Summer Reads! Available in paperback or as an ebook.

All three of my humorous memoirs (Bev and Carol adventures) are available in paperback format - perfect for a fun gift.

Click the links below to view on Amazon:

One Summer in France

Bunny on a Bike 

Stranded in The Seychelles

Happy Days!

Bev and Carol on DHL and prime numbers.

(Bev and Carol are best friends.  They have very different attitudes to life.  It's all a dream anyway, isn't it?)

I was considering killing the delivery man.  There he stood, holding a parcel addressed to me.

When he’d first arrived, he’d handed it to me, before surreptitiously involving me in what I could only imagine was a blatant sting.

Man: There’s a customs’ charge.

I wasn't that stupid!

Bev:  I’ve already paid.

Man:  I’m sorry, there are TVA (I live in France) charges and a service charge from DHL.

I wanted my parcel.

Bev:  How much is it all together?

I had two possible reactions planned: If it was less than five euros, I’d hand over the cash.  On the other hand, I might take a moral stand, in which case, the sum would be unimportant.  I would stick to my guns.

Man: Twenty-one euros.

This is outrageous!

Bev:   I’m not paying.

Man:  I understand.

Bev:   Can I have my parcel?

Man:  I’m afraid not.

Having explained to a hysterical friend, earlier that morning, that giving in to a tantrum about something as trivial as a bounced cheque was a waste of energy, I imagined lunging forward, knocking the delivery man off balance, snatching the parcel and locking the door.  What would he be able to do about it?

He looked distinctly unaware of my violent intentions.

Man:  Could you hurry up.

This was a red rag.

Bev:  I’ve already paid.  This kind of thing has never happened before.  Give me my parcel.

Man:  I understand how you feel, but I can’t.  Please sign here.

I seethed.

Man:  I’m sorry.  I’m just doing my job.

I melted just a little and filled in the dratted form, adding my signature.  It was all over too soon.  I needed more time to be indecisive.  I stalled a little.  He told me I should contact DHL and sort it out with them.

As I closed the door, I died inside.  What had I done?  I’d made my life more complicated.  I’d added to the list of bureaucratic nonsense that arrived too frequently on my French doormat.  My stress levels rose and I almost gave in - I could still catch him.

A voice called from the kitchen.

Carol:  What was that all about?

I came back and I told her.

Carol:  You’ll have to pay it.  It’s customs’ duty.

Bev:      But I never have before.

Carol:   You’ve been lucky then.  They don’t pick up every parcel.

I considered this very unsatisfactory take on my very emotionally disturbing situation and imagined the DHL delivery man driving away, saw myself running after him.  I listened for his van.  Silence.

Bev:    Oh, God.

Carol:  He won’t help you.

I saw my parcel arriving back at a customs’ house by the sea and pictured a pile of rejected parcels being tossed into the Atlantic, where they would dissolve and be eaten by shrimp.

Carol:  Did he give you a receipt or something?

Bev:   Yes.

I handed it to Carol.

Outside, the sky was blue and the sun was shining.  Such meteorological perfection failed to lift my mood. I spiralled down like a broken-winged bird into a world where there were two sorts of problems: those that were concrete and could be solved by action, and those that were metaphysical and could be pondered for eternity without coming to a satisfactory conclusion.

I noticed the book that Carol had been reading, before she’d opened up her laptop.  Prime Numbers and the Reimann Hypothesis.  A choice presented itself to me:  I could sort out my parcel problem or talk about pure maths.

Bev:  Prime numbers?  They’re the ones that can only be divided by themselves, aren’t they?

Carol:  Or one.

She didn’t look up.

Bev:  So, apart from that, what’s the point of writing a book about them?

Carol:  You wouldn’t understand.

She carried on doing what she was doing on the computer.

Bev:  Tell me something interesting about them.

Carol: Nobody knows how many there are.

Bev:    And…

Carol:  Nobody knows how to predict which numbers will be primes.

Bev:    But what use are they?

Carol closed the laptop.

Carol:  You hate maths.  You don’t understand equations or basic calculus.  You think graphs are irritating.

She was right.  But I still wanted to know.  I wanted to be given a pill that would light up my maths neurons and enable me to shock Carol with my insights into her world.

I heard the printer start up in the other room.

Bev:  What’s that?

Carol:  Your receipt for twenty-one euros paid to DHL, together with the new delivery date.

Bev:  I hate you.

She grinned.

Carol:  You’ll like the flowery crap I’ve added at the bottom.

I scowled.  But curiosity always gets the better of me.  I whistled a random tune and pretended to be filling the kettle.

