FREE AUDIO SAMPLE OF TWO FEET

The best reads of the year.

Two great novels stand-out for me this year -- stand-out amidst the tsunami of so-called celebrity authors, a cat named Bob or Charles or whatever and an avalanche of soppy, teenage "stories" about first love and disastrous parenting.
If someone out there can please send me the true definition of a "celebrity" please, please do.

My choice:

....to all those readers of this Blog, I wish you a great time over the festive Season and may 2015 be a bright light on your horizon.

Best Wishes.

TWO FEET - AUDIO BOOK SAMPLE - MARK ROPER

Quote of the Week - H is for Hawk

QUOTE OF THE WEEK:

...in her brilliant  novel, H is for Hawk, Helen MacDonald writes about the author, T.H.White:

"...White had learned that going back in time was a way of fixing things; uncovering past traumas, revisiting them and defusing their power". 

 It is why people write memoirs.

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/aug/01/helen-macdonald-interview-hawk-grief

Two Feet the memoirs

Mr. Morrison -- your trolley is in my aisle.

Dear Mr. Morrison of +Morrisons
Off the bat, do you mind if I call you William or, better yet, Bill? I appreciate this is probably rude of me considering that you managed to turn a simple egg and butter stall back in 1899 (Morrison history) into what is now a major (okay, you are number 4 of 4) chain of supermarkets; but as I occasionally haunt the aisles of your business,  I feel we do have a sense of familiarity. Either way, Bill, congrats on getting the business where it is today: I've been in the film business for thirty years and I'm still fighting red over black when it comes to bank statements and you don't even want to know what Hell it is trying to sell a novel out there.
Up front, Bill, I'm a +Waitrose man -- now that's not a class or money decision. On the contrary. I just like being able to amble down an aisle with my FREE trolley and peruse a variety (note variety here Bill) of foodstuffs. I like the fact that I can PAUSE in an aisle, Bill -- pause and reflect and realise that there are five, if not six, brands of rice in this world: realise that Morrison's did not invent the only pasta sauce and, would you believe Bill, that not all soon to be pork roasts are wrapped in blood soaked clingfilm? It is a wondrous thing, Bill, to be able to idly choose on what to spend your sweat stained pound on, rather than be given the choice of nought but your name brand. I'm okay when it comes to toilet paper and the like, Bill, but come on, Pasta Sauce,headache tablets,soap,baked beans etc etc........?? Give a man a choice and he will come back for more.
Now here is the bone of contention, Bill -- why in the name of Hell and its followers, do you choose to stock your shelves every minute of the day? Okay -- maybe I'm exaggerating, so let me rephrase, Bill -- why is it that every time I habituate your store, I'm not only fighting off obscene screaming mothers, screaming children, obese fathers and cellular phone touting teens, but a multitude of your staff and their unweilding effing trolleys?
I kid you not, Bill -- take a wander when you can. I want a pork pie. There's your trolley, your guy, right there, builder's crack and all, stocking the exact shelf. I make a detour for the tomatoes (what's with this recent dry ice effect going on with the veggies, Bill? I don't quite get it. I gave it a few moments of my attention and was expecting a rock concert but then I got rudely interrupted by a brat steering your one pound trolley) and when I arrive, guess what? Bang! Your trolley and two acne laced teens lazily tossing bags of onions and discussing their next smoke break. Right there, barricading the damn tomatoes, Bill!
So here's the thing -- I'm not saying Waitrose and the like don't have to re-stock their shelves during the day. But they seem to do it...well... in a clandestine manner. They apologise for being there. They ask if they can help. Your mob? Forget it, Bill -- my little one pound trolley is but a mere ant versus your tank; versus your over-stacked, rusty heap of piped metal on shaky wheels.
Get out of my aisle, Bill -- I'm there to spend money on groceries, not to attend a demolition derby.
P.S. Have you ever thought about selling books only published by self-publishers? I'm, of course, suggesting this for selfish reasons, but I do have an ulterior motive: if you did, at least you could offer a damn choice, Bill.
Think about it.

TO READ MORE OF MARK ROPER'S RAMBLINGS, PLEASE VISIT here.

Better yet, download a novella of his scribblings at a ridiculous low price!!!

