Blog Hop Interview - Tag, You're It!

I have Skarlett Flame to thank for me taking part in this Blog Hop, and apologise for being over a week late in answering the questions... I hope I am forgiven.

A couple of weeks ago Skarlett answered these questions on her blog, which can be found here... http://missscarlettflame.blogspot.co.uk/ and comes highly recommended by me, and nominated three more authors to answer the very same questions and pass the baton on. I was one of those authors, but am as usual late and missed the deadline haha. 

So here we go with the questions, and answer session, which I hope introduces you all a little to my work...

1, What are you working on right now?

I am actually working on two versions of the same book "Bollywood Nights" inspired by a conversation I had with my beautiful friend, and Bollywood Actress & poster girl, Bhairavi Goswami. The conversation set me thinking about doing a story based around the Bollywood the World never sees, but it is a pure fiction rather than being based on any real events.

There will be two versions, a XXX Erotic version for my Western Audiences (Probably published as an I.T. Heurtze book) and a more romantic version without the graphic sex scenes for the Indian audience.

The story centres on a beautiful, and intelligent Bollywood Actress called Priya, who meets an English Man at the launch party for her latest film. It sets in motion an unlikely romance, which is surely doomed to failure given the very different public image they have to maintain, yet love it seems is stronger than the barriers placed in its way, and they overcome some challenges as the story progresses.

I have tried to give a taste of the magic of Bollywood, with visits to film sets, and a little drama and comedy to keep you hanging on the next page.

There may be more news regarding this story and I may be persuaded to write a sequel to bring it up to date if there is enough response from readers.

2, How does it differ from other work in it's genre?

I haven't consciously tried to be radically different with my work. But with my comedy I have tried to keep the situations believable. In my erotica I try to write from a different perspective and allow readers into the story. 

With Bollywood Nights I set out to tell a short story taking my western readers into a World they have not seen, and by removing the sex to create a more romantic edition of the story I am trying to reach a new audience in India. 

I suppose by having two different versions of the same story it is a little bit different to the norm, but it is proving to be an enjoyable challenge.

I am always keen to broaden my reach and find readers to read my comedy novels as well as the erotica and sports books.

3, Why do you write what you do?

That is a good question... The comedy like Religious Pursuits, which is, my best work to date, comes to me as I look at the World and see comedy in the everyday situations we all encounter.

With the erotica I am usually encouraged by female friends to write more, and as readers become new friends the requests keep coming in.

Bollywood nights came from me being a film director and wanting to work on a project someday with Bhairavi. The conversation led to a challenge for me to come up with a story set in India, and as I know about film sets the idea of peering behind the scenes came to me, but I have not based the story on any person or set of events, although there is a certain element of the English character which is quite close to home. 

I have also tried to add my voice to the strong political pressure to change perceptions towards women in India following several high profile rape cases. I wanted to add to the debate through the scenes and elements of a fictitious book which is really my way of putting my viewpoint across to the audience.

I feel it important that men understand that women have the right to dress or act as provocatively as they wish, but we should always respect their right to say no. Sex can be a wonderful thing to explore, but it is always so much better when there is consent. It is a woman's basic human right to be allowed to conduct themselves with equality and respect, and some elements of my book try to convey that message.

4, How does your writing process work?

Another good question... It's a little different between my short stories and my novels. With the short stories I have a situation and create characters to play out those scenes. 

With my novels it's a bit more complicated... I usually have a basic idea for a story from start, through the middle to the end. I then create characters and give them their own separate stories to play out around the central bones of the story... so call that the flesh of the story, and then I add a few touches and you have a book.

Going back to Religious Pursuits, in that case I took some characters I felt were believable, and gave them all a funny secret back story. I then gave them a set of circumstances that would flush their secrets out and let them loose on one another in the safe isolation of an innocent village. The book pretty well wrote itself then.

Once again though, with Bollywood Nights, I have found that by creating the characters this is the first book since Religious Pursuits which has been pretty well writing itself in this way.

I hope this has been interesting and an insight to the way I work as a writer, and now it is my turn to nominate three more writers to be tagged and they will hopefully post their responses by 14th October.

They are...

Marie Rebelle

Charming Man

Angel Gone Bad

Ida T. Heurtze The Muse

After gaining a nasty rash in Milan Ida decided to accept an invitation from renowned French artist Pierre La Pong who had initially made his name painting blimps before discovering women and eager to switch to painting life studies.

Ida who has developed a taste for Pizza in Milan was the perfect muse for the little man with a bad temper, which is apparently a common illness among Frenchmen.

She mounted a train ticket and travelled backwards to Paris, via Prague, Istanbul, Munich and Moscow because trains kept going to places she didn’t intend to go to and the stations insisted in writing in foreign.

Eventually finding someone to ask who understood her Nark accent she managed to get a train to Paris, but got thrown off halfway for slapping the guard who had been keen to “Put ze hole in ze teeket…”

She managed to get a later train to Paris and was met at the station by Pierre’s assistant Morris, who insisted on pronouncing his name Mooreesse, which was wrong.

Paris was full of foreigners just like Milan, making Ida wonder how they managed to find anything as all the signs were also in foreign, and so was the food, although their muesli was almost a decent alternative to porridge, even if it tasted strange with salt.

Pierre had bought bigger canvasses in preparation for Ida, and gasped with awe the first time the now famous smut monkey removed her camel hair underwear and assumed the position for him to paint her.

Using all the skills he’d gained from painting zeppelins, the little Frenchman standing on his favourite stool, set about immortalising the woman who was becoming the object of his desires.

For her part Ida was somewhat confused expecting some kind of elaborate face painting, and her confusion only grew as the little man broke off from painting and dragged his stool across to the sofa he insisted on calling a Shay Long or something… Then grabbing her hand and kissing his way up her arm before almost passing out as he got too close to Ida’s hairy armpit.

Coming close to passing out was interpreted by Pierre as love, which he’d only experienced previously after discovering mirrors.

Their affair became the talk of Paris, with other Frenchmen envying Pierre as he paraded his muse around all the flesh spots in Paris, and suddenly his art was in demand and he became as famous for portraying folds of white flesh as his platform shoes with fashionably square toes.

The lovers shared an apartment in Paris for three years, but their relationship ended when the little man discovered a thirst for power, like so many little Frenchmen before him and went into politics.

As you can’t be a French politician without having at least one mistress, Pierre was now too tired to satisfy Ida’s insatiable lust and she stormed out to begin a wild and tempestuous relationship with Pierre’s biggest rival, the sculptor Alan Mon Sweat.

Their relationship was wild and dirty, because he worked with clay, but it too came to an end when Alan was bankrupted because of the extra material needed to make sculptures of his muse.

Ida then went on to inspire the rear end styling of a car by Renault’s dim witted head of design but had left the country before he found his glasses.

Ida then trained to break the record for swimming the channel from France to England but as the French, strangely, didn’t use lard for cooking she couldn’t get enough to cover her entire body and her large white carcass caused panic among the shipping fraternity who hadn’t previously seen an iceberg that far south.

Giving up on the plan to save money by swimming, Ida crossed by accident instead and decided to follow her heroine Jeremy Clarkson to become a professional feminist until it went out of fashion.

Ida then chose to use her experiences with continental foreigners to write smut because she’d heard a nasty man in advertising say once that sex sells.

It was around this time that she first set eyes on the future love of her life, General Compton Smyth when she attended a village fete as part of her book signing tour to promote her new novel 51 Shades of Pink!

He hardly noticed her at the time, and Ida was pre-occupied by a row between the vicar and his wife over an erection she had something to do with even though Ida was pretty sure she had never had an erection.

The book tour was a huge success, and Ida became famed as a writer of smut with film companies keen to buy the rights for a Hollywood version which earned Ida £42.50 and a trip to Los Angeles which is in the Village of America.

This was a strange place to Ida because all the foreigners spoke English, but she could tell they were foreigners because of their bad taste in clothes and insistence on not speaking English properly like the Scots do!



Please do check out the other titles I have published including my comedy novel, Religious Pursuits by Neil Winnington which can all be found on Amazon.

Religious Pursuits
By Neil Winnington
ISBN 1470071347

Sergeant Goode is close to his retirement, a situation irritating him enough before a young pen pusher without any respect for village life had been sent to get to know the local patch.

When his girlfriend falls fatally during a row, blind panic sets in and Goode makes a hasty exit, triggering a sequence of events which would see a simple accident become the centre of a major police investigation quickly spiralling out of control.

Starting with a detective sergeant with a desire to prove his theory that all serious crime can be closely linked to the occult, the villagers, all hiding secrets of varying degrees set up a fake occult meeting complete with a frozen chicken as the animal sacrifice.

With a discredited former tabloid journalist, hungry to find the big story that would bring him back into the Fleet Street fold, a village gossip with a murky war-time secret desperate to hide her true identity, and a group of investigators, sent to discredit the local Reverend and protect the church’s reputation, all combined to escalate the situation further, this sleepy Devon village soon becomes the centre of a national media scandal.

As if things couldn’t get any worse, a hostage situation draws in even more police, and even a squad of soldiers led by a battle hungry sergeant with a massive chip on his shoulder, and the story takes on a final twist, before culminating in a car chase like no other and a cliff hanger end

Available now in Paperback from...
Createspace
https://www.createspace.com/3797405

You may also want to visit my author’s page www.amazon.com/author/neilwinnington

General Compton Smyth and the Pea Shooter Brigade… Part Three

The experiment with Viagra laced food entered at the local fete might have been regarded as a success by General Compton Smyth and Sergeant Grimm, but there were consequences for the villagers on the receiving end.