I was secretly pleased the parcel thing was fixed and at the same time put out that Carol had done it all in minutes. 

I slipped away. There was the receipt and, at the bottom, there was a short, very twee quotation:

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

Courage to change the things I can,

And wisdom to know the difference.

(from The Serenity Prayer, by Reinhold Niebuhr)

Carol:  In other words:  don’t be a dunderhead.

I tried not to sulk.  Carol was so logical.  And Carol was always right.  

What was this?  She was looking at me in a caring way.

Carol:  Prime numbers are useful because, for example, without them, there would be no way to protect information, like bank account details. Hackers hate primes.

I was hooked.

Bev:  Can I borrow it?

Carol:  Sure.

I would prove my mathematical friend wrong.  I would come up with a solution much better than the Riemann Hypothesis, whatever that was, and, in the meantime, I’d make a nice cup of tea.

Happy Days!

More Bev and Carol available here:

One Summer in France (a Bev and Carol adventure - Book One)

I

More Holiday Fun with Bev and Carol

It wasn’t long before we had got into a routine of getting up late, eating brunch, reading and lounging about for a while, and then walking down to the beach for a swim.

We always went to the local beach, it was nicer than Canet Plage, where we had gone with Luc and his friends.  It was less crowded too.  That meant not many children and fewer children meant less noise and less chance of having sand kicked all over us, or concussion from various kinds of balls.

We set out as usual and met a girl carrying an absolutely enormous rucksack, leaning forward at a worrying angle, and wearing one of the biggest smiles I’d ever seen.  She was not English, you could tell even from a distance, from the colour of her skin and the tee shirt she was wearing with ‘Flugzeug’ written across it.

‘Hallo!’ she said, increasing her pace and looking as though she would tumble over at any moment.

We stopped.  Somebody had to.

‘I look for the Mermaid site!  Do you tell me where is it?’ she said, slowing her pace.

Carol was impressively helpful and the girl, whose name was Ingrid, said that she would see us later.  At least that’s what I think she said.

It was four o’clock by then and perfect for sunbathing and swimming in the sea.  We bought oranges from a man with about a million of them piled up on the side of the road and carried on our way. 

I enjoyed the walk to the beach.  It was rare to meet anyone, and the scenery was reminiscent of those paintings where the sky and the land seem flat against each other and the view goes on forever.  I mentioned this to Carol, curious to have her opinion.

‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘Just like in Star Wars!’

As I had not expected this comparison, I probed her further.

‘Do you mean the idea of infinity, the amorphous nature of time and the universe?’

‘Nah!  It all reminds me of the intro.  You know!  When the screen is black and the words kind of roll out into the distance and vanish.’

I had no idea what she meant, so I told her so.  She ignored me and continued with her train of thought as though I had not spoken:

‘Trouble was, I could never read the words in time.  What are all those Japanese people doing?’

This really did fox me.  First Star Wars and now Japanese people.  Was Carol experiencing some kind of schizophrenic episode?  Had the heat of the sun eroded her power of rational thought? 

She pointed. ‘There!  What the bloody hell is going on?’

It was true.  There had appeared, as though from nowhere, a very large trail of extremely overdressed Japanese tourists, all middle-aged and all with cameras around their necks.  They moved as bees swarming, massing together and surging apart, as though breathing, as one.

‘Bollocks!’ said Carol.  ‘They’re going to the beach!’

I didn’t count them, but soon, we had caught up with them.  They filled the path and there was no way past.  In addition to this problem, I wondered whether it might not be the experience we were looking for to be on the same stretch as hundreds of beach tourists who had no intention of taking their jackets off and might never shut up.

‘Come on!’ said Carol, veering off along a path we had never taken before.

It was certainly quieter, and it wasn’t long before we found out why.

‘Does naturiste mean what I think it means?’ asked Carol, standing in front of a very large sign with a very large arrow on it.

I wasn’t sure, but I thought so.

‘I don’t mind getting my baps out if you don’t!’  she reasoned.

The beach was coming up fast and we clutched at each other, controlling our giggles as best we could.  We might have made it, had we not heard men’s voices behind us and looked round to see two bronzed gods swinging up fast.

‘Christ on a bike!’ said Carol, stepping aside and staring rudely.

‘Guten Tag!’

Please don’t stop and have a conversation with us!  I thought.

They passed in front of us and we watched their perfect asses for a while, breathing in for what seemed to be a very long time and, eventually remembering to breathe out.

‘Did you see the size of his cock?’ asked my gobsmacked friend.

