Forever England

...And there will be a corner of some foreign field that will be forever England.”

Only these days it’s more likely to be a half finished villa overlooking a championship golf course somewhere on one of The Costas.

Following an unfortunate encounter with Spanish gin measures and an enthusiastic estate agent, retired special effects engineer Terry England is the proud owner of a nearly completed villa in a new urbanisation in Southern Spain.

Not quite how he’d intended to spend his enforced early retirement Terry nevertheless tries to make the best of his new life. If only the local council can work out which house he’s actually bought and the leaf blowers would please stop.

Terry finds himself being sucked in to the English Expat community with their endless garden parties and quests for real bacon and Tetley’s Tea Bags. Of course, if it all gets too much he can always relax in the local English Bar with a nice pint of Guinness, a roast beef lunch and the Mail on Sunday.

With a growing feeling that he might have moved to the ‘Wrong Spain’, Terry sets out to explore and finds himself tangled in the affairs of a small rustic village in the Alpujarras. It is here where he finds a different Spain. A Spain of loves and passions, a Spain of new hopes and a simpler way of life. A place where a moped is an acceptable means of family transport and a place where if you let your guard down for just a moment this land will never let you go again.

Forever England is the tale of one man trying to redefine who he is and how he wants to live. It is a story of hope and humour with an array of eccentric characters and comic situations for which David Luddington is so well known and loved.

"Overall, this is a very warm and funny book. It is filled with wonderful characters and many laugh out loud moments." book-reviewer.com

"Genuinely funny, with many laugh out loud moment..." Matt Rothwell - author of Drunk In Charge Of A Foreign Language

I twisted the little yellow switch on the remote detonator and the crisp night air ripped apart in a magnificent display of colour and sound. I felt the usual involuntary smile relax the tension in my face.

As explosions go this certainly wasn’t my biggest, that honour belonged to the Eiffel Tower and an out of control Apache helicopter with Bruce at the controls. Or was it Arnold? I can’t remember now, I’ve worked with most of them over the years. It wasn’t even my smallest explosion, the safe deposit box in the vaults of the Monaco Casino wins that one. But by a long way, this was my most personally satisfying. Little bits of yellow metal clattered across the A38, still smoking as they settled onto the deserted tarmac. I removed the earplugs and dropped them into my shirt pocket then kicked the remains of the speed camera into the ditch at the side of the road. The grey metal post that just five minutes ago proudly held the camera high above the road now cast a stark and twisted image against the night sky. Perfect, though maybe not quite up to my usual pyrotechnical displays but still not bad for a spur of the moment bang.

I slipped back into the seat of my Triumph Stag and the engine started on the fourth attempt. Driving a classic car is a great honour but one does have to make allowances for the old lady’s age. As the car swung onto the road and we resumed our journey, I wondered if that had been one of the new digital cameras. If it was, then the images of my number plate were already on their way through cyberspace to the local police headquarters. But what the hell. By this time tomorrow I’d be gone.