to offload some killer chicken. I’ve chucked it in the bin. You look well. Had a good time?’
‘Yeah great. But listen, I’ve got some news. Big news. Meet me in the Ram’s after work.’ She winked and ran to the bus stop where the number 19 had just sprayed a line of rain-stained shoppers.
The rest of the afternoon passed just like any other. Terry came round to see if any of us had orders for him. ‘There’s a lovely brass table lamp I saw in Whitakers,’ said Julie, Pat’s wife. ‘Green glass shade, second floor, next to the clocks.’
‘Can you get me a clock, Terry? Nothing too fancy. Wooden perhaps. Something that’ll look nice above me kitchen door,’ asked Ruth, interrupting the customer she was serving.
Debbie, Pat and Julie’s daughter, flapped her arms excitedly. ‘Oh, Terry, Terry, me Walkm
an’s bust. Get me a good one, will you? And don’t forget the batteries this time.’
Terry scribbled the orders on a scrap of paper. ‘Joe? Any more CDs?’
‘If you can get Thrills ’N’ Pills and Bellyaches I’ll have that.’
‘Hey, if it’s pills you want, you only need to ask.’
‘No, it’s the new Happy Mondays CD.’
‘Oh, OK,’ he said, disappointed, ‘I’ll see what I can do. But if you do want pills,’ he tapped his nose conspiratorially, ‘I know a man.’
Terry returned at the end of the day, red-faced and panting. He dragged a large, leather holdall behind the stall.
‘Littlewoods are here,’ shouted Julie. We grouped around Terry who opened the bag and passed around the various items like Father Christmas on day release. Price tags were strung around the clock and table lamp and my CD still had the security tag attached.
‘I’ll be back on Saturday to settle up,’ he said and scuttled off into the crowd with the empty bag.
I continued to push out ‘tish’ at three for a fiver and mechanically joined in the banter. We wolf-whistled at passing girls and then shouted after them as they turned and blushed, ‘Not you love. Don’t flatter yourself.’ Monotony could be so cruel.
The Ram’s Head was not the obvious choice for a celebratory reunion but it was run by Leonard, the only landlord who would put up with the aroma of stale trout. A previous and unsuccessful career in boxing had left him nasally advantaged when it came to our patronage.
There were half a dozen drinkers scattered about the perimeter of the high-vaulted room. Most sat alone. Their eyes tracked what little movement occurred beyond Leonard methodically drying glasses with an aged tea towel. A Jack Russell lay across the feet of one man. It yawned at the lack of antagonists whilst its master carefully rolled a cigarette as if in slow motion.
Five Bestselling Travel Memoirs Box Set Page 56