There were three surprise pregnancies among the wives and girlfriends of the young farmers’ tug of war team, and a pending divorce as the vicar and his wife never got over her suspicions about him and the glamorous Scottish smut monkey Ida T. Heurtze.

Up until this point the involvement of the secretive young men at the smallholding could be dismissed as co-incidence, but the Battle of Aver Wallop became inevitable as events conspired to draw the innocent villagers into the military experiments General Compton Smyth’s brigade were carrying out.

Behind the scenes pressure was on to develop an effective way to use Viagra as a weapon in time for military trails involving both the Royal Marines and SAS, and while the experiments with Viagra laced food had proven successful, Sergeant Grimm for one, seriously doubted the Royal Marines would stop shooting at you for a tray of fairy cakes.

While it may be conceivable that the SAS may be distracted from a surprise attack on you for a few fondant cakes, it was agreed that other ways of delivering “the payload” would have to be perfected.

In field trials, in the field behind the farmhouse, the most effective delivery system by far was the use of pea shooters, or blowpipes as the soldiers preferred to call them.

With practice the squaddies proved very adept at shooting Viagra pills straight into the open mouth of an opponent at anything up to ten feet, or three metres in new money.

Sergeant Grimm realised such close quarters combat required the right kind of terrain, so marched the squaddies into nearby woodland to practice camouflage, tree climbing and ambush techniques.

As the soldiers in the Brigade knew what was coming it was quickly realised that splitting the brigade into two groups to practice was not at effective as having unwitting opponents who would react more naturally to an ambush.

It was thus decided, with some reluctance by the general to allow Sergeant Grimm to use unwitting villagers and ramblers as practice fodder for the training sessions.


The doctor had advised Gordon Thompson to exercise, “…try jogging. Just a little at first and build up over time…” but exercise he must to control his recent weight gain and fend off potential diabetes.

Not being one to ignore sound advice, Gordon donned a pair of purple running shorts initially purchased by his wife to use for aerobics classes she’d got bored with by the third session, and a white string vest. The look was complemented, if that’s the right term in the circumstances, by a matching pair of sweat bands on his wrists and a white head band.

New trainers and white socks did nothing to salvage the look, but by this the third outing into the woods, Gordon labouring with a reddened face and mouth wide open gasping loudly for air really didn’t care what people thought as he struggled to half way into his planned route.

Suddenly something shot into his mouth and into his throat, breaking his rhythm and starting a choking fit as the fly, or whatever it was got swallowed. In a mild state of shock Mr Thompson began shuffling on as before, feeling strangely invigorated, before an uninvited erection made it increasingly difficult to jog.

As he walked the final leg into the village of Aver Wallop his attire, which had only brought mild amusement to fellow villagers became almost hypnotic as his raging hard-on stood proudly like a tent pole below his equally large gut.

Mrs Thompson was upstairs bending over as she innocently sorted freshly cleaned underwear into her knicker drawer, but this proved too much of a temptation to the Viagra-drugged husband who entered the room to see her arse swaying so seductively in front of him.

Her protests were brief and pointless, as Gordon Thompson was as much a victim of circumstances as his wife, as he gave vent to urges barely remembered and squired his vixen of a spouse like he used to do twenty years ago.

Vera was speechless after the deed was done, and so was the exhausted Mr Thompson.


Four members of the Home Counties Ramblers Association deep in conversation as they strode by the tall hedgerows alongside Willow Ridge farm experienced a similar choking fit as the flies of the village seemed to take a suicidal charge into the mouths of people out to enjoy the British countryside.

The effects were mixed with two male ramblers recovering from their choking fit to become suddenly keen to curtail the walk a little early and take their spouses home, while Miss Farney, a normally quiet young lady of limited visual charms suddenly made her sexual interest in Rodney Brimsthwaite an IT operative for the inland revenue more than obvious and after persuading him to follow her for a diversion away from the group threw him to the ground, wrestled his corduroy trousers off and mounted him vigorously.

Thus the number of virgins among the local ramblers was reduced in number by two, and within nine months a hasty wedding was to follow.


Miss White, a well respected spinster of the parish was giving her Jack Russell Terrier, Freddie, his daily walk in the woods, and noticed him being perkier than usual by the time they returned to the village.

She was mortified though as she stopped to speak to Mrs Timpson, only for Freddie to mount the old friends leg and mate enthusiastically with her wrinkled stocking. The women’s combined screams drew a small crowd, but the efforts of Roger Belgrave to wrestle the randy terrier from Mrs Timpson’s leg brought nips from the unusually aggressive little dog, which was determined to relieve his urges in a renewed vigour.

By the time the crowd had grown to ten people the shock proved too much for the old ladies, and in the end the village vet had to sedate Freddie, while a paramedic called by one of the villagers administered oxygen to the hyperventilating and distressed old ladies.

Over the next few weeks more and more strange events surrounding the woods came to light and suspicions turned to the strange group of young men camped at the smallholding outside the village…

...To be Continued...



Please do check out the other titles I have published including my comedy novel, Religious Pursuits by Neil Winnington which can all be found on Amazon.

Religious Pursuits
By Neil Winnington
ISBN 1470071347

Sergeant Goode is close to his retirement, a situation irritating him enough before a young pen pusher without any respect for village life had been sent to get to know the local patch.

When his girlfriend falls fatally during a row, blind panic sets in and Goode makes a hasty exit, triggering a sequence of events which would see a simple accident become the centre of a major police investigation quickly spiralling out of control.

Starting with a detective sergeant with a desire to prove his theory that all serious crime can be closely linked to the occult, the villagers, all hiding secrets of varying degrees set up a fake occult meeting complete with a frozen chicken as the animal sacrifice.

With a discredited former tabloid journalist, hungry to find the big story that would bring him back into the Fleet Street fold, a village gossip with a murky war-time secret desperate to hide her true identity, and a group of investigators, sent to discredit the local Reverend and protect the church’s reputation, all combined to escalate the situation further, this sleepy Devon village soon becomes the centre of a national media scandal.

As if things couldn’t get any worse, a hostage situation draws in even more police, and even a squad of soldiers led by a battle hungry sergeant with a massive chip on his shoulder, and the story takes on a final twist, before culminating in a car chase like no other and a cliff hanger end

Available now in Paperback from...
Createspace
https://www.createspace.com/3797405

You may also want to visit my author’s page www.amazon.com/author/neilwinnington

Ida T. Heurtze and the Italian fashion house

As she cleared her desk at the Nark Ark following her battles with the editor and the incident with the tethered sheep she happened upon a letter from the Italian design house Luigi Scavadore, which she’d all but forgotten about.

It was an invitation to travel all expenses paid to Italy to view their latest collection, which the marketing department, Alfonso, was sure would appeal to the Scottish market, which the label had neglected up until that point.

The House of Scavadore was the most traditional design house in Italy, only starting to display their latest lines as recently as 1978, and tracing their roots back 300 years, having specialised in camel hair underwear, which they supplied exclusively to the Catholic Church and monasteries Worldwide.

The change in 1978 came about when family Patriarch, Alberto passed away and his flamboyant son Luigi decided to display their new designer ranges at Milan fashion week. The label remained obscure due to the limited appeal of camel hair undergarments, although there had been a certain amount of interest among the English public school fraternity.

The timing of the invitation to the Nark Ark was fortuitous being for the following week, so Ida packed her things into an envelope and travelled by first class post to the village of Milan in the Italian district of abroad.

She arrived to find the House of Scavadore in a state of mild panic, the latest camel hair gusset having left the catwalk models hired for the show with a disturbing looking rash, but Alfonso, son of Luigi, was immediately taken with the exotic looking Ida with her pink, home knitted stockings, and tweed blouse.

He immediately fell for her rugged charms and begged her to be one of the catwalk models for the new collection, which he assured her, would compliment her size 16 frame beautifully.

It took several bottles of Chianti and several evenings of romancing to persuade the Scottish seductress to agree, and by the night of the launch she had been promoted to become the main face of the reclusive design house.

The audience were almost predominantly buyers from the various international branches of the Roman Catholic church, a few nuns and Ida recognised Archie McTaggart of the Clan McTaggart, and fashion writer for the Inverness Fury, as she strutted along the catwalk with her white pasty skin contrasting nicely with the beige camel hair long sleeved vest and knee-length knickers.

There was a gasp and some giggles from the nuns at the daring design with elastic and buttons replacing the traditional need to hand sew yourself in to the scratchy garments.

The rest of the range brought similar reactions, with the monks being particularly impressed with the range of hemp socks, which were based on a traditional design usually made from old sacks.

It was regarded as a huge success, and Ida got to keep the clothes she had worn to such acclaim on the catwalk. Her relationship with Alfonso was to blossom into an affair lasting a whole twenty minutes, with the seductress deciding to stay in Milan in an apartment her Italian admirer had provided for her.

Word quickly spread and Ida’s modelling career took off with other design houses vying for her services. Italian Vogue did a photo shoot with her wearing the latest designs including a barbed wire belt and bottle top earrings from House of Scavadore along with their horsehair dinner dress.

