Zen and the Art of Donkey Maintenance

Häftad, Engelska, 2015

339 kr

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I looked again at the folded map of Europe in my hand. Then I crossed the road to the Continental booking office and bought a ticket for Salzburg in Austria. “Return?" asked the clerk.“Definitely not," I told him. In December 1966, the New Year looked exciting for fifty-five-year-old Robert Crisp. As a man whose youth was spent in constant adventure, leading a calm, domestic life in England had become a burden from which he needed to break free. Named by Wisden as "One of the most extraordinary men ever to play Test cricket," Crisp served as a soldier in the Second World War in Greece and North Africa for which he was decorated for bravery, later becoming a writer and journalist.With his marriage over and his sons old enough to fend for themselves, Crisp decided to start a new life. With sixty pounds in his pocket, his wartime disability pension of ten pounds a month, and a plan to write about his adventures under a pseudonym, his journey began. Through twenty columns filed from abroad over years of rustic living and travel, Crisp, as Peter White, shared his experiences of hitch-hiking through Yugoslavia, settling in a beach shack in Greece where he attempted to cultivate the stubborn land, and a nearly fatal solo boat trip around Corfu. As the first year of his dream life came to a close, he found out that the stomach pain he had been suffering was not a side effect of too much Greek wine, but cancer. With a prediction of only one year to live, he set off on a trek around Crete, his only companion a donkey with plenty of personality.Robert Crisp’s account of his travels, originally serialised in the Sunday Express, is an honest, funny, touching account of this charming rogue’s journey through a foreign land and culture in search of inner peace and happiness.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum2015-09-08
Mått146 x 232 x 22 mm
Vikt400 g
FormatHäftad
SpråkEngelska
Antal sidor228
FörlagBloomsbury Publishing PLC
ISBN9781448215232

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ForewordA Note from EditorPrologue: A Hankering for Pericles SmithPart 1: Greece1 The Pattern of My Magic Carpet2 Rich Beyond the Potency of Wealth3 An Enormous Contentment4 A Small Piece of Warm Bread Dipped in Hot Olive Oil5 Money Itself Was Becoming Meaningless6 This Unlikely Foreigner7 It Was All Going a Bit Too Well8 I Could Have Happily Wrung a Million Speckled Necks9 What I Was Really Looking For Was a Miracle10 A Feast to Assuage Any Sort of Hunger11 Operation Whitewash12 My World Was Full of Spectacle and Conundrum13 Mugs Like Me14 Water, Water Every Where, Nor Any Drop to Drink15 Profuse Green Hands of Thanksgiving16 A Wiser and Better-Equipped Man17 I Was Due to be Haunted18 I Taught the Children of Gythion a New Game19 Sounds of the Sea and the Sky and the Earth20 The One Signal Failure of My New Career21 I Knew I Had to Come Home22 Eat, Drink and Be MerryPart 2: Crete23 I Liked to Think of Myself as a Leader24 My Travels with a Donkey25 It Seemed like the Savoy Hotel to Me26 An Ignorant Alien Who Didn't Know an Ass from an Elbow27 An Explicit Manifestation of a Trackless Waste28 I Had Seldom Felt More Alive29 No Place to Take a Donkey for a Walk30 Heraklion Lay Behind Me and All of Summer Lay Ahead31 A Tradition as Old as Crete32 Where Sea and Sky and Earth Blended in a Haze of Infinity33 A Scene Straight from the Bible34 I Was a Successful Experiment35 The Ultimate Peninsula36 The Crowd Shouted Their Approval37 A Hell of a Day38 A Mixture of Sadness and Joy39 Donkey for Sale - Speaks English40 Damnit, I Wanted to Be Recognised41 I Was on This Small Floating Paradise42 I Took the First Strokes of My Odyssey43 I Became Sensitive to Such Imperceptibles44 I Was Strangely Happy45 The Civilising Presence PhotographsAcknowledgmentsA Note on the AuthorHis Final Message