Graham Relton
 |
|
Whether you have the wanderlust or you’re wander ’lost’, have the travel bug or are just travel sick, whether you’re on top of the world or feel six feet under, this book is for you!
345 days, 16 countries, 4 continents, 3 hospitals, 2 wedding rings, 1 police station and a day lost forever. Around the World in 80 Poems will make you laugh, make you ponder, make you cringe and make you wonder…why anyone would quit a comfortable job to circumnavigate the globe.
From burping Mexicans to aliens in the U.S., ‘Pommie–bashing’ down under to an earthquake in Thailand, split pants in China and an irate nun in Russia, follow the ups and the downs of life with two novices on the backpacker trail from the comfort of your own armchair.
A collection of clever observations, the serious and the funny, that will inspire you to either book the next flight to somewhere new or convince you to never go on holiday again. So whether you are a globetrotter or a ‘rather-not-er’, read poetry everyday or would rather play on the motorway, just sit back, fasten your seatbelt and enjoy the experience. Will this book give you rhyming reasons to travel the globe...or not?
10% of the author’s profits will be donated to environmental charities.
I, Graham Relton, the author, now I like the sound of that. My strict English teacher at Secondary School was the trigger in my life…to turn my back on the literary world. In fact it took me almost five years to read a book for pleasure rather than necessity. And it took me a further seven years or so until I penned my first poem as an adult. A few Valentine’s, Christmas and birthday poems later for family and friends and the habit stuck. It started out for fun and this is how it remains. During 2005 and 2006 I had a few poems published in compilation books and in March 2006 I stepped off the career ladder with my then girlfriend and now wife to circumnavigate the globe. I started writing poems in the first week of the trip in a hostel in the heart of Mexico City for pleasure and as a way of documenting the once in a lifetime adventure we had embarked on. I carried on writing up until the last leg of our epic journey on the Trans-Siberian Express across China and Mongolia to Russia. Echoing fellow Yorkshire man Ian McMillan and with a touch of Purple Ronnie thrown in my poetry is mainly tongue-in-cheek, however read between the lines and some serious issues are addressed. Around the World in 80 Poems is my first book and I hope it inspires, amuses and questions you the reader, giving you rhyming reasons to travel the globe…or not!
10% of the author’s profits will be donated to environmental charities.
Pommie-bashing
It's up there with the cricket...
They like to hand out a thrashing
A national sport in the making
The game of Pommie-bashing!
It's best to just play along
Not take too much to heart
Because perhaps they haven't noticed
Most were Pommies in the start
Dirty laundry
In Britain we're so reserved
Business is done behind closed doors
The act of keeping up appearances
For the 'curtain twitching' neighbours
In Asia it's just the opposite
They don't care who's in the know
Air their laundry on the street
Gather round, enjoy the show
Shouting, fighting, hurling insults
Come close, pull up a pew
A liberating refreshing change
"Whose wife went off with who?"