She was courted by sportsmen and jealous suitors would fight for her affections, with the World chess champion Ivan Bovanovic coming to blows with Paulo Dicanza, the third choice goalkeeper for a football team Ida hadn’t heard of in Milan, at an event laid on at a local brothel.

The high life took its toll on the Scottish woman though. An addiction to pizza and Swiss chocolate led to her falling into ever deeper depths of depravity, her dreams of being a journalist fell by the wayside after several unsuccessful affairs, and it got so bad she almost considered a move to the Spanish Costas where she could indulge her hunger for chips and British beers.

She was saved when an Italian film director cast her as the lead in his adaptation of a British comedy Pride and Prejudice and she received great critical acclaim when the film debuted at a French village called Caan.

It led to a new career as an actress, and several whirlwind years when the name Ida T. Heurtze became was associated with some of the biggest films in Italian cinema.

But that’s another story…

To purchase one of my published novels check out my Amazon Authors page http://www.amazon.com/Neil-Winnington/e/B00CMRJZ46

And do if this little blog amuses you do feel free to leave a comment below.

General Compton Smyth and the Pea Shooter Brigade… Part Two

The Battle of Aver Wallop will not go into the annals of history as one of the great moments in British military history, and as is often the case, it all started with a minor skirmish, or mis-understanding.

General Compton Smyth addressed his rag tag band of troops in the courtyard of the smallholding the army had been bequeathed by an extremely bitter ex military man whose son chose cross dressing over a career running around in hobnail boots shooting at things.

“Men,” he began, “…we are at the cutting edge of military planning. We are here to do field trials of a new weapon…”
The Sergeant held up a little blue pill, which drew a giggle from Private Smith at the end of the six soldiers standing to attention.
“Sergeant Grimm!”
“Yes… General… Sir!”
“Take that man’s name and put him on peeling duties!”
“Yes… Sir!” Grimm replied running up to stand toe to toe with Private Smith, “NAME?”
“Smith… Sir!” replied Smith
“Stay behind after the parade, you pathetic excuse for a little man, you!”

Coming from the vertically challenged, if stocky and aggressive Sergeant, a height comment seemed to be a case of pots and kettles, but Smith knew better than to say so.
“Yes… Sir!”

The Sergeant then turned on his heels and ran back to the General’s side with unnecessarily tiny steps.
“Where was I?” the general mused, “Oh yes… Cutting edge! …We have to devise the most accurate method of delivering the weapon into the mouth of our opponents. So we shall be using the following in our field trials…Sergeant!”
“Sir!”

The sergeant ran using the same tiny steps that he’d used earlier to run across in front of the general to a box on a trestle table standing to one side. He reached inside the box and then thrust his hand in the air holding a child’s catapult toy.
“Catapult!” he shouted.

He slammed the toy alongside the box on the table and thrust his hand back inside, rummaging purposefully, before thrusting it once more over his head holding a modified pub dart.
“Dart!” he shouted.

He slammed the dart alongside the box and once again rummaged about inside to grab the pea shooter and thrust this above his head.
“Pea Shooter!”

As he reached back into the box there was a snigger from the rank of six soldiers, which fell silent as the Sergeant looked up to scan the line in search of a culprit. His gaze then returned to the box where he retrieved the last item and thrust that above his head…
“…Cupcake!”

This was too much for the six young squaddies, who burst out into uncontrollable laughter and the Sergeant running over to bellow at them only seemed to make it worse, so the soldiers were sent to the galley to do peeling duty while the General and Sergeant returned to the office to discuss the next days training.

The next few weeks were spent experimenting with the various methods of “delivering” the weapon.

Cookery classes tried putting Viagra tablets in various cakes and meals to see how the cooking affected the efficiency of the drug. The squaddies would then eat the experimental recipes and standing in a line to have the results measured by the sergeant. No-one had a clue how this information could be turned into field trials against a regular army unit, let alone the nutters from the Parachute Regiment or the SAS. Stopping in the heat of battle for cupcakes with the enemy wasn’t an option, so they concentrated for now on finding the ultimate recipes.

The catapults and various other sling shots proved too inaccurate. You could splatter someone with tablets, which would sting a bit, but hardly stop them coming at you!

Darts were more effective as darts, which they found made an interesting weapon in its own right. Efforts to refine the Viagra into liquid form to create poison darts, of sorts, proved too technical for the very much less than technical squaddies to master.

The pea shooters and various other blow pipes proved both more accurate and effective, but only at close range. But the young soldiers became quite proficient, which gave the Sergeant and General heart.


An opportunity to test the cakes in field trials of sorts came about when Private Davidson, who was somewhat too effeminate for Sergeant Grimm’s comfort, noticed the upcoming village fete had various cake making and pie competitions.

The general thought this was a wonderful idea, and so the squaddies were all ordered to prepare their best cake and pie dishes. Even Sergeant Grimm donned an apron and made some surprisingly good looking fairy cakes.

To avert suspicion the soldiers donned civilian clothes and blend in with the real villagers on the day of the fete and shuffled in to the food judging tent at sporadic intervals so they wouldn’t appear to be together as a group, a tactic that hadn’t altogether been successful as over the course of the day they gradually gravitated together.

Only one of the brigade wasn’t present, the sergeant apoplectic having discovered one of his Viagra laced fairy cakes was missing lined the squaddies up and Private Simpson clearly stood out as the guilty party, so was left behind on sentry duty as punishment.

They had entered several categories from steak and kidney pies, to sausage rolls apple pies and finally Sergeant Grimm’s fairy cakes, so they would be able to gauge the effects of the Viagra across various different recipes.

There were three judges in the food competition. The vicar represented the establishment, while Gladys Guttersnipe who ran the local tea shop provided the culinary expertise and guest judge for this year was Ida T. Heurtze, the internationally regarded author of smut who was in the village for a book signing promotion of her new book “The Young Wife.”

There was already tension in the air with Mary Akroyd, landlady of the Hound and Fox bitter that her culinary rival Gladys Guttersnipe had been chosen for the judging panel and not her, so the vicar and Ida had been last minute additions to the panel to ensure neutrality.

Neutrality was not a great concern to General Compton Smyth and his soldiers, but they did find themselves caught in the middle of the feud when Private Adams’ Sausage rolls beat those of Gladys in that particular category, leading to a challenge being lodged and the judges having to re-do the tasting, and thus getting a double dose of the private’s sausage rolls.

In spite of the protests it was declared by the remaining two judges that the sausage rolls made by Private Adams really had stood out. Unfortunately for the vicar, having eaten them on top of the laced pies and cakes entered by the other soldiers, he was standing out too, and getting an earful from Mrs Vicar who wrongly assumed it was the attractive and racy authoress having brought on his uncontrollable erection.

The other judges didn’t get off Scot free, Gladys suffering hot flushes while Ida found herself feeling strangely amorous.

Private Adams may have been the only member of the brigade to win a prize, but as the vicar was repeatedly hit over the head with a handbag wielded by his wife at the opposite end of the beer tent, General Compton Smyth rewarded his men with a pint of Ferret Ale and declared their mission in the cake competition a complete success.

Their quiet celebration in the beer tent was interrupted by a loud roar coming from the show field where the young farmers had just beaten the local firemen in the annual tug of war competition to leave them undefeated in three years and cocky with it.

Surveying the victory scene Sergeant Grimm and the General gave one another a knowing nod before entering their civilian dressed men as last minute challengers, much to the delight of the majority who were sick of the boastful young farmers never letting anyone forget who the champions were.

Grimm disappeared suspiciously, as the squaddies dug in at the opposite end to their competition.

Being well versed in both technique and burley to boot the young farmers were easily winning when Grimm returned carrying a tray covered in a tea towel, just in time to see the brigade routed.

After a nod from the General, Sergeant Grimm showed there were no hard feelings, whipping away the tea towel to reveal a plate festooned with his fairy cakes, enthusiastically snaffled up by the young farmers.

The effects were pretty rapid with the heart rates already raised with the effort put into taking the strain amplifying the effects of the Viagra. By the time the competition began again the farmers, to a man were somewhat compromised by their erections and unable to put any real effort into the task in hand.

One all and the soldiers were confident going into the decider.

Still suffering the effects of the Viagra, which was really kicking in by now the third tug of war was a complete victory for the squaddies, with the farmers dragged through the mud until they reached solid ground where the lead man’s natural anchor dug in and stopped them.

If the agony faced by the lead man as his penis was ploughed into the field was bad it was nothing compared with the second to last man who fell forward followed closely by the anchorman. The burley anchor was big in more ways than one and his huge erection pushed into the arse of his team mate through his shorts.

The man on the receiving end already embarrassed by his own erection flew into a terrible rage as they finally untangled themselves and a fist fight ensued between the members of the losing team.

It made for a pretty pathetic and funny site and their anger was quickly replaced by embarrassment as the watching crowd all broke down laughing because their erect penises were still pushing their shorts out like tent poles.

The general and sergeant stood to one side as the mayhem ensued, their conversation centred on the effectiveness of the Viagra in nullifying the fighting ability and tug of war annihilation of the young spud monkeys.

The local paper who were there to cover the fete got a brilliant photo of the mud splattered young farmers fighting among themselves and the story a week later read “Sword Fight at The Aver Wallop Coral!”


Although never attributed to the General and his Pea Shooter Brigade, this was definitely the opening skirmish of the battle that was about to ensue.

To Be Continued.....