Lost in Bankgok

Whilst stuck in the traffic here in Bangkok out of boredom I asked Siri where I was.
Here was the response:

...if that doesn't sum up "life" nothing does!!!!
Traffic in Bangkok is relentless -- when it moves, it is, from a foreign perspective, chaotic. An endless cacophony of vehicle and people movement, of disturbed ants. Then it freezes, and the smells take over. Wafts of frying food and sun blasted sewers, of human sweat and incense invade -- over loaded scooters line up like the starting grid of a Grand Prix. Dogs sleep, nonplussed.
Then it moves in a rush, a blast -- another block of weaving, concrete above, a bus so close you can exchange names -- then that pause, that wait -- passengers side saddle with no helmet and a street vendor crossing the road with pork still frying.
Smiling.
Accepting.
A great city.

Journey to nowhere

Kindle Countdown - low priced books

Kindle Countdown -- low priced books

Mabuza once told me that if there are holes in the road you often travel, stop and fill them in, for this will help the man travelling behind you.

Was Mabuza my Madiba, my Mandela? Probably. This was South Africa, and we all needed guidance on what was a bumpy road. 


...the novella TWO FEET is on a Kindle Countdown for the next three days -- perfect stocking filler so I am told!!

 A compelling collection of stories reflecting an adolescent’s memories of an unconventional upbringing in Southern Africa during the 1960’s.

   Allowed to roam the veldt under the protective wing of the Swazi Warrior, Mabuza, the boy’s journey is merged with humour, witticisms, anecdotes and insights from having to navigate the potholes that are left behind by the abrupt disappearance of his father.   

   From learning how to walk with bare feet and how to deal with the unorthodox teaching methods of Meneer Gerber, the reader is transported into a boy’s world where dreams triumph over reality. Set beneath the bigness of the African sky, the stories are pivoted by the boy’s imagining of his father convalescing in a distant hospital, where a natural remedy might be the potion for us all.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Two-Feet-Mark-Roper-ebook/dp/B00D368NT8

Learning to walk. Free chapter.

...learning to walk is one thing, learning to walk with no shoes is another. Back in the good old days, walking bare footed was a norm...you somehow felt connected to it all but the times have changed and I seriously wonder if today's Health and Safety idiots are busily compiling further rules to justify why kids should NOT walk with bare feet. Anyway -- so be it:
Enjoy the free chapter from TWO FEET and, yet again, I'd greatly appreciate your comments. This is NOT a difficult thing to do -- at the end of the chapter, is a little box...just add your X!! And please note, all the novels can be borrowed for FREE --
...enjoy your journey.

LEARNING TO WALK

If you wore shoes – as I did for one day only -- at the local Eastern Cape Government School, you were ridiculed and beaten, so you did not wear them. You went home and put them in the cupboard and ignored them, as shiny and black and tough as they may have been, forever more.

Learning the art of walking barefoot was a necessity for any child who did not want to be ridiculed and beaten or put in a metal rubbish barrel and rolled down a hill or have his head held over the school long drop (outdoor toilet) and forced to inhale, exhale and inhale as a barefoot farm boy twice your age kicked your backside as if it was a rugby ball.

Shoes were for the sissies and the rich, and as schoolboy law forbid either, that was that.

Barefoot, or die.

For the soft-soled, pink-fleshed farm boy, the initial steps are agony. The dusty sand offers heated granules that swamp your naked flesh and the hard trodden areas on the path to the milk shed are as hot as the plate on a stove, so you start your learning by hopping from foot to foot which is witnessed by the herd boy who daily washes the milk cans who quickly and politely turns his back on you, but you can see by the movement of his shoulder blades that he is laughing.

You retreat to the steps of your porch, which is cooler in the shadow offered by the jacaranda creeper where the bumble-bee flit to and fro and there you start to breathe again.

Tomorrow you will have to take the bus to school, and you know that if you wear shoes you will be staring into the long drop as some barefooted, bigger-than-you farm boy kicks your backside so you step back off the porch and you avoid the loose gravel but you adopt a form of hopping because, in your mind, you think this is how the native children that you have seen running to school do it.

You are wrong. The red earth is now blistering hot, and you feel your toes curl away from the heat, so you take unusually long strides toward the soft ground where the dogs sometime rest when the heat gets to them, but you don’t see the masticated bone on the ground, and when you step on it, you bite back pain and, again, retreat to the porch where you collapse onto your soon to be kicked backside and hold your aching feet in your hands.

Thus far, you have learnt only to hop, and it is guaranteed that the herd boy who washes the milk cans has already told the tractor driver who is now telling the maid that he is hoping to marry, that the white farm boy cannot, or does not know how to, walk properly.

I have surrendered and have sounded the horn of retreat. On the stoep, I begin putting on my veldskoens, but as I am doing up the leather laces I have a picture of those children that I see every morning running to the small school on Old Man Ford’s farm (the one with the red tin roof that has no glass in its windows and the playing field is as barren as a bush pig’s hole) in my mind.

