This novel is something a little different for me. It is a satire set in the
UK at the present moment. There are striking parallels between these days and
the 1930s. There’s a lot of racist people around who are crawling out of the
woodwork as they have been encouraged by the implications of the Brexit vote.
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“That’s a posh way for a revolutionary to arrive,” mused Tompkins looking at the cruise ship’s itinerary. “It’s an expensive way – he might have come with me for half the price in my modest 100-foot yacht – The Whelk.”
After drinking two tots of 30-year-old Macallan whisky from his finest Waterford Crystal decanter, Tompkins retired to bed. Just after his head hit the pillow, he was dreaming of fishing in the lochs around Scourie in Assynt, pulling out the finest trout, and then throwing them back to give another sportsman a chance at wrestling with these most cunning of fish.
Chapter 2 – June 25th – The Afternoon
Tompkins awoke with the sun streaming through the red, white, and blue chintz curtains – it was just after noon, early for him. He looked around the blue-painted room and located his red dressing gown and light-blue slippers, which were under the white 19th-Century chaise-longue, for reasons Tompkins had forgotten.
He romped down the stairs and cooked his favourite breakfast of kippers and porridge. It reminded him of those summers long ago when Tompkins and his Pater would walk for miles after a huge breakfast such as this. They’d swim in a few lochs, climb trees, chase deer, run up mountains, carry boulders, and generally have a wonderful time in the Scottish Highlands. The chimes of Big Ben from the front-door bell broke Tompkins’s reveries like ice on an aching tooth.
“Bish and bosh, who can it be at this early hour?” said Tompkins to himself as he strode to the door, almost pulling it off the hinges.
On the step was a short man, wearing a deerstalker hat and smoking a cigarette he’d rolled himself.
“Yuri, how the blazes are you?” boomed Tompkins.
“My name, Mr. Tompkins, is Vasek, I am not sure where you get the name Yuri from, anyway your car is here for you.”
“Well, that’s quick work, Vasek, my Polish friend.”
“Slovenia, Mr. Tompkins, Slovenia,” replied Vasek.
“Well, alright, East European, it’s still quick work, regardless of where you are from in that part of the world.”
“Well, quick work of a kind,” replied Vasek with a smile, “you see your car was, now what are the correct words in the English, a complete write-off, so I swap your car with another car in the showroom, before they open up, as you say in England.”
Julian Worker UK Blog 