The Young Wife by Ida T. Heurtze will be published soon. In the meantime please do check out the other titles I have published including my comedy novel, Religious Pursuits by Neil Winnington which can all be found on Amazon.




Religious Pursuits
By Neil Winnington
ISBN 1470071347

Sergeant Goode is close to his retirement, a situation irritating him enough before a young pen pusher without any respect for village life had been sent to get to know the local patch.

When his girlfriend falls fatally during a row, blind panic sets in and Goode makes a hasty exit, triggering a sequence of events which would see a simple accident become the centre of a major police investigation quickly spiralling out of control.

Starting with a detective sergeant with a desire to prove his theory that all serious crime can be closely linked to the occult, the villagers, all hiding secrets of varying degrees set up a fake occult meeting complete with a frozen chicken as the animal sacrifice.

With a discredited former tabloid journalist, hungry to find the big story that would bring him back into the Fleet Street fold, a village gossip with a murky war-time secret desperate to hide her true identity, and a group of investigators, sent to discredit the local Reverend and protect the church’s reputation, all combined to escalate the situation further, this sleepy Devon village soon becomes the centre of a national media scandal.

As if things couldn’t get any worse, a hostage situation draws in even more police, and even a squad of soldiers led by a battle hungry sergeant with a massive chip on his shoulder, and the story takes on a final twist, before culminating in a car chase like no other and a cliff hanger end

Available now in Paperback from...
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You may also want to visit my author’s page www.amazon.com/author/neilwinnington

Something for the Children

Although I have written and published a lot, including song lyrics, magazine features and books, some people won't have seen the children's poetry which I write in the hope that someday my little Emily will discover them and know the kinds of conversations we'd have had, and the stories I would have told her at bedtime...

...Here is a little selection, you thoughts and comments are welcome...



The Tale of Billy Magrew
By Neil Winnington

A cautionary tale of Billy Magrew,
Who never did what he said he would do!
From Shopping,
To homework,
To chores to be done,
When jobs needed doing,
Young Billy was gone!

When asked by his Mum to clean up some goo,
Well that's the last thing that Billy would do!
He left it,
Ignored it,
And played with his toys,
The goo just stayed dirty,
Just like little boys!

One day our Billy left running a tap,
Water kept running, looking for a gap!
The bathroom,
The bedrooms,
And half Billy's Street,
Were filling with water,
Up over your feet!

Policemen and Firemen said nothing to do,
Floating away was our Billy Magrew!
His Father,
A Fireman,
A fellow called Ned,
All climbed in a boat,
And after that bed!!



The Wibblaboo
By Neil Winnington

The Wibblaboo are a curious crew,
All wibble and wobble and fat,
All that they do is nibble and chew,
And sleep all day long like a cat.

They live on a boat, which is barely afloat,
On account of the weight of the Boo,
So they sail on the sea in their half sunken boat,
All wondering what they should do!



Wazzers
By Neil Winnington

Wazzers, or Wozzers, as they're often known,
Are only three inches when they are full grown,
They live in your skirting boards, just like a mouse,
And steal things they like from all over your house,
A sock, or a thimble, or your lost toy car,
If you have some Wazzers they will not be far!

"So what does a Wazzer look like?" you ask,
Well here little friend, I give you a task,
For never, not ever, was a Wazzer seen,
We only know where those Wazzers have been,
Some say they are furry, and some say they're not,
Some say that their noses are runny with snot.

Some say that the girls choose dolls dresses to own,
But what little boy Wazzers wear isn't known,
Nobody's sure what a Wazzer might eat,
But lost crisps and biscuits must be a treat,
So next time a toy or one sock has just gone,
You can be sure that a Wazzer has one!



The Botty Burp!
By Neil Winnington

(Blow a rasberry before reading the rhyme)

Was that a botty burp I heard you do?
It wasn't from me!
So it must have been YOU!

No, it was not me, I hear you say!
Making that noise,
That was coming my way!

It must have been Kitty, Asleep on the floor!
Looks like he's smiling,
He's done it before!

Are you SURE that it wasn't from you?
You say no too much,
So it might not be true!

I'm sure that botty burp was there, you see!
If it wasn't you,
Then it must have been ME!

(Blow another rasberry!)



Where Mountains come from!
By Neil Winnington

Mountains reside on a giants backside,
And result from a terrible itch,

It is said that an irritant they can't abide,
And a scratch will result in a ditch,

So imagine one night if a mosquito bites,
And the giant awakes to have found,

An itch he can't fight, and try as he might,

It results in a mountain sized mound!



I hope you all enjoyed those... I'll be back to my usual madness next time... Meantime to check out my published books for adults at http://www.amazon.com/Neil-Winnington/e/B00CMRJZ46

Keep sharing my links, and please do leave comments below...

General Compton Smyth and the Pea Shooter Brigade… Part One

Throughout military history the balance of power has often hinged on the adoption of new tactics, innovations and weapons. Usually a dominant army is backed up by a wealthy state and industrial might.

…Neither applied to post war Britain and even less so since Cameron and Osborne came into government with a pet theory they’d worked out on the back of a Top Trumps Box back at Eton they wanted to try out on the economy.

Thus they were on a mission to slash ministerial budgets to find out how much they could cut before the economy collapsed completely, with several bets placed at high class betting establishments about how long it would take!

Within the ministry of defence this brought nothing short of blind panic as the chancellor of the exchequer continued to insist on swaging cuts to the point that only soldiers from the rank of Sergeant upwards got boot laces and recruits trained with toy guns.

With someone in Britain still making a few pounds and able to support themselves, George (Jeffrey) Osborne, seeing his economic experiment to bankrupt Britain come perilously close to failing, piled the pressure on even more!

The Navy lost its last remaining active aircraft carrier and was now reduced to three rowing boats and a destroyer with no guns but a missile firing platform with a capacity for 36 Tomahawk cruise missiles, and only one active weapon among them. The sailors were then drilled in standing on deck to look frightening.

The Royal Air force suffered its own losses. Along with the Red Arrows aerobatic team reduced to doing ground displays on bicycles with red wings strapped on to their backs. Meanwhile their secret programme to stick sheets of cardboard and black paint to Tornado Jets to create a cut price stealth fighter to counter the Americans’ machines was also a victim of the cuts, losing all £342.25p budget and all the biscuits from the staff canteen.

Seeing the havoc wrought in their rival military services, the generals were in something of a panic, as first their specially commissioned brass paperclips were deemed an extravagance and then the cuts started effecting civilian support staff, with local businesses taking the brunt. Suzie Whipsnade’s Hen Den had to lay off three prostitutes as the general staff saw their entertainment budget slashed.

Next the Chancellor invested millions to pay French workers to upgrade the battle site at Waterloo for the 200th anniversary of us having an army of note instead of sending squaddies over as the generals had suggested, on the grounds that their plan to use this covert operation to re-take Calais was neither a good use of public funds or part the government’s plan to give money to French workers to appease our Gallic neighbours prior to us making a loud noise about Wellington peeing on their Emperors’ bonfire.

The generals decided they needed to come up with cost effective new tactic that would appeal to Whitehall minions and would enable them to ring fence funding to guarantee their investment portfolios in defence contractors wouldn’t go up in smoke alongside their brainstorming sessions at Suzie Whipsnade’s Hen Den!

General Peregrine Ant-Equated vaguely recalled an experiment the top brass did where they decided to take an unusually hands on approach to testing new products before trials were to filter down the ranks…

…On that occasion they did battlefield trials of Viagra and came to the conclusion that fighting, or even conducting a battle from the command bunker, was near impossible with a raging erection! Viagra was a great British invention and success story, and surely a scheme to combine two great British institutions would get favour from the men in suits?

Surely they could do something along those lines? After all the MOD still had a warehouse facility full of the drug which had been purchased when the procurement funding was a little more generous and Madam Suzie and her girls were not off limits on expenses.

It was, he reasoned a matter of time before some pen-pushing shit from the treasury stumbled on the purchase order and god forbid started looking at taking away their ability to choose what their budget was spent on!

The other generals agreed, one bringing up the time Whitehall tried to impose digestive biscuits on them instead of Hob Nobs! “And tea bags from a supermarket instead of Earl Grey!” added another.

The problem was that their massive supply of Viagra was in the traditional pill variety and persuading an enemy soldier to stop fighting and down a pill over a cup of tea was a little unlikely in modern warfare. Their American Allies certainly seemed to take a dim view of stopping proceedings for elevenses during recent war games, when things seemed to be going badly for the poorly equipped Brits.

On that occasion the Americans refused to drink the prepared cups of tea laced with Viagra, and one of the Brits accidentally drank from the wrong cup causing himself something of an injury due to wearing his tight fitting and restrictive leather underwear worn in the hope of an early getaway to visit Madam Suzie.

What the senior generals needed was a fall guy. Someone they could jettison if the shit hit the fan, so they sent for files on their senior staff to see who was available to take the blame should this idea fall flat!

Eventually it was suggested there was only one man incompetent enough for the job and that was General Compton Smyth, whose career had been spent mostly behind a desk coming up with schemes as ludicrous as to dump land mines and other obsolete weapons at sea rather than on British soil, causing untold mayhem when the pollution from these degrading weapons hit fish stocks and a trawler later sank having set off one of the supposedly de-commissioned landmines as it went about its desperate business in the strangely fish-free waters. The chain reaction as the other weapons exploded downed the small civilian craft in no time at all and the survivors had to be given a massive payout to keep quiet!

