Category: Razzamatazz

Memories of my camel injuries weren’t the only thing I brought back with me from Lanzarote, as I have been struck down by a virus and order generic viagra have been feeling worse that death warmed up for the past couple of days, in fact death warmed up would be a luxury.
However I have had good news to temper the bad, for while I have been away on holiday a book publisher has emailed me, wishing to know if I am interested in his firm re-publishing my book Dear Air 2000 and publishing its follow up, Dear Coca-Cola. Am I interested? Is a man just released from a ten year jail sentence interested in getting a shag. Is a man dying from thirst in the desert interested in a drink of water? Do bears shit on The Pope?
However, not wishing to appear too eager I waited for two minutes before emailing back that I would be delighted if he were to publish my books. (Dear Air 2000 is at the moment a self-published book. Self-publishing is all very well and it gets you into print for not much money but it is the Devil’s own job to get a self-published book into retail outlets like Waterstone’s and W H Smith, which it of course needs to be to get decent sales and make the whole business worthwhile, if profit is the motive).
The upshot of it is that I am meeting the publisher for lunch in London next Tuesday.  I’ll get the most expensive bottle of wine on the wine list out of him if nothing else. Actually he has already offered me a handsome advance which I am not about to turn down.
Since relating my good fortune to friends and family I have been inundated with well-meaning good advice, particularly in regard to the contract I will eventually have to commit myself to. Apparently most publishers’ contracts can be likened only to minefields when it comes to possible dangers, and always drawn up in such a way as to obtain the greatest reward possible for the publisher and the least possible reward for the writer. In fact one friend warned that contracts can be so biased in favour of the publisher that it is quite possible that the writer ends up paying (I) them. Therefore I will be eyeing any contract offered to me with suitable suspicion. And if anyone out there has any tips on publishing contract negotiations please feel free to pass them on, they would be most appreciated.
Getting back to my friends, they are of course delighted for me. Especially Atkins Down The Road, who sees my success as encouragement to his own literary ambitions, having almost completed his crime/mystery novel Lady Don’t Look Backwards. Actually I’ve read it and the only crime will be if it ever gets published and the only mystery is why Atkins thinks it has any merit, but try telling him that.

Ignore this if you have already read it. My books Dear Air 2000 and Football Crazy are now in print. They are priced at £8.99 each and are available from Amazon, but readers of my blog can buy them direct from me for £7.50 including p & p. Just send me a cheque and I will send the book/books by return.

You can write to me at –

Terry Ravenscroft, 19 Ventura Court, Ollersett Avenue, New Mills, High Peak, SK22 4LL

Dear Air 2000

Everything was going fine until the camel in front of my camel farted.
However I’d better begin at the beginning.
On holiday in Lanzarote I was looking at the brochure of holiday attractions that that wonderful little island has to offer when my eyes alighted on the words, ‘You will have the possibility of riding a camel’ included in the advertising literature for a trip up Fire Mountain, Lanzarote’s most famous attraction. Untroubled by having only the most basic skills in English Language, what the writer of the blurb probably meant was ‘You will have the opportunity to ride a camel’; for a possibility it most certainly was not, certainly not for me at any rate, because having succumbed to the delights of camel riding on a previous visit to Lanzarote twelve months ago I wasn’t about to tempt fate a second time. Once bitten, twice shy, as the saying goes, although to tell the truth I wasn’t bitten by the camel, just merely deposited on the floor and kicked a couple of times.
The muzzle adorning the camel’s hairy snout might have warned me that the beast I had been persuaded to ride atop would prove to be not as sweet-natured as I would have liked; The fact is I didn’t need much persuading as I had been presented with a chance to show off, and as I don’t get too many nowadays I seized upon it without concerning myself  at all with the possible consequences.
It is in fact very unusual to ride on top of the camel on these trips in the foothills of Fire Mountain as all the camels have two seats suspended to their sides, rather like large saddlebags, in which the passengers are carried. However there was an odd number in our party and I was the odd one out when everyone else had boarded. Spotting this, and no doubt seeing me as a man of action who would take it in his stride, the camel drover invited me to sit on top of the camel, rather than in one of the seats. I took this as to be nothing but good sense as to sit in one of the seats would have meant that the camel would have had an unbalanced load. In fact even if I’d spurned the camel drover’s invitation and chosen to sit in one of the seats the camel’s load wouldn’t have been half as unbalanced as its state of mind when the camel in front farted.
Animals are known to have a keener sense of smell than humans but as the stink that emanated from the camel in front’s arse was by far the worst odour it has ever been my displeasure to inhale God alone knows what it must have been like for my camel.
I have never attempted to ride a bucking bronco but after what followed I would have gladly swapped the ten seconds or so that I spent on the camel for an hour on the buckingest bronco known to the Wild West. I will never know exactly what happened when the camel went berserk because all I saw was the world going round and round and up and down at about a hundred miles an hour, before suddenly stopping to go up, but still round and round, when I hit the ground with a thud that must have been heard in our flat back in Puerto del Carmen. Before I could get to my feet the camel had kicked me in two places – where I was and about five yards further up Fire Mountain, where its first kick had deposited me. The camel drover, between laughs, couldn’t have been more apologetic. I would have preferred a smaller apology and less amusement. Fortunately only my pride was hurt, apart from a couple of large bruises, but I had rode my last camel.