As routine as a school bell, these children run, daily, some miles down the length of the main dirt road that navigates past the farm gate. It is a wide road that is covered with corrugations, stones and jaw-breaking potholes. The children run barefoot carrying their slates or a tatty exercise book. They are always smiling and will always wave to you as you drive past in the school bus.

I study this picture in my head as my hands pause over the laces of my veldskoens. I think of their faces, and I am seeing, in my mind that they run with their heads held high; that they are proud to be running barefoot on that road to school. They are focused on what lies ahead for the day, their eyes darting left to right occasionally in case they may see a bird’s nest with eggs in it or the silver of a hub-cap that may have fallen off a pot-hole dodging car the night before.

They are not watching their feet on the ground. They are not running on the ground. Their feet are not touching the sharp, granite stones or the rusty lid of an abandoned sardine can or the heated granules of sand or even the hard cowpat left there by stray cattle.

This is I realise, about mind over matter.

I take off my veldskoen and stand with my bare feet on the waxed surface of the stoep, and I look toward the milking shed where the herd boy is no longer washing the empty cans. A thin spiral of smoke is coming out of the chimney on the roof of the tin sided hut where the water is boiled for milking. To the left of the path the fence there is covered with Granadilla plants and to the right there is a space dotted with clumps of khaki weed and stinging nettles. I focus on the milking shed, the door of the dairy, and the thin spiral of smoke. I keep my back straight. I step off the stoep and onto the sun-baked path.

I get to the milk shed in seconds flat, but I know I never did wince with pain once.

I spent the remainder of the day walking around the farmhouse with a straight back and head held aloft and ignoring my naked feet. Because of this posture, I was soon nicknamed “Skolomanzi” by the herd boys. This is the name they have given to the Blue Crane birds that wade in the shallows looking for fish, frogs and snakes.

That night as I step into the tepid, soapy water left in the bath, I shout out with pain. I rest my bare, no-longer-to-be kicked backside on the edge of the bath and look at the soles of my feet. They are red and inflicted with razor-like cuts.

When I sit down in the school bus the next day, I make certain that my bare feet protrude out into the aisle so that their lack of leather covering can be seen by all, especially the pimple faced over the age of his class farm boy seated across from me.

“Hey,” he says to me.” How come you wear your blerry hair so long? Hey? Just like a blerry girl, man! Sis!”

I stare out of the bus window hoping to see the native children running to school.

Talking With Dog

This is DOG:

...he may not be what you expected, but, hopefully, not much in the book is either -- Talking With Dog is an adaptation of a screenplay so it reads somewhat different...like a high speed car chase I suppose.

Here's Dog's introduction :

My name is Dog.

I am a simple creature: I eat from a simple carcass. I ask for no more or less. I am good.

I fly your sky. From a height I witnessed the beginning of the end.

In my simplicity I do not profess to know your sciences, your mathematics, your nucleus, atoms and fission.

 From aloft, riding a thermal, I experience the detonation.

My wings are buffeted by the shock waves that precede the wrath.

My body is pummelled.

I close my eyes to the whiteness of the light before I begin to spiral away.

Toward what and where, I do not know.

Only time will tell. 

Two Feet - a free chapter

THE SOUND OF A HAGGIS??

...DOES A HAGGIS HAVE A SOUND?? READ FOR YOURSELF. 

This is what I imagine.

My father was dying from a diseased lung, liver or kidney.

Whichever the ailing organ was, it’s decaying state had been described to him as having the texture of a Haggis.

That is how the Indian doctor, from Calcutta, had described the infected appendage.

 “Spotted like a Haggis, “he had muttered as he stared at the ghostly image that was scorched on the grey and white sheet of X-ray in the room where only one fluorescent tube worked and the fly-strip, heavy with its catch, hung limp from the ceiling.

Through the rusty mosquito netted window, the earth was red, and the sky a brilliant blue, as it always is in Africa.

The Indian doctor, from Calcutta, had recently received a letter from his brother in Birmingham, England. In the letter, his brother had told him that he’d travelled to Scotland. In the letter, he had written down the ingredients for haggis.