When he got the call to take up his new role in the field Smyth was busy working on a plan to equip soldiers with single seat hovercraft with sub-machine guns mounted on top. Not in itself a bad idea except that hovercraft very rarely pointed the way you needed them to in order to hit a target and the recent cut backs meant that there was no budget for sub-machine guns, let alone hovercraft that would require training to operate.

“We’re sending you on a commission in the field!” announced the youngest looking member of the assembled general staff present at the other side of the table.

“Afghanistan?” Smyth asked enthusiastically, thinking he was going to get a chance to put into practice his policy suggestion of persuading the Afghan farmers to grow Roses instead of inferior poppies.

“Not this time,” the senior general explained after clearing his throat. “We’re sending you to set up a top secret brigade.”

“SAS?” Smyth ventured optimistically.

“Even more secret, and so secret it will be a mini brigade.”

“Mini?”

“Six men!”

“Six?”

“Six!”

“…Okay!”

Smyth was handed his orders in a sealed envelope and set out immediately for Aver Wallop (not to be mistaken for Upper or Lower Wallop), where the new brigade would be based just on the outskirts of the village on the site of a smallholding left to the ministry by an ex soldier out of spite for his son who broke the family tradition of a life in the army in favour of a career cross dressing in a burlesque club in Soho.

One thing is for certain, the peaceful World of the unsuspecting villagers in Aver Wallop was about to be turned upside down!


...To be continued.

To find details of my published comedy titles as well as other books authored by me, please check out my Amazon Authors Page at http://www.amazon.com/Neil-Winnington/e/B00CMRJZ46 and follow my Twitter account @NeilWinnington

Your comments are welcome, and feel free to contribute below.

Ida T. Heurtze and the Battle of the literary Narks

Unfortunately my efforts to type up and bring the first novel by Ida T. Heurtze to print have been delayed slightly by Ida getting herself arrested, which by all accounts is just the latest incident in a blood feud with Gladys McTavish of the Clan McTavish.

Ida’s family had always been thought of as outsiders or incomers in the town of Nark ever since a relative several generations back acquired a German sounding name for them in a raffle. He had in fact won top prize, which was life membership to the Tory Party, but national pride and an aversion to trousers, bigotry and the colour blue made him choose to take the runners up prize and the name Heurtze.

The rivalry with Gladys McTavish of the Clan McTavish started at school when the vacancy for class swot was keenly contested by the two girls, briefly along with Suzie Blaire, whose eagerness to put her hand up so often was due to a sore shoulder.

The rivalry continued beyond school to consume them as they pursued careers in journalism. Ida found her calling with the local newspaper, The Nark Ark with several significant reports on the failure to establish a goldfish fishery in Lock Loast and the fire at the local Whisky Distillery.

Her rival meanwhile went to a foreign land and found work at a newspaper in the English village of Newcastle. England is a country way to the South run by idiots who liked bending over to be beaten at expensive schools, and then by Madam De Sade when they reached public office.

Newcastle being a forgotten outpost had a newspaper called The Cartoon and Gladys McTavish of the Clan McTavish went down there to write stories about their little football team and brown ale, which is a watery whisky they liked in those parts.

Gladys started as a staff writer and worked her way up to editor before returning home to become editor of The Nark Ark a role Ida T. Heurtze had set her heart on after years of sexual harassment. She soon stopped the harassment and tried other tactics, but the editor retired of her own volition and Ida naturally assumed the job would be hers!

From the outset there were disagreements over the direction the ark should take, and Ida objected to the new editor going tabloid and giving the front page to Jimmy McDuff of the Clan McDuff who became a local celebrity when he landed a walk on part in the Taggart police series. His drunken ramblings while on holiday living rough in Glasgow caught the attention of the director who had just fired the actor hired to play a bum in the scene.
“Why don’t we just use a real bum like…? Like HIM!” and so Jimmy McDuff became a celebrity in Nark.

Jimmy hadn’t been given a line to speak, but he did have one of the lead actors stand quite close to him when he declared, “There’s been a Murrrrrderrrrr!”

Giving the front page to a celebrity story jarred with Ida who saw her report on Billy McNish of the Clan McNish being given a control order banning him from contact with sheep after an incident caught on camera in a sting by the Ark’s staff photographer Andrew McMuck of the Clan McMuck!

The sheep in question had been tethered at the roadside under a lamppost on Billy Mcnish’s route home from the pub, with a rather fetching bow tied around her neck, and special black suspenders to entice anyone so inclined for the planned feature “Beastiality…Fact or Fiction?”

Billy succumbed to the honey trap and Andrew McMuck took the incriminating pictures, although this proved a challenge when Billy McNish got so distracted by his desire to pleasure himself with the sheep that he found it difficult to smile for a clean shot. Another problem was the sheep failing to realise its’ moment of fame and struggling somewhat.

The feature drew widespread acclaim in the local pub, and delighted Ida by being taken up by an English comic called the Daily Sport.

Ida’s follow-up story on the subsequent trial of Billy McNish of the Clan McNish was intended by her to be her crowning achievement, especially as members of UKIP desperate to drum up support in Scotland had donned summer dresses because they heard of the Scottish propensity for wearing skirts, and were protesting outside the court, each with a sheep on a lead in support of Billy and the “…rights of every man to love his animals!” according to their spokesman, “…We will fight the EU who imposed these laws on animal welfare upon us” he continued, “A right to LOVE your animals that would be protected if UKIP came to power!”

The UKIP intervention didn’t spring them into power in Scotland, it merely split the Conservative party vote which up until then stood at an all time high of zero!

This snub to Ida was merely the latest in a string of insults, starting with her story on the launch of the local distillery launching that years vintage being usurped by a feature on kilt hem lines, and reaching a climax with the request to forego a feature on a campaign to have Nark Haggis trademarked as a local product in favour of a report on porridge snorkelling. This brought the feud to a head and it’s a matter of debate whether Ida quit the Ark or was fired, but such was the bad feeling that it split the town down the middle.

It very nearly split Ida in two when a pub sign she was standing under while drowning her sorrows fell and missed her by inches. Foul play was suspected, but no chickens were in the area.

Then Gladys got a parking ticket on the high street on a Monday, when everyone knew the traffic wardens only came to Nark on a Thursday afternoon between 1:30 and 3:00pm! Ida’s fingerprints were said to be found on the offending ticket and she was consequently arrested for impersonating a person who mattered.

Upon hearing that Ida was the local swing voter several political parties made it their business to intervene and declared an interest in saving their innocent voter, only to discover upon her release that the rumours about Ida’s voting habits were in fact gained from playing a parlour game judging style and performance at the sophisticated adult parties held by Benny McSwindle of the Clan McSwindle in his new pigsty.

Regardless of the reason for this intervention I am assured that Ida is back on the game and will be sending the latest part of her manuscript wrapped in a freshly worn pair of knickers and a brand new house brick!


Please do check out my Amazon Author page where you will find my published titles including my comedy novel Religious Pursuits and LFC fanbook The Importance of being a Red!
http://www.amazon.com/Neil-Winnington/e/B00CMRJZ46
Feedback is always welcome both there and here.

Being a Liverpool FC fan is in the blood.

The following is an extract from a book I am writing which is written by a fan for the fans, and because of this your comments at the end will both be appreciated and will effect the book. It is a very personal journey I am taking people on, but if you love LFC or are a Psychiatrist wanting to understand the mentality of a football fan this might be for you... Please do leave your comments at the end, and please add any anecdotes of your own that illustrate the points I am making. Include your name in Brackets if you are willing for me at include what you add in the book...

Being a Liverpool Fan is in the Blood, not optional... FACT!
By Neil Winnington 

Preface
Some things in life are analysed too much, with people claiming to be smarter than us trying to peg a reason for everything we do in life. From our handwriting to relationships, to the cars we drive, we’re told it can all be explained and that our tastes can say a lot about us.

Some things cannot be explained so easily, and our passion for Liverpool Football Club cannot simply be dismissed as tribal. This is no mere local club. There is a history, sentimentality and warmth that has grown and spread around the World.

This is more than a football club, it has taken on a personality of its own. It is bigger than any owner, manager, player or fan. We are all custodians of a living breathing life force which is only as strong as the elements within, and although wounded in recent times it is a force that will grow again because it’s heartbeat on the Kop beats as strongly as it ever did.

This is a book is a personal journey to share my passion and thoughts, which fellow kopites, and even fans of other clubs will understand but will leave those who don’t get it as bemused as ever.

Neil Winnington

Chapter One
It’s in the Blood!

My Grandfather was born a few streets away from the football ground at Anfield in Hartnup Street… No, not merely grew up, he was BORN in that little terraced house, so him supporting Spurs was just not going to happen. His passion for the club was the example I have followed and his pride lives on as I have tried to emulate him.

My father being a Liverpool fan must have helped break the ice on that awkward first meeting when my Mother introduced her boyfriend. I of course wasn’t around at the time, but knowing my Grandfather if Dad had been an Everton supporter or heaven forbid a Man U fan there might not have been a me to write this book.

Skipping a generation, my daughter was a red in every sense, but I’ll come back to my pride and biggest heartache later.

I remember the day I officially became a Liverpool fan. I say officially because it was never in doubt. My Grandad lived with us, and Match of the Day was always a noisy affair with the two men of the house screaming at the black and white TV while I was instructed to be quiet because the football was on.

