Life Love & Lavenham

By Anthony E Thorogood

Philadelphia is a thoroughly modern girl with a determination to choose her own destiny but the matchmakers are everywhere. Her 80 year old Grandmother is busy conspiring with Kaleen, an upwardly mobile fashion designer, the two of them want Philadelphia to team up with Algernon, Kaleen’s dysfunctional mathematical genius of a son. In the meantime Philadelphia’s Grandfather is also matchmaking and wants her to marry Sir Reginald Houghton-Smythe a globetrotting millionaire with a plum in his mouth. However there is a spanner in the works in the form of Johnny Compost a punk rocker from London and self- proclaimed leader of The Great Unwashed. With such a cast of zany characters the only possible outcome is pandemonium, mayhem and madness.

My husband discovered Thorogood by chance. His laughter prompted me to read this as well. We are both well into our senior years and have always believed laughter is the best medicine. Thorogood is our new prescription.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Anthony E Thorogood
• Release date: Apr 24, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370287413

Anthony E Thorogood

I was born in London England in 1953, which makes me a baby boomer I think. Dad ran a market stall in Woolwich’s Beresford Square selling anything and everything. A natural Cockney salesman with all the patter that goes with it but when he was told to give it up or die from the cold, we packed up shop and migrated to Australia.In my youth I always enjoyed my old Dad’s tales of his adventures in the navy in WWII and of his childhood hop picking in Kent, I got my love of storytelling from my Dad. I wrote a book on cider in 2008 after being awarded a Churchill Fellowship to travel around the world and drink and research cider, the cider book sold out. I followed the success of my cider book by writing a series of madcap comic extravaganzas: Bigfoot Littlefoot & West. I followed the Bigfoot books with my Jack Hamma action adventure series starting with Shakespeare on the Roof. Then in 2015 I wrote three romantic travel adventures starting with Sex Sardines and Sauerkraut.This is the bit where I state that I am happily living the good life on our 5 acre property, on the beautiful island of Tasmania, spending my time walking, cycling, planting trees, growing vegetables and writing the odd book, very odd some people say.

Book preview

Life Love & Lavenham

A Romantic Comedy

by Anthony E Thorogood

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Copyright Anthony E Thorogood 2016

Published at Smashwords

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Thank you for downloading my ebook. Please note that this book took a lot of time and trouble to create and is subject to copyright restrictions and must not be redistributed.

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Life Love & Lavenham

Contents

Introduction

Cast

Act One: The Garden Party

Act Two: The Wedding

Anthony E Thorogood

Who the Hell am I

What the Hell do I Write

Click here to read my blog

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Introduction

Comedy - the Best Medicine

Many years ago I wrote a play called Planet of the Cows which was performed during the Fringe of the Adelaide Festival of Arts in 1980. One thing I enjoyed about the play was the garden party and ever since then I have dreamt of writing a play that revolves around a weekend garden party. In 2009, in between sessions of cider making, I wrote the garden party play, I felt it was quite good but Sue, my wife, read it and wasn't convinced. So during the summer of 2010 I deleted the two main characters, invented Sir Reginald Houghton-Smythe and threw in a little bit of madness for good measure. The play came alive and started to leap off the page, then I invented Lavenham a boring old, that is young, solicitor with just a bit of a spark.

The play is set in the garden of an old country house in the Midlands of Tasmania however it could be set in the countryside bordering any Australian city. Two sets of 'parents' have come together to set up their children, a boy and a girl, for a wedding. All is straightforward apart from the fact that the two prospective spouses don't like each other, then another spanner is thrown in the works when the very eligible Sir Reginald Houghton-Smythe turns up, charming and debonair, fresh from London, England.

Cheers Anthony E Thorogood

Cast:

Lavenham: A young man in his late twenties early thirties, well dressed in an old world way, he wears tweeds, likes to wear a shirt and tie and look smart. He is a solicitor and can put on a gutsy performance in court but generally he is a bit middle class and a bit soft. As they say in England he is a wet.

Clarinda: Born in England and married to Edgar, Clarinda is about 75 years of age and is a woman who knows her own mind. She speaks very properly and looks down her nose at people.

Edgar: Married to Clarinda about 80 plus years of age. In World War II Edgar was an RAAF pilot and flew Lancaster bombers over Germany. When he returned to Australia he never worked, not even managing his property in Tasmania, but he thinks he would like to be a painter.

Philadelphia: Clarinda and Edgar's grand-daughter and heir, she is about twenty one years of age and doesn't altogether know what she wants to do with her life, she is a bit of a rebel and wears a Fedora hat.

Johnnie Compost: A young punk from London England and a friend of Philadelphia, he wears punk type clothes, tight jeans, doc marten boots, a leather jacket with studs, a T-shirt made from hemp that states Save the Whales and a Mohican haircut. Johnnie Compost wants to save the world, he is about twenty two years of age.

Kaleen: Married to Dav-id about forty five years of age, runs her own business, she is a self-made woman and likes to think of Dav-id and herself as special people.

Dav-id: Married to Kaleen about thirty seven years of age, a business man and although he left his private school, Geelong Grammar, 20 years ago he still lives the life of a private school boy.

Algernon: Kaleen and Dav-id's tongue tied son, he loves playing with his calculator, about nineteen years of age, he has a thick crop of black hair.

Sir Reginald Houghton-Smythe: The son of a World War II buddy of Edgar's. British and proud of it, about thirty eight years of age and a bit over weight. He wears a blazer with a great monogram emblazoned on it and he also wears a cravat. Financially he is loaded, Swiss bank account, estates, share portfolios, a yacht in the Mediterranean, that sort of thing.

Chantelle & Courtney: Philadelphia's cousins, they are in their late teens, young and giggly. They wear straw hats with flowers in them and matching summery clothes.

Act One

The Garden Party

(The patio of Clarinda and Edgar's country house Pendalton in the Tasmanian Midlands. There are elegant tables and chairs scattered strategically around, a fountain, it doesn't work, a Greek column, and potted plants. Lavenham is sitting on an outdoor lounge, lounging, he has closed his eyes and started to snooze. The two cousins enter the garden walk