These are the ingredients that were listed for the Indian doctor, from Calcutta by his brother from Birmingham, England:

1 sheep’s stomach bag

1 sheep’s pluck – liver, lungs and heart

3 onions

250g beef suet

150g oatmeal

Salt and black pepper

A pinch of cayenne

150mls of stock/gravy

My father would only have “humph-ed” in reply to the description because it was an accurate one and not one for debate. The Indian doctor, from Calcutta – who also owned the general Dealer Store and drove, occasionally, the only imported car – had no need to pull punches or dance the verbal tango with his words. He had seen worse. He would have, as the entire African continent, in his eyes, was ill and looking like a Haggis: dark and spotted and congealed. It was diseased. That is what he often told his wife when he helped serve the pot-bellied  runny nose children from behind the counter in their store. Occasionally he would add the word damn to this description, but that was when he was angry because the Leghorn chickens from the street had fouled in the shop or had stepped onto the bonnet of his imported car.

“Damn dark, spotted and congealed damn continent,” is what he said out loud, now more frequently than usual.

The hospital in which my father was dying was of Government design. That implied it had a corrugated iron roof and was built in the shape of a square with a courtyard and a broad porch. It had a tree in the centre of the courtyard and a concrete bench. The outside walls of the hospital were painted yellow with a green skirt. The hem of the skirt was now stained with the red of the earth, and the yellow had lost its yellow. The roof, that popped and whispered in the heat, was silver in colour and in the evening the branches of the tree would attract the hens to roost.

There was one tap of running water (attached to the borehole pump alongside the dirt road) in the courtyard. A not-so-ill patient would have been nominated to guard over this precious commodity. The tap leaked, and the pool of water attracted many worker bees during the day. On the porch, waiting patients would sit with their backs against the wall, and wait. Their babies would offer a chorus of sounds and the waiting men would spit lumps of phlegm from TB infested lungs into dirty rags.

 And they would wait, and wait for the doctor from India who was an extremely busy man.

My father would have been able to see these waiting, patient people from his bed in his private room. He would have been able to see them through the only door as he lay on his back on the rough, grey blankets and the over-starched linen. Perhaps he admired their patience, the occasional gesturing of mothers as they waved off insistent flies or pushed away the noses of ever-hungry, stray dogs. Perhaps he didn't.  He was, after all, an African himself – white skinned, but African, so these sights and sounds, were not foreign to him. Or then perhaps, he was looking and listening elsewhere by now; had reached that mental space where he was looking and hearing far beyond his present whereabouts. A little soul searching, I wonder, but also doubt.

My father’s room was painted the standard, government-issue of puke green: the colour of a growing lemon on a sick tree. The floor would be red and polished, and there would be a framed photograph of the country’s present dictator on the wall. The mosquito mesh over the window would be rusted. The ceiling would be sagging a little, shaped like a pregnant woman’s belly and there was a water stain in the shape of the island of Madagascar in the corner. He would have a small, white metal table beside him with a jug of water and a glass. That is all.

In my mind, this is the place where he was to die.

In his reverie, my father would listen to the popping and the sighing of the corrugated iron roof above him. He would listen to the chorus of babies and the occasional tap-tap of a nurse’s heel as she walked along the porch. At sunset, he would hear the waiting patients leave the hospital quietly and without dissent. They would return the following day as the sun rose. The smell of distant cooking fires would intrude into the room, flavoured with the taste of maize meal and curry. If and when it rained, my father would listen to the raindrops hammering onto the sheet- iron roof and perhaps as I did as a child, think of machine guns and advancing armies. He would smell and sense the air chill when it rained.

When the night came a nurse would have given him a paraffin lamp with a spluttering wick. In its light, he would have watched the dancing shadows on the walls and listened to the barking of stray dogs. My father did sleep, or at least, he tested sleep, but sleep, when you are dying, offers up darkness, and I think, if I were my father, I would have avoided that. Dozed, but not slept for fear of never awakening.

The Indian doctor, from Calcutta, would do his rounds three times a day. He wore a white jacket and had a stethoscope around his neck. He wore dark shoes that had hard heels so he could be heard approaching from a distance. Clipped onto his breast pocket were three biro pens (blue, black and red) and a little torch for looking into a person’s eyes. On his wrist, he had a fake Rolex watch that was sent to him by a cousin from Bombay along with three cans of sugared litchi and a photograph of a Bollywood starlet.

The Indian doctor, from Calcutta, also wore a woman’s perfume. It was Chanel number five from Paris, France. A salesman had left the sample bottle at the shop months ago. The Indian doctor, from Calcutta, had told his wife that there was never a chance in Hell that they would ever sell such stuff in this “ Damn dark, spotted and congealed damn continent “ and that the salesman responsible would be in need of a new job shortly.