I must have been young because the black and white TV was gone for most of my formative memories, replaced by a colour TV which had the colour and contrast set to make red VERY red. I was old enough to be talking though, but the rest remains pretty clear in my head, and my Grandfather recounting his recollections proudly to friends, patting me on the head helped make this memory one of those golden moments that stays with you for life.

“If you go in the back room, be quiet,” Mum warned me as I ran through the kitchen, “Your Grandad is watching football!”
“Okay!”

I needn’t have worried, Mum was an only child, but reminded me again and again that I was the apple in my Grandad’s eye. The son he’d always wanted. My Brother likewise, but I benefited from arriving first, and that meant I could disturb the football without getting the silent treatment.

I ran into the room. Grandad was sitting in his chair by the door I’d just run through. The TV, a Granada rental TV with four channel buttons (even though only three channels existed), was positioned in the opposite corner and faced directly back to the old man’s throne. Nothing was said by Grandad, choosing to ignore the intrusion until I ran right up to the TV. I wasn’t stupid enough to stand right in front of the screen, I’d been told off often enough to know better, but just standing alongside the box seemed to make him nervous.

“I’m watching the football!” he said with a degree of distress in his voice. I knew that, of course. One of the teams was all grey, the other seemed to be grey and white stripes, but the team in grey were passing the ball among themselves, while the other team seemed to be running around a lot without the ball. Something about that team in grey appealed to me.

“Which team is that?” I asked, my index finger following one of the all grey men across the TV screen, much to the old man’s discomfort.
“Liverpool!” came the irritated reply.
“What colour are they?”
“Red!” replied Grandad, desperate for my hand to leave the screen.
“That’s my favourite colour.” I declared, and the old man smiled, “Which team is that?”
“…Liverpool!”
“That’s going to be my team!” I announced, my gaze now fixed on the screen as seriously as the old man’s. I didn’t turn round until after he’d answered my next question, “Which team do you support, Grandad?”

There was a sniff from behind me, and the old man was still clearing his throat when he replied, almost choking the word out.
“…Liverpool!”

I turned round to see that huge grin that only I got when I did something spectacularly wonderful that always confused me. Yet there were tears rolling down his cheeks, and he was wiping a tear from beneath his thick black, square NHS glasses. I’d never seen a grown man with tears on his face before, and tears only happened when someone cried, so I ran into the kitchen thinking I’d done something terribly wrong.

“Mum, Mum! Grandad is crying… and smiling, at the same time!”
Mum rushed into the back room and after a brief muffled conversation with a big smile on her face.
“Is Grandad okay?”
“Oh yes, he’s very happy!”

I don’t remember much more from that day, apart from Dad being called into the back room by Grandad when he got in from wherever he’d been. I was stood to attention in the middle of the room by Grandad as he told my Father about the good news, and I remember my Father smiling and both men making a huge fuss of me.

Ok, so it wasn’t an epiphany. It wasn’t an unspoken thing with me being a red from birth. It was always going to be the case that I’d support Liverpool, and it was always going to be the case that I’d be a Liverpool supporter, but I remember the day that I chose to be a Liverpool supporter. I definitely wasn’t brainwashed… Brainwashed? Oh I’ll come to that…


So you might be sitting there thinking this woolly-back, grandson of a proper scouser chose God’s own football team to support because his favourite colour isn’t pink!

It certainly doesn’t prove my argument that being a true red is in the blood. Well I had given my Grandfather that beautiful moment when his pride flowed with the tears down his face. My daughter Emily gave me several!

Emily’s story is one I will touch on from time to time in this book, but what happened to her is a book in its own right that is too painful to relive even now. It must be written, and she must not be forgotten, so for now Google Search Emily’s Song by Sam Blue, and if enough of you want to help you will find the way there.

Emily’s mother is Russian, but I met her in Birkenhead, not on the internet, as even I’d have assumed if someone told me they married a Russian. I don’t really want to bore you with the story that will follow in another book, but by the time her visa had run out and she had to return to Russia we were engaged, living together and she was pregnant with Emily.

I travelled to Pskov in Russia with my pregnant bride to be, and was pretty reliant on her translating for any kind of communication. Some things don’t need translating though, especially football, and Liverpool were on another European run after the miracle in Istanbul.

There was local interest because we were playing CSKA Moscow, and my pregnant bride to be teased me, finding it hilarious that I was getting so wound up, cheering and cursing with the eb and flow of the game as we lay side by side on a double bed watching the game on the TV.

I was confident of victory, but something even more important happened that evening. Stevie G scored a goal, and I let out a loud roar. Then Vika shouted something wonderful that any parent will recognise as special…
“She just kicked me!”

Yep, my daughter Emily chose that very moment to kick for the first time! I briefly thought of that moment with granddad, but this was a million times better, because here was proof beyond doubt that Emily would be a Liverpool fan. It was in the blood and I was the happiest man alive! Vika tried to reason that it was my cheering that earned the kick, and how could I be so sure Emily wasn’t a CSKA Moscow fan anyway? Don’t be stupid, woman!

In fact regardless of how horribly wrong it all went with her mother, Emily just got better and more wonderful and more precious, so much so that I counted the minutes at work, just wanting to get home to my little girl. Which is just as well, because no matter how tired I was upon getting home my wife would leave Emily with me and retreat upstairs to chat on skype or on the phone with the bastard soldier who’d broken up our marriage to sate his ongoing appetite for married women.

Our marriage had been miserable for me for a long time. I was too old, stupid, fat and ugly for so long that I was numbed to the insults, but I would do anything to save that miserable marriage for Emily, because I knew her mother could only stay in the UK as long as she stayed married to me, and I would take a lifetime of misery to protect Emily and make her little World perfect.

She was the most joyous little two year old a father could hope for, and she would sit happily on the sofa with me getting excited with her Daddy, even if she didn’t quite understand why… Even I’d concede that last point.

It was on such an occasion that Emily and I were watching yet another European night with Liverpool playing at Anfield. Once again Daddy was getting excited and Emily was jumping up and down on the sofa alongside me. Enter the dragon… in a foul mood as it happened, who launched into a tirade against me.
“What’s this doing on TV?” she demanded, “You can’t watch football with her. She’s a little girl!”

Well done for noticing, I thought, before insisting the happy dancing little girl alongside me was enjoying the match and was a Liverpool supporter just like I am! This obviously struck a nerve, because an obviously well rehearsed speech taking me back to that night in Russia when, for all I knew my shouting had disturbed the unborn Emily, or that she had in fact been a CSKA Moscow supporter kicking with disgust and showing her true Russian roots.

How stupid, but before I could respond a little voice by the TV won the argument for me. With the TV crew focusing their cameras and microphones on the Kop, my little daughter was copying the fans on TV holding an invisible scarf above her head and waving it side to side while singing “Ivervoo… IVERVOO!” bringing a tear to my eyes, and even forcing the ice queen to smile and concede the point before sitting on the other end of the sofa. Emily hopped up between us and hooked her arms around both our necks, trying to pull us together. Without words she had said what she wanted, the ice queen declared she was cute. I burst into tears.

Now I ask the most hardened fan to deny after that being a Liverpool fan is in the blood.

Emily gave my father many proud Grandad moments, but the one that sticks in my mind most I didn’t even witness. As any right minded Dad would do to his young apprentice… er, daughter I would teach Emily the things she needed to know, especially as Wrexham, where we lived seemed to be full of Manchester United fans…

I need to digress slightly at this point. Aside from Mickey Thomas, why the HELL are people in North Wales predominantly Man U fans when geographically Liverpool is closer??? Worse still they are the kind of angry nasty fans who spit hatred and bile at everyone who isn’t afflicted with their sickness!!!

…Anyway…

I taught Emily, who was still barely speaking to show any nasty Man U fan brat of a kid the palm of her hand while proudly saying “Five times!”

Now Emily was as cute as cute got, with chipmunk cheeks and a smile that could melt the coldest heart. Mum and Dad were having Emily stay with them for a weekend to give her a break from the frost and hatred at home and to give me a break. They decided to visit our relatives who live in a farm on the outskirts of Macclesfield. These were relatives we’ve always been close to, and die hard Man U fans, which is forgivable because they at least live within a reasonable distance of the place.

My uncle Jonathon was the most vociferous Man U fan of them all, so a certain amount of good humoured banter would be exchanged, and by 2007-8 a sickening air of superiority was added to make it worse.

Knowing that they were taking Emily there, I made a point of getting Emily to show her Grandad “five times!” which made his face light up, and that was enough for Emily to know she was doing something very special and very right.

Apparently my Uncle Jonathon was introduced to Emily and thought she was a very nice little girl… then Dad whispered in her ear and she thrust her palm up facing her newly introduced relative and said more clearly than ever “FIVE TIMES!”

Apparently Dad was almost crying with a mixture of laughter and pride, and even Uncle Jonathon had a little smile before shaking his head and saying “Tell Neil he’s teaching his daughter some very bad habits!”

Emily loved attention, and loved to milk a crowd, so she would follow Uncle Jonathon around repeating “five times!” much to everyone’s amusement.


Like I said though… It’s in the blood!


Chapter Two
To Walk on Hallowed Ground and Stand Among Gods!

Any player weighing up an offer to play for Liverpool against an offer from a “bigger” club… Or a player who has just signed for Liverpool, and is only vaguely aware of our history, I urge you to read this chapter. For to understand the contents of these pages may well change you from being a player to becoming a legend!

