LITMIR.BIZ

      CONTENTS

      Publisher’s Note

       Title Page

       Chapter One

       Chapter Two

       Chapter Three

       Chapter Four

       Chapter Five

       Chapter Six

       Chapter Seven

       Chapter Eight

       Chapter Nine

       Chapter Ten

       Also Available in the Confessions Series

       About the Author

       Also by Timothy Lea

       Copyright

       About the Publisher

       CHAPTER ONE

      Two hundred yards downstream, the bed sinks.

      Typical, isn’t it? I should have known the moment Sid asked me how I’d like to be the first man to sail round the world on a bed. Mind you, I would have thought that it might have stayed afloat for a bit longer – like to The Isle of Dogs or even Woolwich Ferry. Still, you can’t afford that kind of naive optimism when you are dealing with my brother-in-law, Sidney Noggett. It is like buying a hot water bottle before you go for a paddle in the alligator pool.

      The events leading up to Sid casting me adrift on a double bed – I was lucky it was a double, he isn’t usually that generous – are well known to readers of Confessions from the Shop Floor, more an education than a book and still available from Futura Publications, or direct from me including seven pounds eighty-five pence for postage and packing. Suffice to say that Sid planned to use my trip round the world to publicise the firm of bedmakers he has bought his way into, The Universal International Bedding Company – now known as Slumbernog.

      At the moment, it looks as if another great Noggett idea is about to make contact with the bed of the Thames. Not that the bed sinks fast, I will say that for it. In fact it takes me a few minutes to realise that the water is rising up the inside of my trouser leg. I thought it was the wash from a passing tug. To say that cold panic invades my system is no exaggeration. I can feel percy trying to find a foothold on my belly button as the icy water gets closer and closer. Thank goodness Sid left me with a life jacket. He is not all bad. There is a piece of string hanging down the front of it and some writing. What does it say? ‘REJECT’. I wonder if that has anything to do with inflating it? Only one way to find out. I wrench the piece of string. There is a loud ripping noise and one side of the jacket comes away at the shoulder. Oh well, back to the drawing board. Maybe the pillows will keep me afloat – or maybe they would have done. The last one is floating off into the night.

      Blimey! I am really getting worried now. You don’t know how fast the current in the Thames can move until you try floating down it on a double bed. Sid must have chosen an ebb tide specially. Conniving bastard! I wish I had my hands on him now. His own brother-in-law. How could he do it?

      I am on the point of losing contact with the bed when I look up and see a row of lights looming up in front of me. For a moment I think that I must have drifted in to shore. Then I can make out a mast and rigging against the night sky. It must be a boat.

      ‘Help!’ I shout, ‘Man overboard! Help!’

      There is no faulting what I am shouting. It is all good solid stuff that I have seen used to very good effect on any number of telly screens. If my name was Robert Redford the water around me would look like an explosion in a washer factory as the lifebelts plopped over the side. But my name is Timothy Lea and that makes a lot of difference. All I hear is the echo of my own voice, the lonely hoot of a foghorn and a sound like someone playing the banjo. At least the boat in front of me does not appear to be moving. I had always reckoned on dying in bed, but not by being cut in half by a bleeding great liner!

      I have hardly had time to open my cakehole again when – zomp! The bed bashes into the side of the boat and goes down faster than Britain’s gold reserves. So much for the pride of the Noggett fleet. I fling out my arms and find myself clutching the thick links of a gunge-encrusted chain. For a few seconds the current plucks at my body and then I manage to haul myself up and find a foothold on the chain. Exciting, isn’t it? I bet you are all on the edge of your seats. No? Well, do you mind edging forward a bit as I get discouraged very easily? Ta. Anyway, there I am, shivering with cold and terror and trying not to think why the anchor chain I am clinging to smells the way it does. All those rats running up and down it can’t help a lot. I suck in a few deep breaths, square my enormous shoulders, and start struggling up to where the chain disappears through a hole in the side of the ship.

      Above me, I can begin to make out the name of the boat. It looks like Len Grade. It must be named after one of the famous Grade family. Funny, I have heard of Lew and Leslie but not Len. As I get nearer I see that there is a lot of other writing, like the symbols they use in cartoons when someone is swearing, and that it is Leningrad not Len Grade. The boat must come from Russia which accounts for the balalaika music smiting my earholes. I thought it was a bit haunting for a banjo.

      This news cools down my blood another couple of degrees. I know that the Ruskies do not take kindly to unannounced visitors snooping round their goodies and I hope that there are going to be no misunderstandings about the reason for my appearance on board. Better, perhaps, if nobody knows about it. With this thought in mind, I slide my hand up the side of the boat and close my fingers round the lowermost of the rails. A few more contortions that Charles Atlas would envy – well, he must be about seventy now – and I pull myself up so that I can look on to the deck. There seems to be no one about so I swing my leg over the side and—

      ‘Haltski! Stay exactly where you are!’

      I wish the bloke with the gun had not said that because the ship’s rail is threatening to carry the cleft in my arse round to the front of my body. ‘I’m not a spy,’ I say. ‘My bed sank.’

      ‘Your what?!’

      ‘My boat sank,’ I say. I mean, there is no point in making the confusion worse, is there? I flirt with a few items of verbal jollity that involve Vulgar Bedmen and Volgar Boatmen and decide against them. The gentlemen with the submachine-gun pointed at the centre of my nut cluster could well fail to be amused. Their ways are not our ways.

      ‘You looking for asylum?’

      What a funny thing to ask a bloke! I suppose I do look a bit odd but there is no reason to start jumping to conclusions. The geezer reads the expression

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