‘Well, yes.  I didn’t have much choice in the matter, did I?’

‘Come on!  There must be loads more on the beach…’

I wasn’t sure that I fancied the idea of so much nudity all in one place, but I had never sunbathed topless before, so I was keen to give it a go in an environment where one extra set of, admittedly, perfect breasts would not cause too much of a stir.  To my horror, Carol was untying her bikini top before we even got there and soon it was difficult for me to concentrate on what she was saying as I felt a little seasick in the face of so much uncontrolled bouncing.

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A Bit of Bev and Carol

I hope you enjoy this excerpt from One Summer in France...

Luc lived in a caravan on a neighbouring campsite.  It seemed to be the way things were in the South of France during the summer.  He had two friends, both men, who were quite a lot better looking than he was, but it was Luc who was the life and soul of the party, at all times.  He sang a lot, too.  Even when he was having a chat with his mates, or looking for a pair of socks, he often sang what he wanted to say, so that, in the end, I was disappointed when he didn’t.

He took us to all the places where he sold his stuff, so Carol and I toured the neighbouring villages and towns, free to look around during the morning, and meeting up with Luc and his friends for lunch, which was always lively and fun, and generally delicious too.  I have photos, somewhere, of Carol in her favourite green bikini and me in my yellow one, in most of the places we visited.  We were young.  We didn’t need clothes.  The fact that no one else was wearing swimwear didn’t even cross our minds at the time.

Everything was going well until Charles arrived at the campsite. It made me even more sure that, no matter how much I liked Luc, we would never be more than friends.

Carol said I should tell him how I felt, that he was more serious about me than I was about him, but I was the world’s best procrastinator, so even though my intentions were good, I failed to mention anything until he found out for himself.

Charles started work in the crêperie and Carol and I started eating pancakes at lunchtime and dinner.  He was tall with blondish curly hair, quietly smouldering, and had a smile that could kill at twenty paces.  He played a lot of French rock music on a battered cassette player, which stood on the counter.  The music was not up to much most of the time, but he did have everything ever produced by Jimmy Hendrix. When he wasn’t working, which wasn’t often, he sat around with his friends next to the boules pitch, which happened to be near the tennis courts.

Needless to say, my game became increasingly energetic and unabashedly girly.  It must have been obvious to everyone, except Charles of course, that I wanted to be introduced.  

HAPPY DAYS!

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My interview with Hajira Amla of Seychelles News Agency

 Bev Spicer, author of Stranded in the Seychelles

Amazon UK

Amazon US

Can you start off by explaining a bit about the Bev and Carol series in general and why you decided to write them?

Like most things in my life, Bev and Carol were sort of accidental.  I was talking to a friend who also writes, and when she found out I had worked at a London Playboy casino as a croupier in the early 80s, she said I would be mad not to write about it. People would be interested to know what it was really like dealing blackjack in the not so glamorous world of Playboy. That was the beginning of Bev and Carol, two friends with larger than life personalities and not a great deal of common sense.  So, Bunny on a Bike (Playboy croupiers in 8os London) was the first humorous memoir I wrote, but the second in the series.  Confused?  All will become clear... 

Are there any more Bev and Carol adventures in the pipeline since they were last seen jetting off towards Bangkok?

Aha! Well, there are three so far: One Summer in France (two girls in a tent)Book one, Bunny on a Bike (mentioned above) Book two and Stranded in the Seychelles (teachers in paradise)Book three.  I’m very, very tempted to go off piste with Bev and Carol next time.  Perhaps a hilarious sci fi adventure: Black Holes and Poptarts for example.  If you remember the 70s and 80s, Poptarts were a kind of mass produced flat cake with synthetic jam in the middle.  These delicacies were responsible for many a toaster fire as young people everywhere fed their addiction for sugar and animal fat.  Yummy. They do feature in the Bev and Carol books.  Perhaps Seychelles was lucky enough to escape them?

Stranded in Seychelles is a very tongue-in-cheek look at the islands back in the late 1980s - what would you want Seychellois readers to know before they pick up the book? 

Glad you asked this one!  Stranded in the Seychelles, like all the books in the Bev and Carol series, is meant to be entertaining but also interesting.  Hopefully, readers will see that the laugh is generally on one or other of the protagonists rather than at the expense of other characters who appear in the books.  The portrayal of Seychelles is from the point of view of two young women who are exploring a new and exciting culture where, for the first time in their lives, they are exposed to a society which is evolving at a fantastic rate.  There are aspects of Seychellois life that Bev and Carol find charming, laudable, refreshing and, at the same time, they come across social practices that test their moral and political yardsticks, sometimes leaving them baffled or overwhelmed.  During their time on the islands, Bev and Carol are delighted, challenged and terrified in turn.  Above all, I hope that the deep affection and pride I felt for Seychelles and its people will come through loud and clear.