I may not have grown up in the shadow of Anfield like my grandfather, but I did grow up in the 1970’s when Liverpool were not just the kings of the old First Division, but we were the kings of Europe, and half the team that did that had a scouse accent. Even when Jan Molby came from a village called Denmark HE learned to speak proper scouse!

The point was we did have early computer games and other toys, but we didn’t dream of fame coming from Big Brother’s house, but from donning the greatest kit ever devised by man and walking onto Anfield as a player.

Now non of us dared risk the ridicule of our peers to say it as anything more than a joking reference, but the obvious route to becoming a Liverpool player was to be outdoors playing the game because those scouts for Liverpool football club could turn up at any time to spot the kid who was playing a blinder and take him on the inevitable path that would lead to scoring the goal that would win the league, in front of the Kop, who would worship you for the rest of your life and chalk you up as a legend.

I’m pretty sure the 13th Bebington, the scouts group in Bromborough, where I grew up got a few members because someone had heard that scouts took kids to Anfield and they became gods, but they also had a football team which played on the Plymyard playing fields and the REAL scouts might be that bloke who always seemed to be standing there watching all the young boys playing football.

Nowadays that Liverpool scout would be carted off and end up on some register or other, but back then everyone knew he was probably sent personally by Bob Paisley to find the new strike partner for Kenny Dalglish, who’d hand over the number seven shirt out of admiration for the amazing talent he would see on that debut game.

Not all of us got to play on Plymyard, but I lived, as it happened, next door to Bromborough Secondary School, and back in the days when the most valuable thing on a school’s premises was the cane, a single pocket calculator and lead on the roof, the gates were left open and both the strips of grass on the front and the playing fields at the back were echoing to the sound of kids all playing at Anfield, and all expecting a scout from Mr Paisley to pluck us from obscurity.

It turns out that the council who closed the school not long after I left are now going to turn my old school into a housing estate, assuming that we the people who’d still care what happens to our old school will not care anymore. They’ll also moan about youths in hoodies hanging around on street corners menacingly reaching into the depths of their pockets and moaning about everybody hating them. I’m afraid we, the old gits, do hate you, but only because you possess the youth we squandered, and to be fair we had it easier because we were allowed to play on school grounds without people assuming we were all thieving scum!

…I digressed a bit didn’t I?

…So how much does it mean to a kid from Merseyside to become a Liverpool player? Well I can only speak for the kids back then, and it meant everything. If you had a team full of scousers playing for Liverpool they’d be paying the club for the privilege and would give every last breath and sinew to win the game. We would give everything and run ourselves into the ground, without knowing defeat until the referee blew that final whistle.

Their strikers would not pass a scouser in defence, who would stick his body on the line to keep the ball from our net. Ask Jamie Carragher, the ball wouldn’t be beyond saving until it was all the way across the line, and having robbed the striker of the ball, our scouser would stroke the ball up to Stevie G to do his magic.

Ok so this is ninety percent emotional and doubtful to say the least on the skill front, but then what would we want more from our players, incredible ability, but lack of application, or someone who spits blood, runs themselves into the ground and gives everything… Er tough one. Ideally we’d have a skilful player who also gives everything, but when push comes to shove and our manager made a bit of a cock up on his virtual football game and the chairman wondered in, picked up the piece of paper with a name circled I think we’d rather have an over enthusiastic clod than some primadonna who thinks they are more important than the team. No brainer really.

Of course to every individual kid playing on waste ground, or in my case on that strip of grass at the front of the old school, on our day we were as good as anyone, even those of us who weren’t…

…I got better and better as time went on. A genuine late developer I developed a knack for judging the stride of an on-coming player and sticking a leg in to nick the ball cleanly. I wasn’t too bad as a shot stopper too, but my best trick was judging a long pass to land perfectly to match the stride of one of my players… but all this came late, and once you have a reputation for being crap, it sticks!

…None of us were good enough, of course, but that just made it even more important to get noticed, or to be part of a game where someone you knew got spotted and called up to do a trial at Liverpool.

You see knowing how much that shirt, that ground, and the team means to someone local you know damn well that they’ll give at least 50% more than a bought in player. Some players quickly cotton on to this and become Gods because they share our passion. A little Scottish kid called Kenny lived and breathed LFC and we loved him for it, so that’s an examples of the outsiders who become part of our family and Kenny Dalglish will be worshipped for the rest of his life and beyond…

Then there are players who SHOULD be gods but don’t quite get it. I give you two contrasting examples, both local lads, both brilliant strikers, both could do no wrong in our eyes when they played for us, but one remains a god… Robbie Fowler, and the other says he feels hurt that the Liverpool fans haven’t taken him to our hearts given what he did for us… Michael Owen.

Robbie had all the enthusiasm of a Yorkshire terrier, speed, and an instinct for goal that made him a legend in his teens, but for three or four seasons he terrified defences and scored goals in matches that have become part of the legendary annals of victories past… Beating Newcastle 4-3 in a season when both teams were in the hunt to break their long years of pain waiting to win the league…

When Robbie left us he remained a red to the core. He gave everything to his new teams, like Manchester City, but everyone knew that his heart was in Liverpool, and even his goal celebrations had reference to Liverpool, holding four fingers up to United fans when, at the time we had won the European title four times and that great night in Istanbul was yet to happen…

In essence Robbie Fowler will be a god to the day he dies, because we all know that the club is everything to him. We know the shirt means more to him than anything, and we know coming short in the league hurt him even more than it hurt the rest of us, because he’d been there AND he’d given everything he had. THAT is what a player thinking of coming to Liverpool needs to understand. Give as much as Robbie and Kenny emotionally and we will forgive almost anything!

Michael Owen’s record for Liverpool in terms of goals and results stands comparison with everything Robbie Fowler achieved. He was arguably the only thing saving us from embarrassment for a couple of seasons, with his goals and Stevie G being the two vital ingredients that kept us in contention. In terms of record Michael Owen will always be right up there as one of the greats, but he never found a home in our hearts in the way Robbie did.

So where did it all go wrong for Michael Owen with some of the fans that has led to him to comment that he is disappointed with the sentiments of some fans toward him… Was it going to Real Madrid? Well no. I for one wouldn’t begrudge him that. He had given us his best years, and if you’re going to leave us at all, go to a big European club.

He then went to Newcastle United, who are perhaps spiritually the closest club in England to Liverpool with the passion of the Geordies matching ours for our club, and Kevin Keegan, another great player who seems to play down his Liverpool past (strangely) went there, so no, if you go to Newcastle in the twilight of your career, kudos and respect to you, Sir.

No, in the very, very twilight of his career he joined the old enemy Manchester United… Now let me upset some of my own fans now. Chanting vitriol over Munich is simply sick! That was a tragedy just as tragic as Haysel and Hillsborough. There are times when rivalry should be put aside and football fans stand side by side, but that aside you do not go to your biggest rivals. Sir Alex understood that when he blocked his players from coming to us.

David Beckham was the perfect United fan, complete with his squeaky cockney accent, and he became a legend by being quite good at crossing the ball and taking free kicks. Jolly good for him! He too left the club he had grown up playing for, who had nurtured him and developed his talent for advertising tattoo parlours and a penchant for giving his children strange names, but when he went to Madrid he made it clear he would always Love Manchester United to the day he died, and could never contemplate playing for another English club… Deluded he might be, but you have to grudgingly admire his loyalty. Yes he went on to play for clubs in several countries, and he is, if I’m honest, a very nice chap, but he lives and breaths for the club he loves, and anything else for him is never quite going to mean the same…

Fast forward to the end of the 2012-13 season when five people who had made a significant contribution to football retired.

Sir Alex Fergie chew chew Ferguson we have to give credit to. If we analyse what he did best at Manchester United he assessed what we had done from Shankly to Paisley and on to Kenny’s double winning side, he mixed the best young players from elsewhere to young talent nurtured from local lads with a passion for the club. He developed a system and a pride, and he gave them an ethic where they never knew defeat. They would intimidate other teams before they even got on the pitch, and he took it a step further with Roy Keene leading his mob to scare the bejeesus out of any match official who dared to make a decision they didn’t like. It may have gone a bit too far. One rule for them, and especially in the case of Cantona, but another for anybody else… But Manchester United today are doing what we used to do. Everybody hated us, but they admired what we did… and much as he hated us, or seemed to, you have to look at his record at Aberdeen and Manchester United and admire what he did… Sorry, but if you’re going to hate me for being open minded you’re no better than Gary Neville.

At the same time old red nose, and Paul Scholes left Manchester United, Jamie Carragher left Liverpool and retired from playing (Like Scholes) for the same club throughout his career. He had cleared the ball from the line to keep us in a European run, had lifted the Champions League cup, UEFA cup FA cup and lived and breathed Liverpool football club. He never gave up until the last whistle, and he never wanted to leave because nothing else could matter more than playing for Liverpool. When Kenny Dalglish was brought back as manager for the second coming Carra went out and bought video tapes of the glory days when King Kenny played for the club to show the young players just how important Kenny Dalglish is. Why it means so much to the fans and club… Why he is a legend. Carra knew this. He understood it. That is what sets him apart from Michael Owen, who declared his retirement as a professional bench warmer at the end of the 2012-13 season, as did David Beckham, but I’ve given him enough space in here, and the point about the tattoo’d one was made.