Always following the Indian doctor, from Calcutta, was a nurse from Abuja, Nigeria who was as thin as a bird and as dark as ebony. She was new and she did not like being in my father’s ward. He could sense that in her because she always looked away from him and found interest in her bare feet or in the map of Madagascar on the ceiling. What my father did not know was that this nurse, from Abuja, Nigeria, was feeling ashamed to see such a large, broad shouldered white man lying on a thin metal bed waiting to die. She was ashamed because she knew there was nothing to be done for this man. She was ashamed for him and others like him. That is why she looked at her bare feet on the red polished floor. She was ashamed to look death in the face. The little silver watch she wore over her heart (awarded to her at nursing school in Abuja, Nigeria) was to be used to count a man’s pulse, not to record its fluttering and ultimate demise.

The Indian doctor, from Calcutta, would use his stethoscope and listen to my father’s chest. “Breathe in, breathe out,” he would say. “And again, please." Amplified in his ears, the Doctor, from Calcutta, would hear the gurgling and dying of the Haggis. He would close his eyes to this sound as he listened and he would imagine himself driving on the long road to the city with the Bollywood starlet sitting beside him in his American car.

“Not good,” he would finally say. He would use the red biro pen to write on my father’s chart. “I will prescribe more pain killer. Understand, nurse?”

“Yes, Doctor,” the nurse from Nigeria would chirp in response as she studied the southern tip of Madagascar and wondered who lived and died on that part of the island.

“Are you sleeping better?” My father would be asked.

His response was in the negative.

“Eating?”

He responds with a shrug.

“This I can appreciate. The skoff (food) here is minimal, and the cook, if I may loosely describe him as that, is ignorant, but we do our best as I am most certain you can understand. Perhaps I must put you on a vitamin drip. That will offer you some nutrition. Yes, that is what I will do. I will order it, and it will come by the truck.”

And then the doctor, from Calcutta, would leave followed by the nurse from Nigeria and my father would remain in his bed, listening to a child crying somewhere in the hospital and his nose inhaling the ghostly scent of Chanel number 5 from Paris, France.

Two Feet - somewhere in Africa.

In response to Mr.S's comment/question regarding which country did some of the chapters of Two Feet take place? Thanks for your question, Mr.S. and your spending your time to ask !! Always willing to oblige.
When I scribbled Two Feet I intentionally kept dates and the name of places vague -- Africa is and will always remain a mysterious continent to me  -- perhaps because it is ever-shifting, forever in chaos, future events unknown.
Two Feet and its contents are primarily based in the mountainous Kingdom of Swaziland.

Where the hell is that you ask? 

If you peruse the map of Africa, drop your eyes down South toward South Africa. Swaziland is nestled, somewhat fragile, between the borders of South Africa and Mozambique (...in my day it was called Lorenco Marques,http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Lorenzo+marques , and was Portuguese territory and promised the best King sized prawns since the invention of sliced bread). Alas, the prawns disappeared during the intervention/invasion of the Russians, Cubans and the AK 47. I do have a memory though that when Lorenzo Marques gained its independence, on that historical day, as the new flag was raised, the flag-pole collapsed. Somewhat symbolic, I dare to add.
But I digress as always -- Swaziland's claim to fame, during my young years there, was that it boasted the longest remaining monarch ( I think it still does?) His name was King Sobhuza II Longest reigning monarch. Maybe I was naive ( I was 10 going on twelve) but life seemed pretty good under King Sobhuza II. Fruit, cotton and sugar cane was abundant and rumour had it the King was well into his 200th wife and tourism was on the up : especially as across the borders in +South Africa  both gambling and access to soft-porn and even a tantalising view of a woman's left or right breast, was religiously banned.
Swaziland jumped on the bandwagon and soon the valley of Ezulwini was festooned with casinos and a cinema that projected anything or anybody in the nude. My younger brother, not even sixteen, became the ticket seller, manager of the only Drive-In and its midnight attraction of French porn was well populated by porn starved South Africans. The Story of O being a major magnet.
Again I digress -- Swaziland was granted its independence from the United Kingdom in 1968. Much shield banging and drinking of corn beer heralded the event -- I was there and King Sobhuza II was festooned with the feathers of the Sobhuza bird. It was a momentous occasion and I would like to say the picturesque Kingdom has never looked back since. Alas, I read today that since Sobhuza's death in the 1980's, the country is now plagued by HIV and corruption. And that marijuana is now its major export -- ah well, another opportunity lost on my part. Marijuana in my time in Swaziland grew like trees -- even the birds flew higher than most. I don't jest.
So -- there you have it, Mr.S. -- Swaziland it was and no matter its present state, a country of many memories it will remain.

Thank you for your question --  I hope you enjoy the remainder of the read.

TWO FEET