It is the day of the village fete. Everyone is setting out their stall on the village green next to the post office. The Blacksmiths Arms is unveiling its new lunchtime menu and Honor Blackman has baked one hundred scones (fifty fruit, fifty cheese) for the Women's Institute stall. All the Major has to do is deliver said scones to the WI stall before mid day, then he will be free to do as he pleases, whether it is sitting in the Blacksmiths beer garden for the rest of the afternoon thereby avoiding the irritations of what he calls "a fete worse than death" - see what he did there? - or sit listening to Lady Pamela Pilkington ask why a horse should be measured in hands and not feet. Or hooves. Or maybe just sulk around the study in loose robes for the rest of the day. But in Leafy Northumberland, nothing is ever as easy as it looks. For one thing, the Major's Jaguar has broken down. Again. He would ask car enthusiast and sub post mistress Penny Laine to help, but alas, his pride and vanity as usual prevent him. And he has other worries. Sir Roderick Pilkington has laid a drunken bet at his club that he will not only hunt on the Major's land that very Sunday (something the Major - the reluctant 'Lord Morpeth' has hitherto forbidden) but will capture and render as a trophy that most elusive of furry nemeses Charlie The Fox, who you may recall from the series of delicious vignettes that was "A Thirsty Thursday At The Towers". Add to this the fact that Countess Lydia has again broken into the Towers and is set to snaffle the Major's objets d'art and put them on Ebay and that Mike has invented a cologne he calls 'Pimp Pheromones' the Major's is set to have a very average day. Oh, and Dr Vincenza Moretti is back. With a sniper rifle. What's the worst? Will the Major deliver the scones (fifty cheese, fifty fruit) on time? Will dastardly Sir Rod finally catch Charlie The Fox? Will Countess Lydia make anything from Antiques Roadshow?
About the Author: Richard Winter was born in Carlisle, Cumbria in 1968 and grew up in Northumberland. He trained as an actor and in business studies before embarking on a twenty year on / off non-career in the Army, serving in both the Territorial and Regular Army. He was awarded the Territorial Decoration in 2012 and finally retired in January 2013 as a Major. When not serving as an ambivalent soldier, "RSW" has spent time variously travelling, often working as an international DJ, playing, drinking and "generally making a scene" in various places from Cannes and Monte Carlo to Beirut and Syria. He was expelled from his DJ residence in Abu Dhabi following his creation of a very popular hip hop night where everyone danced but no-one bought drinks. Collaborations in Cambridge with writers and comedians from the Cambridge Footlights resulted in his return to acting after a gap of over two decades, in Daniel Henry Kaes' Harry Porter Prize Nominated "It's Complicated" in the London production in Covent Garden in 2012. A life-long fan of comedian Tony Hancock, Richard got the idea for "The Towers" from the way "the lad himself" styled his own comic creation - not only casting himself in the central role and using his own name (adding the Stephenson - his middle name - as it would "use up more bulbs") but by alluding to a (fictitious) aristocratic childhood with no basis in fact. Such was his deadpan explanation of this bare faced lie, coupled with the fact that many of his Army colleagues addressed him as "Lord Morpeth" - a name he uses in The Towers. Richard is also the second cousin of Golden Globe, Bafta and Academy Award winning screen writer Simon Beaufoy. Richard has been a keen diarist for many years but now focuses on his writing for self publishing, in part to help fund his life as "a struggling actor. "The Towers" began as a way of making social media more interesting, but his characterisation of himself living at an inexplicable country house along with rock stars, actors and other quirky aristocratic characters was so popular that is eventually became his first eBook "A Thirsty Thursday At The Towers" which he has now followed with his first Towers novella "A Twist Of Fete At The Towers." "The message of 'The Towers'" he says "is that everyone has weaknesses, whether it is vanity, greed or whatever, and we should accept people as flawed and try to be kind."