E-Format – https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B004JHYMOU
Paperback – https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1790739144
A fictional novel set against the juxtaposed backgrounds of life on the lower deck of British aircraft carrier in the 1960’s and the emerging new age eco minded pot smoking hippy culture. The galvanizing catalyst is the UK defense establishment. At that time, ruthlessly creating people with no recorded identity to carry out their bidding. Deliberately targeting the vulnerable vacuum of the ‘flower power’ era. Ambitious ruthless patriotic ‘Civil Servants’ eagerly exceed the boundaries of state involvement. Using the police and the Criminal Justice System as a tool of coercion they create expendable people. Persons with no recorded identity who could be threatened and forced to carry out illegal government tasks under the shadow of their own unnoticed disappearance should they refuse. Leonard Flower Welham a young sailor drawn by the glamour and adventure of the Fleet Air Arm. Roaring powerful dangerous flying machines. Alien and foreign places and cultures. Grey unstoppable warships that policed the world’s oceans and offered a safe home. A voyage of discovery as he changed from a boy to a man. In the mid sixties he is drafted to join HMS Bulwark. The ship is undergoing a refit in Plymouth dockyard. He is confronted with its sheer magnitude and majestic presence. Climbing aboard up the steep gangway he enters a special world of smells, sensations, sights, sounds and the beginning of the trip of his life. Joel. Born in a damp Yurt in a green wet valley in Mid-Wales to a thin depressed hippy eternally searching for her own happiness. Her low self esteem restricting her to abusive relationships leading to her coerced insemination and a boy child. He was to grow to be the only thing of true value in her life. Joel spends his happy free childhood unfettered by the expectations of school and conventional society. Accepting his alternative life as nothing unusual he is taught by his own curiosity and associations with people who knew the answers to his questions and who could teach him what he needed to know. The lives of the two young men come together. Life becomes familiar and normal. Friendships develop, fun is shared and enjoyed. The eastern world is paraded before them to be dipped into and experienced whilst having the safety of a floating ‘England’ to run back to. All this time Joel cannot escape the lurking incredible officialdom. Their awful instruction and the dislike for himself and his own weak compliance.
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