An interview with Michael Owen about the retirement of Alex Ferguson really hit the nail on the head as to why he didn’t have the same admiration as Jamie Carragher from the Liverpool fans.
“I felt privileged to play for him” at… “the biggest football club in the World” and “the greatest manager there had ever been!”
It might not have been an accurate transcript of his interview, but those phrases in quotation marks were definitely in there, and this was an interview a few weeks after he had done another one and declared himself disappointed that Liverpool fans didn’t appreciate him as much as he felt they should have!

Now I personally like Michael Owen. I think he was a brilliant player, with pace to burn off and scare any defence, but at the same time he didn’t live and breath Liverpool and he went to the one club no true Liverpool man could really contemplate going, and having done that declared Sir Alex the greatest manager of all time, and Manchester United the biggest club in the world! I’m sorry Michael, you may be a thoroughly nice chap, but you just don’t get it if you don’t understand how deeply that cuts some of our most dedicated fans, who as you read this are burning their copies of my book because I had the gaul to say nice things about Becks and Fergie, so if I’m up the proverbial without a means of progress you, my friend have been marked up as an even bigger traitor to the extreme minority, and neither of us will escape unscathed so far as our reputations are concerned. Mine doesn’t matter because I am a nobody and no-one significant will probably ever read this, but you really must know deep down why you hurt some Liverpool fans. Don’t you?

…I digressed again. I have a question for all those bemoaning the lack of local players in the Liverpool squad. Where can our kids play any more? Ball games are banned from all the places we used to put our sweaters down, and even if the kids could go out and play, how can we have let things go so far that the kids would rather play games rather than go out and play football in the terraced streets and side roads like we used to?

…and to the club, if we do our side of the bargain and get our kids out there playing to get noticed, will you get your scouts to get out there and spot the local talent? I KNOW it was never like that, even back in the day, but passion is everything, and if you want to be great again some local passion has to be in there.

To everybody I’ll mention this, as a parting thought about passion to play the game. I have walked on Copacabana beach in Rio De Janeiro, which is not an idle boast, but a prelude to a point, because I wasn’t there as a tourist. I saw rich kids, and poor kids, on Copacabana playing beach volleyball…with their feet! The skills were simply breathtaking. I remembered me and the other kids who thought we were ok back in the day and imagined these guys taking us on at this game, and we’d have been annihilated!

So will some rich bloke buy the school next door to my Dad’s old house and set up the playing fields, running track and football pitches over to a community youth scheme tied up with Liverpool FC and set up similar schemes across Merseyside, it’ll cost a fraction of the wages bill QPR paid payers who didn’t do a shift and got them relegated, but will bring benefits both to community health and our beloved football team in years to come… and while you’re at it, put in a massive sand pit and let’s give our kids a chance to get some of the amazing ball skills I saw both on the beach and in the slums of Rio.  

Please leave comments both positive and negative about these two chapters... I value your feedback...

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And if you're stuck what to get him for Fathers Day why not buy this and give him a laugh...
Religious Pursuits
By Neil Winnington
A sleepy Devon Village is turned upside down when an accident leads to the police, paperazzi and even the army descending on the village, and there are people here with secrets they'd rather didn't get out!
https://www.createspace.com/3797405

Also available in paperback from Amazon.

Ida T. Heurtze, An Introduction...

Ida T. Heurtze, an introduction.

I thought it would be a good idea to break my promise to talk about my own erotica in this blog, and write an introduction to Ida who approached me to publish her work, given that she lacks both the internet and confidence to do it herself. It would also help to clarify once and for all that we are not one and the same person, especially as Ida is a woman and I am not.

Ida T. Heurtze… Not to be confused with Ida A. Hertze who lives in the Everglades in Florida with her budgie called Cecil (Who she insists on calling Seesil, which is wrong on account of us being English, and therefore right!) and writes travel guides for alligators…

Ida T. Heurtze lives alone with her pet dog Dougal (who she says she has taught to lick… whatever that means…anybody?) and her goat Billy in a smallholding just outside Nark in Scotland, which is a little place full of angry men in skirts and Mel Gibson look-alikes some way north of Watford, which is a little village in England, which for our American friends is a place other than London which we invented to have somewhere for our trains to go.

Ida is celibate apart from the rare occasion that she has sex, and learned everything she knows about physical love from reading Mills and Boone and a man called Hamish McDuff from the Clan McDuff and her Aunt Edith who hated men and lived with a man called Mary.

She inherited her German sounding name from her father who was Scottish and also had a German name. How he came by it nobody knows but it can be certain it wasn’t in a card game because he was very bad at gambling and once lost his way in a bet with an Irishman who got there first.

I receive Ida’s hand written manuscripts in ten page batches neatly wrapped around a brick every Tuesday at 8:30pm, which co-incidentally is when old Bobby McDonald of the Clan McDonald stands outside my house with a bottle of whisky and shouts obscenities at me.

Bobby McDonald is also a Scottish lady like Ida T. Heurtze, although clearly unusual as Scottish ladies go for having a ginger beard, and used to walk around town topless until her nipple rings rusted and forced her to resign her seat in the Houses of Parliament on grounds of metal fatigue.

She came down to England riding a £5 note which he had especially tuned to avoid capture by the Scottish mounted police on their Lambretta scooters!

The highlight of her political career was a record breaking 78 hour political debate with he MP for Little Wallop held during a recess when the rest of parliament were away on holiday, during which she discovered the word willy and ended up being dragged out after breaking into a shouting match with a tour guide and his confused Chinese delegation coming to see London on their way to visit a little place called America they had just bought on the stock market.

Bobby’s Brother Sally had made and lost a fortune in Iceland, investing everything he had in mechanical pleasuring devices for the females of that parish when the economy took a nosedive and the women folk tightened their chastity belts until the men folk took their fingers out and sorted out the mess they’d made of it.

With a van full of worthless products bought at a premium from some bloke called Ann Summers on the internet, Sally, fuelled by alcohol and the desire to get away from it all, drove his van up a glacier and dumped the lot into a crevice. The resulting seismic event caused by 2538 high powered Deadly Donkey vibrators hitting the bottom and suddenly bursting into life caused a dormant volcano to suddenly spring into life and grind Europe’s airspace to a standstill.

The melted plastic mixed in with the ash cloud was deemed too dangerous for delicate jet engines, although the plastic content was hushed up by a scientific community who were convinced they’d be on for a certain Nobel Prize for discovering naturally occurring plastic from the eruption.

With the foreign visitors from the IMF who’d been there to lecture the Icelanders on the ill judged decisions leading to the collapse of their economy grounded, the locals had a brief boost in their economy providing guided tours of the volcano by boat at extortionate prices due to having a captive audience.

At this point I’d like to make clear that rumours I used a gagging order to silence the press from reporting an illicit affair with a fairground goldfish called Daphne are wholly groundless and I can prove beyond question that at the time the alleged incident took place I was in fact rescuing a goat from a mineshaft, which unbeknown to me had been chained to the railway sleeper I threw down said shaft to find out how deep it was. The sight of a distressed goat hurtling toward me in the twilight was quite distressing for me and probably for the goat too! My extensive efforts, over the next five minutes, to retrieve the animal came to nothing. However I maintain that my being there clearly refutes any possibility that I could have been simultaneously in a fairground near Cleethorpes serenading a goldfish called Daphne!

I shall continue typing up the manuscript delivered to me by Ida and ask you to keep following for news of books bearing her name.

Please could you help us identify who has been reading this blog by cutting and pasting the following Tweet…? You are a sick Twat! Your book is brilliant, can I buy a copy? …and send it to the Twitter account @NeilWinnington

…and then having proven that you are willing to blindly follow instructions given by an idiot, report to General Compton Smyth who is recruiting for a rapid response suicide squad to retake the town of Grimsby after reports came in to the Ministry Of Defense of a Viking hoard invading as recently as January 8th 1027!

Please remember to check out the links below, and do leave a review after reading one of my books, thanks.

Religious Pursuits
By Neil Winnington
A comedy novel in the Tom Sharpe mould, with a sleepy Devon Village facing a media frenzy as a combination of lies and incompetence leads to a media frenzy and the paperazzi descend on the unwitting locals...
ISBN 1470071347
Available now in Paperback from...
Createspace
https://www.createspace.com/3797405
and
Amazon
http://www.amazon.com/Religious-Pursuits-Neil-Winnington/dp/1470071347/ref=sr_1_fkmr1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1368540328&sr=8-1-fkmr1&keywords=books+on+sale+neil+winnington




Wicked Perspective
By N.J. Winnington
ISBN-10: 1484818709
ISBN-13: 978-1484818701
A collection of short Erotic Stories to give you a quick thrill with the one common theme that they put you in the role of the girl at the centre of the story

Available in both Paperback and Kindle from;
Amazon
(UK) http://www.amazon.co.uk/Wicked-Perspectives-Steamy-Collection-Stories/dp/1484818709/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1368540706&sr=1-1&keywords=Neil+Winnington

(USA) http://www.amazon.com/Wicked-Perspectives-Steamy-Collection-Stories/dp/1484818709/ref=la_B00CMRJZ46_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1368541078&sr=1-2



Ages Of Sin
By N.J. Winnington
A collection of short erotic stories exploring the theme of age differences with bonus material and a few surprises.

https://www.createspace.com/4292981
and
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ages-Sin-N-J-Winnington/dp/1489533311/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1369343612&sr=1-3&keywords=Ages+of+sin