Overview

A retired sports' journalist who we come to know only by his nickname, 'Lumpy', decides to tell the life story of one of his earliest and most interesting friends, Robbie Sparrow. The writer is caught in a dilemma; should he 'tell it like it was', or sanitise a life for a more palatable product. After consultation with the subject of the proposed book, 'Lumpy' finally decides to recount the story 'warts and all'. So we share Robbie's naughty, and sometimes wicked childhood, his adventurous and experimental teenage years, and the early part of his working life, which sees him fishing commercially up and down the West Australian coast. The last fishing trip results in a period of incarceration in Fremantle Gaol. Called up for National Service, Robbie subsequently does a year-long tour of duty in Vietnam. Upon his return he retreats to a bush block in the great southern of Western Australia. 'Lumpy' helps his friend develop the block and build his house, and meets Angela for the first time. Then with commitments at two America's Cups, 'Lumpy' and Robbie lose touch. When there is a 'twitch on the thread' everything has changed, and not for the better. A previous 'gentlemen's agreement' between Robbie and Cliff Birmingham, honoured years before, is now paid back in spades, and Robbie Sparrow has some 'golden years', and a positive influence on some young lives. 'Lumpy' gets an ending to his book, but it really wasn't the one he wanted.

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9781925529203

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Jeff Hopkins (1950) is a retired schoolteacher. He lives in Western Australia with his two Labrador dogs, Jack and Sam. As the drama master at a private boys' school he wrote eleven original musical plays and produced and directed them at the school. In 1992 he researched and wrote a family history, 'Life's Race Well Run' and after retiring in 2006 he has written nine novels: 'Reflections' (2016), 'Artifice' (2015), 'Gnarl' (2015), 'The Spiv: The Robbie Sparrow Story' (2015), 'Impressment' (2015), 'Benedict Lovelace and the Travelling Show' (2016), 'Lord Gnarl' (2016), 'Rocking Horse Rider' (2016) and 'The Hydrographer: The Clyde Steadman Story' (2016). Jeff previously maintained he wrote entirely for pleasure, and to fill in the long summer months between football seasons. Recently he has admitted that he set himself the task of writing in a number of different genres as part of a three year programme to learn about creative writing and self publishing. He said it was like an undergraduate degree course for which there was a strict budget and work schedule. It has since become clear that the whole experiment was one of the most interesting and absorbing things he had done in his life. He continues to write.

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