Full Description
Referred to colloquially as 'getting off at Edge Hill,' the withdrawal method didn't work for Joe; a shotgun wedding was hastily arranged a month before Peggy's sixteenth birthday and she was delighted... Three children later, Stoker 2nd Class Joe returned from the deep sea to find his new-born baby the victim of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. Accusing Peggy of rolling over drunk, he beat her up and stowed Tommy and Owen away under a lifeboat canvas. (If he hadn't, his boys wouldn't have suffered the systematic abuse by paedophile priests; no ten-year jail sentence and no Maori love affair.)
After losing his second wife to the global flu pandemic, Joe retreated to in the penury of the New Zealand slums. He later found some solace in Uncle Spike's outback Sly Grog Shop, but the outbreak of World War Two soon put pay to that. It prompted his return to blitz-ravaged Liverpool where he was imprisoned for the 'wilful abandonment' of his family. Young Owen and Maori chief Hankgora were reunited at a MENSA concert in Alexandria, but all too soon the Maori was recalled to arms and seriously wounded in action. After Germany's surrender, he was discharged from a Maltese hospital 'with only one thing on his mind'...
Contents
Foreword ix
1 Go n-eiri an bother leat. 1
2 Caed mila failti 21
3 Gunboats on the Mersey 27
4 Help the mayday, mister 37
5 TIP Brand 41
6 Your country needs you 55
7 'Ka mate kamati' kamate 67
8 Tarpaulin muster 73
9 Shirt lifter 81
10 The very best kind 93
11 Sly-grog shops 103
12 That ain't no lady 111
13 SIDS 119
14 Nitty Nora 131
15 Republican Brotherhood 141
16 Blue-arsed fly 151
17 Carpet of orange lilies 161
18 The stowaways 167
19 Fairbridge 185
20 Reasonable force 199
21 Jumping the Dyke 213
22 Padigm shift 221
23 Coitus interruptus 235
24 The loan shark 243
25 House of Plenty 249
26 Fozza 263
27 Necessary practicalities 273
28 Waitangi Day 281
29 Let's see your knob then? 287
30 Spiritual home 293
31 Monkey Business 301
32 The Bootle buck 311
33 Shit parcels 319
34 Takatpui' 331
35 A town called Bootle 349
