Up Close And Personal: Volume 2

By Stewart Bint

Novelist Stewart Bint writes a regular column in a fortnightly magazine, The Flyer, ranging from the intensely personal, humorous and hard hitting controversy, to sheer whimsy. This is the second compilation book of those columns., taking us from October 2014 to May 2017, and is published to coincide with the author's 100th column.

Topics include cold calling, smoking, dreams, the supernatural, going barefoot, retirement, why we should abolish the letter 'e' in the English language, manners, children flying the nest, the author's involvement in charities, and supporting what you love instead of bashing what you hate.

An extremely diverse range of subjects. Something for everyone.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Stewart Bint
• Release date: Apr 2, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370393565

Stewart Bint

Writer: novelist - four novels and a short story collection traditionally published in print and ebook (To Rise Again, The Jigsaw And The Fan, Timeshaft, In Shadows Waiting, and Thunderlands); magazine columnist; public relations writer .Previous roles include radio newsreader, phone-in host, and presenter.Married to Sue, with two grown-up children, Chris and Charlotte, and a budgie called Bertie.Usually barefoot.Lives in Leicestershire, UK.

Book preview

Up Close And Personal Volume 2

By Stewart Bint

Copyright 2017 Stewart Bint

Smashwords Edition

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For Sarah Holdsworth, Editor of The Flyer, who publishes my column every fortnight.

Cover designer: Donna Garratt

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This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. Although this ebook is free, it may not be given away to other people. If you would like to share this ebook with another person, please return to Smashwords.com and download a further copy. If you are reading this ebook and did not download it yourself, please return to Smashwords.com and download your own copy.

Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

*****

May 5, 2017 marked the 100th appearance of novelist Stewart Bint’s 100th column, Up Close And Personal,

in the fortnightly magazine The Flyer.

This book, which celebrates that milestone, is the second collection of those columns – Volume 1 took us up to October 17th 2014.

Up Close And Personal

Up Close And Personal, Volume 2

Ranging from the intensely personal, humorous and hard hitting controversy, to sheer whimsy.

October 31st (A lookback at Volume 1)

I’m taking the opportunity to use today’s column to promote my new book, which is all about this column!

Confused? No need. All my columns in The Flyer since I started writing them in February 2013 have been compiled into an ebook, available for all ereaders such as Kindle, Kobo, iPad, androids, laptops and PCs. So if you’ve missed any of my musings, now’s your chance to catch up on them.

Oh, by the way, did I say the book is free? Well, it is! My depleted wallet will be chasing me, but Up Close And Personal is free directly from the publisher’s website: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/485648.

Before you all rush to get it, let me remind you of some of the subjects I’ve tackled over the last 20 months, so here comes a little self-indulgence for me, and a trip down Memory Lane.

There’ve been hard hitting attacks on our local authorities for their stupidity about libraries and recycling; suggestions that the Christian clergy should do more to promote Easter or let big business step in and do it; and bullying in the workplace and online, both of which raise my blood pressure to dangerously high levels.

Not even football referees have escaped the Bint wrath. Nor have charities which try and guilt-trip us into contributing. But then my softer side has kicked in – there’ve been columns about my 10k barefoot walk (which turned out to be 10 MILES after we misjudged the route!) to raise awareness for Lyme Disease; getting locked in the stocks at two local carnivals to raise money for good causes; and how my neighbour’s cat keeps me company during my daily toils at the keyboard.

Who can forget when my Grandmother ate that hair on her cake? Or how I got in a lather over people misusing the humble apostrophe. And what about my encounter with that red-eyed ghost, and two meetings with Mrs Thatcher?

Yes, they’re all there – my goodness, what a varied collection we have. Hope you enjoy the book. Who knows, if enough of you read it my publisher could be thinking about Volume Two in July 2016?

November 14th

I’d been intending to write this column on another topic altogether, but when my budgie took it upon himself to fly across to my chair from his cage for the first time, it rather focused my attention in a different direction.

He’s made short trips to me before when I’ve been near his cage, but this time I was at the far end of the lounge watching TV. He was sitting on his outside perch. Suddenly there was a chirping and flapping of wings and he was on his way over.

We’ve had Alfie since August, when he was ten weeks old, after our last feathered friend, Smokey, died at the grand old age of 13.

Alfie is such a little character…he’s now starting to say his name (the result of me making an audio recording saying Alfie, Alfie, Alfie, over and over again for half an hour! I think it drives him mad when I play it. I know it drives me mad).

He had some rings to play with in his cage, but preferred threading his way through them until he got stuck in one. So they had to go; replaced with little balls. What does he do with those? Manages to untie the knot in the string holding them to his cage, with his beak, then sits squawking, peering down at them.

They say looking after a pet keeps you young, fit and healthy. Not sure how a budgie does that…but we couldn’t be without some sort of additional loving presence in the house. Okay, don’t mock, but I sense his love when he sits on my finger, and the cute way he tilts his head slightly to one side as he looks at me.

Regular readers of this column – and those of you who downloaded the free compilation book of all my columns, of course – know that my neighbour’s cat, Goose, keeps me company while I work every day, so I’ve come to regard her as, sort of, my pet now, too. She’s curled up on a chair alongside me as I write this, at this very moment.

No – the budgie is safely in the lounge with the doors closed, because Goose did bring us a little present a couple of days ago…a dead blackbird.

November 28th

I go barefoot most of the time through choice. But it’s estimated that a staggering 1-billion people in the world today have no choice in the matter.

They have to go barefoot.

Why? Because they simply cannot afford shoes.

Around 300-million of them are children, 70-million of whom are also denied an education, because their school uniform requires shoes. For many of those 1-billion people, another problem is disease picked up by their bare feet through poor sanitary and irrigation.

I’m writing this having just got back from a barefoot hike at Conkers. No, not their specially created 450 metre barefoot trail, but a 5k loop taking in gravel, stones, grass and mud. On a mid-November day the ground was cold, wet and rough. But