Fugly & Friends

Frederick Fugly said that no creature should ever get lost the way Harry Mouse did. Bursting with curiosity to find out what happened, Big Bugs goes off in search of answers deep into the forest. Along the way, she meets various forest creatures who all think they know what happened to Harry Mouse. But has she been tricked? After all, Frederick Fugly is the only one who can truly know what happened to Harry Mouse.

Fundamentals of Aircrew Performance

Fundamentals of Aircrew Performance
This book takes the latest developments in psychology (learning, stress management, coaching, personality, etc.), neuroscience (cognition, memory, data-processing, etc.), and linguistics (cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), neuro-linguistic programing (NLP), etc.) and shows how they can be applied in a practical way to improve the performance of aircrew. It complements the skills training and aviation medicine training currently undertaken by aircrew to allow them to perform at their best in the high-stress, data-rich environments of modern aircraft.
‘Airmanship’ is a much-overused word in the aviation world: Part 1 of this book will allow the reader to have a much clearer idea of what it is, together with concrete and practical ways to improve ‘cognitive airmanship’. Each chapter includes sections to aid in the assessment and instruction of these skills.
Part 2 of the book covers Aircrew Performance Coaching, detailing how executive coaching techniques can be combined with sports psychology to provide a unique and proven system applicable to aircrew.

Gardens of Deprivation

The first four decades of my life were spent in a small country that was nested in a hostile and unstable old region, Israel. I strongly felt, enjoyed, and participated in, the revival of that country and experienced the uneasy reintegration of the returning descendants of Abraham, Issac and Jacob from the four corners of the world. I have felt the pain of the less happy residents of that reviving country. In particular, I have felt the hardship of the Mizrachi Israelis – the Jewish returnees and refugees from Arab countries.

I have wished to live in a world that is not divided by religion, ethnicity and skin colour. As there is no such world, I embraced the second best – the remote, sparsely populated southern continent that has provided a home to convicts and refugees from the old world. I arrived in that continent, Australia, at almost forty years of age with an already developed strong sensitivity to ethnic-based social injustices.

My tales from my land of origin and from my land of choice record interwoven personal and national memoirs of ethnically based inequalities and injustices. I wrote those tales with a hope that they will make a contribution to the moderation of the intensity of such social problems. The colour of my tales is brown – the typical colour of the skin of the Mizrachi Israelis and the colour of many members of the minority ethnic groups that live in Australia.

Gas Meter Knees

“It wasn’t until I was 13 that I realised pressing 50 pence pieces into Plasticine sheets and filling the impressions with water, freezing overnight and quickly using the ice coins in the electric meter slots wasn’t normal behaviour.” From raiding the bins of London fashion labels, to being asked to bury dead bodies in a flyover, being beaten unconscious twice in one day, to regularly driving my inebriated maths teacher back to school for a fee, finding my boss dead in a mysterious suicide and dragging a teetering motorcyclist to safety on a busy A3 flyover to avoid certain death, the weekly war with the bailiffs doggedly trying to repossess my TV, and finally an attempt to emulate Evel Knievel by jumping a pickup truck in Wimbledon Stadium. I learned the hard way that nobody was going to save me except myself – all this before the age of 16. A real-life rags-to-relative-affluence story which takes us from humble SW17 origins to the bustling streets of Singapore and Tokyo. The story is as diverse and delightfully absurd as it gets. If I hadn’t lived every moment, I wouldn’t believe it either.

Gate-Crashers

It’s Christmas 1984 in Manchester and seventeen year old Nick Hopper has devastating news on his mind.

Rather than reveal his tragedy to school mates in their gloomy old pub, Nick seeks a change of heart and goes to a trendy hotspot where life gets in the way of death when a beautiful girl writes on the back of his hand urging him to seize the day and choose life!

Along with his carefree best friend Heff, Nick embarks on the greatest night of his life gate-crashing a lavish house party to pursue the girl of his dreams, Jasmine.

Welcomed into the in-crowd’s heady ‘sex, drugs and pop music’ party world, Nick is forced to face his demons and discover who his real friends are when to win Jasmine’s heart he unwittingly throws the wildest New Year's Eve house party ever!

Gathering Moss

An atmospheric, mainly biographical story set in the 1930s-1950s, of a British Naval Officer's determination to foil the enemy's wartime dive bombing of our fleet. Hundreds of lives were saved by his suggested adaptation of the big, anti-aircraft barrage balloons which were flown above cities and other land based targets, to be specially tailored for the defence of shipping as well.

Combined with this moving story is a colourful account of family life at that time, and it was not very long after the ending of the Second World War that Commander "Basher" Boorman began to find himself involved in certain minor skirmishes on his own home front.

