Rob Walters

Being Down, Looking Up: The Adventures of an Itinerant Shoeshiner (eBook, ePUB)

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

This book is about an unusual journey: a unique journey through everyday surroundings. A few years ago Rob Walters decided to become a shoeshine boy. He stowed his shoeshine kit, a tent, and a few items of clothing in a trailer, connected the trailer to his push bike and set off from Oxford to visit the old shoe-making cities of middle England. Along the way he polished many shoes, met lots of interesting people, pedalled many miles, and gained a fascinating insight into his own country from a rather unique perspective.

Rejected by some, welcomed by many, he polished shoes in shopping centres, solicitor's offices, a kite festival, railway stations, campsites, street corners, and a bewildering selection of pubs.

He polished the shoes of dossers, company directors, criminals, Morris dancers, publicans, bikers, policemen, schoolboys, reporters, a bowling green groundsman, an Icelander, and a Latvian to name just a few. He slept in fields, in woods, and on the edge of golf courses. He was ejected from the Norfolk Show and welcomed into the offices of lawyers and fruit importers.

During his journey he met members of the Household Cavalry, topless protestors, a homeless joss stick seller, a man who stole baths in hotels, a submariner, a beaten housewife, a disenchanted solicitor, a rubber recycler, a toyshop owner, and two ghost guides amongst others. All of them had a story to tell: some sad, some amusing. It is their tales and Rob's own incisive observations that are related in this unusual book. Reading it will transport you to Northampton, the centre of the English shoe making tradition; then through the Fens to East Anglia; back across the country to the Midlands; down along the River Severn to Gloucester; and then over the Cotswolds to Oxford. Progress is at a comfortable cycling pace along the country roads and through the sleepy villages, yet interrupted regularly by diversions into the vibrancy of the cities.

---

Dieser Download kann aus rechtlichen Gründen nur mit Rechnungsadresse in A, B, CY, CZ, D, DK, EW, E, FIN, F, GR, H, IRL, I, LT, L, LR, M, NL, PL, P, R, S, SLO, SK ausgeliefert werden.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Rob Walters
• Erscheinungstermin: 23. Juli 2013
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9781301701933
• Artikelnr.: 72370641

Autorenporträt

I always wanted to write, even as a kid, and now I do. I can transfer the desire to other projects and often do - but if there is nothing much on then I need to write.

In my past life in the technical world I was often puzzled by colleagues who hated writing in the way that some people hate maths.They were forced to write whereas the pen had to be wrested from my hand.

When my children were young I wrote for them. I clearly recall reading the second chapter of a book I started on the lives of a family of city foxes. I had almost finished reading a section in which most of the cubs were gassed in their earth when I looked up and was amazed to see tears streaming down the faces of my two daughters. The power of the written word?

My first full book was published in 1991, It followed many technical papers and articles and was followed by two newsletters which I edited, and mostly wrote, for the next ten years. Four more technical books appeared after which I abandoned the world of technology and began doing my own thing.

I travelled, became an Oxford city guide, and wrote a number of books and articles, some fiction, some non-fiction, some published, some not. See my bookshop on the web for all of my books and a shocking experience in an online pub.