Pride Comes Before a Bedbug: Tottie's Travels, #3

By L M Krier and Tottie Limejuice

Tottie famously hates flying. She's managed to avoid it for nearly twenty years.

But with the chance of an author talk and a live BBC interview back in England, can she overcome her fears and get on a flying thing once more?

More importantly, will she be able to find her way by car around Paris and to the right terminal of Europe's second busiest airport? And all with only the help of Conchita the capricious satnav.

With Tottie's familiar conversational style and touches of humour, she'll take you on a trip across three countries. With some surprises, not always welcome ones, on the way.

Fasten your seatbelts. You could be in for a bumpy ride.

• Language: English
• Publisher: L M Krier
• Release date: Aug 22, 2019
• ISBN: 9782901773252

L M Krier

Retired freelance copywriter and copy editor Lesley Tither writes under various pen names for different genres. Already well known for travel memoirs as Tottie Limejuice, Lesley also writes crime fiction under the name L. M. Krier. Lesley is a former journalist, working as both a criminal court and coroner's court reporter. She also worked as a case tracker for the Crown Prosecution Service, and for a firm investigating irregularities in offshore finance. Her other jobs have included owning and running a holiday riding centre and acting as a 'charity mugger', lying in wait to sign up shoppers for a wildlife charity.

Book preview

from Tottie Limejuice, the author of the Sell the Pig travel memoir series,

the DI Ted Darling Crime fiction series (writing as L M Krier)

and children's fiction books writing as L M Kay)

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Dedicated to all the many new friends I made

as a result of this big adventure

Copyright © L M Krier Tither 2019

Published by LIVRES LEMAS

ISBN: 978-2-901773-25-2

The author asserts the moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

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All Rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the author, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

Table of Contents

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Chapter One   A flying thing

Chapter Two   I need a big one

Chapter Three   Who needs clothes anyway?

Chapter Four   Filthy foreign food

Chapter Five   Oh look, a butterfly

Chapter Six   Rainbows in the rain

Chapter Seven   The dastardly Tintin gang

Chapter Eight   All aboard the bendy bus

Chapter Nine   Uninvited guests

Chapter Ten   Not wanted on voyage

Chapter One

A flying thing

Holidays are fraught with danger when it comes to relationships. They’re supposed to be a time of rest and recuperation. But many a marriage, partnership or friendship has floundered on the rocks of sea or mountains, hotel or tent, fly or drive.

I count myself amongst the lucky ones. My best friend of long standing, affectionately known as Sensible Aunt Jill, and I have been going on holiday together for thirty years and we are still speaking. She’s a Quaker Elder. I am blissfully godless, but we still manage to get on well.

In that time we’ve done pretty much everything, from a leaky tent in the Rocky Mountains to luxury hotels in Europe. So much so that it’s becoming something of a challenge to come up with something different.

We’ve ridden horses up mountains in Spain, the USA and Corsica. We’ve got a hire car stuck in the snows of France. Got spectacularly lost along the Oregon Trail in the States. Last year we slept in a Hobbit House in Italy’s Apennines mountain range and wild camped in a thunderstorm on top of a big lump of rock. Because it was there.

It’s always hard finding places Jill hasn’t been to before. Her late father was an airline pilot so she and the rest of her family got lots of concessionary flights and made good use of them.

She lives in Wales but is originally from London. So I hesitated to put my latest germ of an idea to her as it involved spending a weekend in the UK – my first return visit there in nearly thirteen years. But then I produced my trump card. Had she ever been to Luxembourg? I asked.

It turned out that, like so many people, she hadn’t. And it just so happens that I have a lot of family in the small country where my grandmother was born.

Emboldened by this success, I put the rest of my proposition to her. For those who don’t yet know me, Tottie Limejuice is the pen-name I use for travel memoirs – the Sell the Pig series – as well as travelogues – Tottie’s Travels.

In addition I write crime fiction as L M Krier (part of the Luxembourg family name), the Ted Darling Crime Series, based in Stockport. Geographically in Cheshire but for administration purposes, within Greater Manchester. Although I was born in Nantwich, Cheshire, I moved to Stockport when I was very small and as I’ve lived there longer than anywhere else to date, I consider it to be my home-town. And because Ted and I are both great believers in equality for all, I am proud to sponsor Stockport Pride.

What if, I suggested, still rather tentatively, we met up in Stockport for Pride weekend? I knew if I went there I would get to meet some of Ted’s great fans, and some of my Facebook chums, who have been so kind and helpful to me in bringing Ted to a wider audience.

After that, I proposed, we could return to my beloved Auvergne in Central France, where Jill likes to visit every year, by way of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, stopping off somewhere new to both of us in northern France on the way down. Wherever the pin happened to land when jabbed into my AA road atlas.

My suggestions received a big thumbs-up from Jill. All of them. She’d be delighted to come and join the fun at Stockport Pride, although, it has to be said, Stockport is not the most picturesque town in the north of England. Thrilled to be making her first visit to the ancient capital of Luxembourg. And delighted to take the leisurely route back home to the Auvergne, stopping off  somewhere suitably scenic on the way.

All of which was very satisfying and left only the question of how I was going to