Showing results by narrator "Paul Metcalfe" in All Categories

Peter Williamson, investment director at Aardvark in London, is in trouble! The investment he led into Riverjack Crypto looks doomed when the notorious founder kills himself (and his finance director) in a bizarre car crash! Peter's boss, Gordon, is on the hunt, seemingly not just for him but for superstar Susannah. Meanwhile, the firm's suave lawyer, Tom, is permanently distracted by Peter's delectable PA. When everyone descends on a hotel for the meeting—and at night attempt to descend on each other—total mayhem ensues. This is the world of venture capital—fully exposed!

This is the hilarious follow-up to Going Around the Bend on the QE2 where Nick now runs away to America to escape his proctologist. He is welcomed by the American people and delighted to find that they love his accent. As always, the outspoken Nick runs into many situations, some of which would seem to be unbelievable, but they are true: He meets a number of Hollywood stars and has a flaming row with one of them, is interrogated by the FBI, lives with a top model, has a fight with a mobster, and sadly witnesses the Americans' reaction to 9/11!

"In Love" handles a serious subject in a light, almost comic way. A couple are engaged but have no sexual feelings for each other. The tensions, as they try to do what is expected of them, explode until a compromise is reached. But will the marriage last?

Written by the author of Life After This, this audiobook delves into the details of how life and death are intrinsically linked. Listen to an entirely new perspective on living with grief and that there is life after this. The author shares his own experience of losing his father, an experience that shrouds you in a "cloak of grief" for which nobody is truly prepared. We all need to find our own ways to cope with loss, and you will hear how to do exactly that.

Two Blue Birds tells the tale of the classic triangle of the man, the wife and the secretary, who struggle to work out what their relationships are with each other. Neither of the women seem to want the man sexually but the secretary offers devotion while the parasitic wife has more insight into the man and his work. All the relationships seem unhealthy, all three seem to want something different but are incapable of expressing what they desire.

"The Man Who Was Through With the World" picks up the same themes as in Lawrence's short story "The Man Who Loved Islands". He asks if we can ever withdraw from the world, no matter how much it disgusts us. The ironic part of this fragment is that the hermit vainly seeks to think holy thoughts while all around him is the natural world which could provide his life with meaning. The fragment is unfinished, leaving the listener to wonder if the hero would return to the world, if the world would come to him, or if nature would take its course and let him die in his hut.

Lawrence uses the story of a storm and the deaths it causes to revive the feelings for (if not an actual belief in) the old gods, in this case Mercury whose shrine is ignored by the tourists but who takes his revenge.

"None of That" concerns itself with the nature of desire. The man in the story is no more than an animal with base instincts but is attractive to women. The woman looks for something deeper with imagination, but in the end is brought down by the more instinctive man. Lawrence again seems to be saying that a woman cannot exist beyond the control of a man, however crude, and can only bring unhappiness on herself if she tries to live on her own terms.

"Mother and Daughter" can be understood as one of Lawrence's diatribes against women. Two women do their best to get along without men, but in the end, as Lawrence always proposed, a woman cannot be fulfilled without a dominant man, however unsuitable he may be.

"The Blue Moccasins" has the charm of looking at some eternal human problems such as unequal marriage, the waning of sexual desire, and a woman who cannot give herself wholly to her husband in a thoroughly English and local setting: the stage of an amateur dramatic society where all the passions and delusions come to a head.

"The Undying Man" is a slightly unfinished piece, drawing its inspiration from Shelley's Frankenstein about the creation of life and the fear of death. It is interesting to speculate where Lawrence would have gone with the story, but the sound of broken glass is the most likely ending.

"The Lovely Lady" is a fine observation of a life - the lovely lady of the title - that thrives by sucking the life out of others. The two victims escape by a somewhat melodramatic and comical means, but in the process destroy the lovely lady and form what will probably be a dull and passionless union.

"A Dream of Life" is unfinished, but there is enough extant to let us know where Lawrence was going in this story. He begins by looking back and bemoaning what has become of his generation, under the thumb of women and lacking the spark of his father's mining friends. Then, in a scene reminiscent of Pilgrim's Progress, he travels forward in time and sees his village in the distant future. The people are living in an idealized commune, but do they have the spark of life?

"Rawdon's Roof" is a slight comic piece, relying for its humor on the folly of a man throwing away his chance of happiness because of an unexplained and unlikely vow.

"The Last Laugh" is another of Lawrence's supernatural stories, set in a dreamlike snowy London. The question left open is who the three people in the story saw on the snowy evening. Perhaps Pan, returned to destroy the Christian God, as the church is destroyed in the story, and to bring love to the frigid young woman in the form of a policeman who is prevented from leaving the house. But why the other quite harmless, and Platonic lover, had to die is a mystery. Perhaps because he had made love to a Jewess?

"The Border Line" is unusual in that Lawrence dabbles in the supernatural (as he was to do again in "The Rocking-Horse Winner" two years later) and that this is less a story in the traditional sense and more an exploration of the mind of a particular woman, based on his own wife, Frieda. Katherine, in the story, realizes that her real love was her first husband, whom she should, according to Lawrence, have submitted to to gain real happiness. As Lawrence says in the story, thinking of his German wife, perhaps, "Beyond all race is the problem of man and woman."

"Jimmy and the Desperate Woman" tells the improbable story of an intellectual editor persuading a working woman to live with him. We would say now "on the rebound" from a failed marriage, but Lawrence crosses the class divide and poses questions about what makes us attracted to other people. The intellectual twists and turns of the magazine editor contrast nicely with the stark honesty of the spurned miner husband.

"Things" takes a cutting look at two "idealistic" young Americans who travel around Europe in an attempt to give their spoiled lives some meaning, and in the end settle for suburban America, surrounded by their possessions, their "things".

"Sun" is a sensual story of a woman rediscovering her sexuality through the power of the sun. But for the unexpected arrival of her businessman husband, she was ready to give herself to a local peasant, but is finally pulled back to respectability by her husband. But she is free to remain apart from him in the sun.

"The Flying Fish" is unfinished, but tells the story of an Englishman, Gethin Day, returning home after years in South America. There is a hint of the homesickness Lawrence may have felt during his long exile. The bulk of the story is the time spent on the ship which is taking Day back to England. It is a ship of fools, a "plague ship", and the only positive note is the joy Day sees in the play of the flying fish and porpoises around the ship. It is tantalizing to speculate how Day would have adapted to English life again, confined to an old house in an old country.