What kind of person was Bev Spicer in those days?

Incorrigible, unstoppable, dozy, blonde, less wrinkly, and on the lookout for adventure.  I remember never wanting to settle in one place for too long because I might miss something.  The world seemed like a huge treasure chest and I wanted to dive in and pull out as much sparkle as I could.  I suppose I was lucky to have received a free university education, trained to be a teacher and to have had a father who only wanted me to follow my heart and be happy.  And so, in those days, I was a traveller, first and foremost.  I’ve lived in a lot of different countries and feel privileged to have encountered so much that is new to me.  Wherever I have been, I’ve always found amazing people.  People who smile no matter what life throws at them.  I had very little in terms of possessions in those days.  I felt free and unafraid of the future.

Have you been back to the Seychelles since your departure from the NYS? If so, what can you say about how the islands and the people have changed since then?

No, I’ve never thought about returning. Do you know how rich you have to be to holiday in the Seychelles?

I’m so pleased to have found your site, though.  Now I can keep up with what’s happening at the click of a button.  Amazing!

You say that the book is partly fictional and partly a true account of your experiences in Seychelles - how much/what parts of the book has been embellished with fiction and why?

Now this is a very leading question!  I would say that practically all of the events are based on my own experiences, with the occasional exaggeration for dramatic effect.  Fiction comes into play with the characters, who have been made as unrecognisable as possible from the real people I met.  ‘Carol’ is an entirely fictional character in all of the books.  The person who accompanied me to France, London and Seychelles, was nothing like Carol.  What is absolutely real, and what I have endeavoured to convey is the profound and treasured friendship that comes from knowing someone well and enjoying their company in a way that is effortless and genuine.  I sometimes think that Bev and Carol are probably more like two sides of my own rather strange personality.   

Are you still close to Carol (is that her real name)? How did she react when you told her you wanted to write this series?

I am in touch with my friend, yes.  Her name, as you’ve probably guessed, is not Carol.  How does she feel about the books?  I think she is quite impressed, and very happy for me.

Is the book only available on Amazon or do you have print versions available as well? 

All three memoirs are available on Amazon as kindle versions or in paperback.

 

Are you self-published?

Yes.  I like being self-published.  I have total control over content, cover, pricing and publication dates. 

 When was Stranded in Seychelles released?

The kindle version was released on February 27th 2014.  The paperback version on October 17th 2014.

How has the book and the series in general done in sales and have you received any interest from publishers?

All my books are gradually reaching a wider audience, which is very exciting for me. I try to spread the word using social media, but I try not to overdo this.  Most readers who buy my books do so after reading reviews on Amazon or by recommendation from a friend.  Interviews like this one generally help too!  I am always thrilled when someone chooses to buy a copy of one of my books and I’m lucky enough to have received excellent reviews for all of them.

Publishers?  I’ve had a great deal of interest, but nothing concrete, as yet.  I’m quite happy being an independent author for the time being. 

How many other books have you written in total and what kind of genres do they cover?

Apart from my three humorous memoirs, I have three published novels and three published short stories, all kindle versions.  I’m aiming to get all my work into paperback by the end of the year.  Wish me luck! 

My Grandfather’s Eyes is a psychological drama featuring a strong female protagonist who some readers have described as evil.

A Good Day for Jumping is set on the island of Crete where I spent two years teaching, and is more of a character driven mystery involving a multilayered plot, a handsome libertine and a glamorous woman who has led a very unusual life.

The Undertaker’s Son is set in France, where I now live, and is rather more of a soap opera, with lots of local detail and a collection of rural and international characters.  There is romance, deceit, croissants, and a terrifying twist at the end.

I have also published three separate short stories: Angels is a metaphysical horror story, Strings is an apocalyptic sci fi and Peaches in the Attic is a rather disturbing tale about a grandmother and her granddaughter.

You now live in France with your husband and children - would you say your days of adventure, binge drinking and reckless abandon are over? 

I don’t binge drink any more, although I do have a glass of wine with dinner - this is unavoidable given where I live... and very enjoyable, too.  Would I give up adventure and reckless abandon?  I don’t know if I could ever do that!  

To go to Seychelles News Agency's online journal, click here: 

 Hajira Amla of Seychelles News Agency introduces Bev Spicer, author of Stranded in the Seychelles.