Ignore this if you have already read it. My books Dear Air 2000 and Football Crazy are now in print. They are priced at £8.99 each and are available from Amazon, but readers of my blog can buy them direct from me for £7.50 including p & p. Just send me a cheque and I will send the book/books by return.

You can write to me at –

Terry Ravenscroft, 19 Ventura Court, Ollersett Avenue, New Mills, High Peak, SK22 4LL

Dear Air 2000

I will be on holiday (Lanzarote) until Monday March 5th, so no blog until then.

Ta ta for now.

You can write to me at –

Terry Ravenscroft, 19 Ventura Court, Ollersett Avenue, New Mills, High Peak, SK22 4LL

Dear Air 2000

I lost the car again this morning. Well not lost exactly, ‘temporarily forgot where I’d parked’ it would be a more accurate description.
I do this quite often nowadays. It’s an age thing I suppose. Although I wasn’t all that hot at remembering where I’d parked the car when I was much younger. I was never particularly absent-minded but, whatever failings I had in this area, they all seemed to be concentrated on the business of forgetting where I’d parked the car.
Multi-storey car parks were my main bugbear, and many the frustrated hours I’ve spent in them hopefully and hopelessly searching their dank, dark levels.

“Are you sure you left it on level D?” This is The Trouble.
“Well you were with me.”
“Yes but I didn’t notice.”
 “Perhaps you ought to have?”
“Me? It isn’t my place. It was you who parked the car therefore it’ is you who is responsible for remembering where you parked it. Although I can see I shall have to start remembering. Failing that we’ll have to start leaving a trail of bread like Hansel Gretel.”
The Trouble can be very cutting sometimes. Mind you she had every right to be cutting on this occasion as although I was correct in my belief that I’d left the car on level D we turned out to be in the wrong car park.
I once spent a good hour looking for our blue Ford Cortina before I remembered I’d changed it for a red Mondeo about a week previously. Fortunately I was on my own at the time so the incident passed without causing me any embarrassment. Which can’t be said for the time I took my twelve-year-old grandson to watch Macclesfield Town play football one Saturday afternoon.
Fully aware of my habit of forgetting where I’d left the car I made a note of the name of the street in which I’d parked it. Laburnum Drive. When we returned after the match it had disappeared. There was a space exactly where it had been, leading me to immediately jump to the conclusion that it had been stolen. Nevertheless I double and triple checked the whole length of the street to see if I hadn’t perhaps left it further up or down the street than I thought I had, but no, I was right. The car had definitely been stolen.
We made our way the short distance back to the ground and I reported the theft to a policeman in a patrol car still on duty outside the main exit. He told us to hang on for a few minutes then he would take us to the station to make a full report and see about getting us home. Five minutes later we were in the back of his patrol car on the way to the station.
We’d travelled no more than a couple of hundred yards when he made a left turn. And a few seconds later drove past my car, by now just about the only parked car left on the road. It was definitely my car. What do do? My first thought was to completely ignore it, let the policeman do his stuff, then return later for it. I hadn’t worked out how I was going to explain to the police how it came to be back in my possession but in the event there was no need to as at that moment my grandson pointed out of the window and shouted: “Grandad! Your car!”
I feigned surprise. “Is it? No, mine’s a darker blue than that.”
“No it’s yours Grandad, it’s your registration number,” the eagle-eyed little bugger squealed.
The policeman stopped the car and turned to look at me. “Sir? Is it your car?”
Wishing the earth would open up and swallow him – not me, I’ve no wish to give the hot bowels of the earth a closer examination but I didn’t mind the policeman doing it, take some of his mates if he wanted – I had to admit that it was.
It turned out that I’d been looking for the car on Laburnum Avenue, the next street down, and parallel to, Laburnum Drive.
“It isn’t the first time this has happened,” said the policeman, in the tone of voice that was consoling but nevertheless got over the fact that he thought he was dealing with a bloody idiot. “It’ll be the last time it happens to me,” I said.
“You’re going to make really sure that we’ve got the right street next time, aren’t you Grandad,” said my solicitous grandson.
“No, we’re never bloody coming here,” I said. “Get in the car.”

Ignore this if you have already read it. My books Dear Air 2000 and Football Crazy are now in print. They are priced at £8.99 each and are available from Amazon, but readers of my blog can buy them direct from me for £7.50 including p & p. Just send me a cheque and I will send the book/books by return.

You can write to me at –

Terry Ravenscroft, 19 Ventura Court, Ollersett Avenue, New Mills, High Peak, SK22 4LL

Dear Air 2000

Football Crazy