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    Trains, Planes And Taxicabs
    Trains, Planes And Taxicabs
    Trains, Planes And Taxicabs
    Ebook56 pages57 minutes

    Trains, Planes And Taxicabs

    By Les Broad

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    About this ebook

    A comic tale of disaster following disaster, the story follows the attempt of Jim Tubbs to travel from the UK mainland to the Channel Island of Jersey to sell furniture. It was a simple plan – fly out, do the job he was so well paid to do, then fly back. It didn't happen that way.
    While Jim was away his marriage is collapsing, not that he'd worry too much about that, and his secretary is deciding that she really doesn't want an affair with her boss any more.
    So Jim was having a really bad time failing to reach Jersey and back home everything he held dear was collapsing. But as Jim really isn't the most likeable of men it's quite fun – and easy – to laugh at him as the disasters mount, one on top of another.
    And just wait until the drunk appears: you might even feel a spark of sympathy for Jim just then!

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherLes Broad
    Release dateSep 18, 2011
    ISBN9781466021877
    Trains, Planes And Taxicabs
    Author

    Les Broad

    That picture isn't me. It's my much-loved Border Collie bitch, who I lost to a spinal tumour in April 2011. She deserves this memorial.I was born a very, very long time ago, very close to my mother in England. Now I live in Wales, which isn't England but is part of the UK. I've written all sorts of stuff, but mostly science fiction. It's sort of believable sci-fi - maybe it can't happen today, but might tomorrow, you know? The sci-fi novels are all on the theme of 'first contact' and the first one is being given away free. You'll have to pay for the others. Sorry.I've got other novels, short stories and things that are supposed to be funny too but whether they are is your decision, right?Some of the books are based on real incidents - I know they are, because they happened to me. There are five in total, I've released two, two are being tidied up and the last one won't be finished for a while yet. If you read one, remember it all happened to me and that I don't mind being laughed at. I'm used to it.A while back I released a free book, 'Top Of The Shop'. (If you're a writer you might want to read it. I'll say no more.) I've since released another one, 'Tea, Drums And Speed'. So now the first sci-fi novel is free, 'Top Of The Shop' is free, and there's a free volume of short stories. I must be mad, giving this stuff away. Mind you, it hasn't stopped me giving away a book of political thoughts. If you're from Wales, or British, or even interested in Welsh politics, it might be worth reading.There's also a free book about some films that appeal to me. You might find it interesting but I thought it would be a bit cheeky to want money for it. Have it on me.There's one little thing I don't understand. Of everything I've put on this site, I think the stories in 'Swift Shifts' are the funniest, yet it's the title that's looked at least often. Why is that, do you think?After a gap of several months I've now added a new three-story volume of funny stories. To balance this, there's a thoroughly miserrable one on its way!A word or two about my pricing strategy might be worthwhile. A lot of people on this site (and I apologise if I've got this wrong) quote prices that are just a bit cheaper than you'd see in a bookstore. I don't do that. Ebooks don't have production or distribution costs, so why should you, the book buyer, have to pay even a tiny share of something that doesn't exist? Isn't it better to spend, say, $3 on three little books than on just one? I want you to enjoy what I've written, and at a realistic cost to you that I can live with. Simple, isn't it?I'll add to this from time to time - there's no point saying everything at once, is there? You'd have no need to come back, would you?

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      Book preview

      Trains, Planes And Taxicabs - Les Broad

      TRAINS, PLANES & TAXICABS

      Les Broad

      Published by Les Broad at Smashwords

      Copyright 2011 Les Broad

      Discover other titles by Les Broad at Smashwords.com

      Smashwords Edition, License Notes

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      This is #3 in a series of 4 books (so far) that are based on real events from the author's life. When The Swinging's Swung, Trains, Planes & Taxicabs and Sunrise over Walsall are fictionalised; Bodily Disfunctions is (painfully) real.

      Introduction

      Every single day uncountable numbers set off from somewhere, travel, and arrive at somewhere else.

      For the overwhelming majority of people the 'somewhere else' where they arrive is the 'somewhere else' they intended to be. This is generally accepted to be, and indeed is, quite normal, even if the means of travel is public transport.

      Sometimes, though, circumstances arise that frustrate even the most carefully laid and the most important of plans.

      For Jim Tubbs, furniture salesman extraordinaire, life seemed to roll out the red carpet when he travelled: he set off, he arrived where and when he intended to. On the day that he happened to be travelling over an expanse of salt water, and therefore couldn't drive to his destination, of necessity he put his fate in the hands of others.

      That might have been a mistake.

      TRAINS, PLANES & TAXICABS

      The 1980s had been good to Jim Tubbs, successful salesman of commercial furniture. His decision, taken at the very beginning of the decade, to specialise in hotel furnishings had been wise and lucrative – the financial rewards had brought him a pleasantly comfortable house in the more desirable suburbs of the northern city he called home, a shiny new Alfa Romeo to drive and plenty of opportunities to stay in good quality hotels around the country. And he was rarely troubled by a bill.

      True, he had a wife to share that comfortable house, but nobody's life is perfect. As long as he made sure her little Ford Fiesta was running and had fuel in the tank, all the household bills were paid and that a blind eye was turned to the more extravagant purchases she made on her credit card life with Mrs Veronica Tubbs was more or less tolerable. He had devised enough ways to avoid her fearsome displays of temper, either by not triggering one or by ensuring that he wasn't there when one blew up. As it was the nature of his job that he should spend at least half the week away from home he was usually well enough out of the firing line anyway. It was, unsurprisingly, a childless marriage.

      Veronica may have been a touch on the volatile side, she may have been perfectly capable of hurling really quite substantial pieces of domestic furniture across a room at prodigious speeds, but she had her virtues: the one that Jim valued most highly – even more highly than the fact that her physical interest in him was long dead - was her complete disinterest in anything to do with his job. That suited Jim right down to the ground.

      Even as he approached his fortieth birthday he was still fit and trim, carried himself well (in his opinion) and was blessed with wit and an easy charm (again in his opinion). There may have been a grain of truth in his own view of himself since it wasn't at all uncommon for him to find himself a casual acquaintance to share his room when he was travelling and even when he wasn't on the road the office in which he worked supplied him with the services of a secretary. She, for someone with a reckless disregard for employees' welfare had allocated a female person to the job, acted in the role of his personal invoicing clerk as well; the company rewarded her financially for doing both of these jobs, but not for her other duties. Those were undertaken on a purely freelance basis and were usually carried our after working hours. Oh yes, Jim Tubbs was a walking, talking cliché – he was having an affair with his secretary. Mind you, the young lady in question, Susan Wilkinson, did rather well out of the arrangement: her 'official' salary was never, ever going

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