Commander's daughters do not always obey orders, even if their father has the appropriate rank, and this teenager certainly had a mind of her own. Determined to pursue a career not approved by her father, Basher's daughter found herself to be out-manoeuvred. But battles sometimes resolve themselves in unexpected ways, as was eventually the way with this particular one.

'Gathering Moss' is a fast moving, evocative story which covers a variety of events, backgrounds, and human emotions.

Generation Care

Drawing on his experience of over 50 years of health care service the author has imagined how life would improve if mankind moved towards a more caring and loving society. While mankind has greatly benefited from the goods and services which have been delivered by capitalist societies, the excesses of capitalism and the selfishness which leads to inequity have ruined many lives. Love calls us to a caring capitalism in which competition delivers high standards while governance protects the poor. Everyone’s basic needs are met by this society. The model of inspection against governance standards has been used with great success by the Care Quality Commission to improve care and to protect vulnerable patients in the UK National Health Service. With the potential disasters of a viral pandemic followed by the environmental threat of global warming, capitalists are being called to work primarily for care and not primarily for money. It is interesting that this same message is contained in the teachings of Jesus who founded our culture.

Genevieve – Book I

The manuscript follows a primary protagonist who has gone by many names over the years but stuck to her most recent alias due to its relatable nature: Genevieve, derived from the patron saint of Paris, St. Genevieve, who is often depicted holding a candle and the devil beside her who blows it out when she goes to pray at night.

She is the CEO and founder of the First Fruit Corporation (FFC), a successful architectural and development firm in the organised-crime riddled Clarence City, her ambitions to tear down old sky scrapers and rebuild them in her own ingenious designs, changing the city skyline, gains her a lot of enemies and fewer friends as a strange man and his soldiers come to town bringing her dark and mysterious past of Punic era to her door step.

George (The Teenage Years)

This is an introduction of George to the masses. He is the representative of a whole lost generation (lost to the government and the British public) who have recently been in the news as the revelation of who they are comes out.

George tells the story of an 11-year-old Windrush boy who arrived in England from the island of Jamaica in 1965. The story is narrated in third-person and speaks of the boy’s first experience of being in a cold country, the absence of an introduction to his new family, the difficulties he faces as a new boy in a new school, the struggles to find his place, his resistance in conforming to stereotypical expectations and his fights to maintain the self-pride and independence he learnt from his early years in Jamaica.

As George progresses through the school and struggles to assimilate, he moves from being the outsider to become a cultural educator and a facilitator of his peers and brings together the different groups within his association. However, he has difficulty reconciling his family and church life with his secular associates. Through the boy’s eyes, the narrator depicts how it was at that time for the West Indian immigrant community in London and the group of unnoticed children whom they brought from the islands, how they mixed and associated with each other, their embryonic family and the indigenous population.

George and Sam Meet the Snow Queen

Whilst out and about in Witches Wood picking holly, the two little red squirrels, George and Sam – brothers and best of friends – make an astonishing discovery, one which will take them on a fantastical journey to the very palace of the immortal Snow Queen.

Join George and Sam on their icy adventure and the creatures they meet along the way – a huge snowman, a friendly witch, a little fairy, an old shire horse… and not forgetting a disappearing black cat!

George and the Briton

Mark is a young British sailor who is deployed to Antioch in Syria as part of a delegation to brief the Emperor Diocletian on the liberation of Britain from a usurper. By coincidence, he meets the Tribune Constantine who introduces him to a fellow Roman Army officer, George. Mark can write in Latin so George appoints him as his clerk.

Mark is tasked to keep an account of the operations of the ‘special forces’ unit that George commands on the front line of the Eastern Roman Empire. He also keeps his own private diary and is required to provide Constantine, who is a member of Diocletian’s personal staff, with periodic accounts of operations.

As George achieves some extraordinary results and Diocletian manages to stabilise the Roman Empire following a generation of chaos and uncertainty, a new problem arises. Diocletian’s deputy, Caesar Galerius, starts seeing Christianity as a subversive religion. This becomes a challenge for George, his family, and some members of his unit.

This is the tale of Constantine and George, told through the eyes of a young soldier’s diary.

George Saves the Rainforest

When George, the orangutan, discovers his rainforest is being destroyed, he is very, very angry. With encouragement from many of the smaller animals whose homes have been destroyed, George starts on an adventure to save the rainforest with the help of Grace, the clouded leopard, Sleepy, the mystical binturong, General Aman, and many other animals at the Wildlife Centre--animal power versus man and machine.