The Complete Pratt
Read The Complete Pratt Online
Authors: David Nobbs
Second From Last in the Sack Race: The first Henry Pratt novel
5 What About the Crispy Bacon We Used to Get Before the War?
Pratt of the Argus: The second Henry Pratt novel
The Cucumber Man: The third Henry Pratt novel
The Complete Pratt
compiles the first three volumes of the misadventures of Henry Pratt, beginning with a brilliantly funny evocation of a Yorkshire boyhood. As he matures from schoolboy to gawky teenager, the unathletic and over-imaginative Pratt proves he can stick up for himself with the stoic good nature and passive courage of the great British underdog.
Older but still prone to accidents, Henry’s first story as a cub reporter on the
Thurmarsh Evening Argus
, about a stolen colander, is not quite as straightforward as he hopes. So when the scoop of a lifetime finally comes his way it threatens to upset the family and complicate his ever-hopeful love life.
From there Henry decides to take on a new role and a new challenge – working for the Cucumber Marketing Board in Leeds. Stumbling through the fifties, sixties, seventies and eighties, he accumulates jobs, marriages and children on the way as he embarks on a touching, painful and hilarious switchback ride through a divided Britain.
David Nobbs was born in Kent. After university, he entered the army, then tried his hand at journalism and advertising before becoming a writer. A distinguished novelist and comedy writer, he lives near Harrogate with his wife Susan.
FICTION
The Itinerant Lodger
A Piece of the Sky is Missing
Ostrich Country
The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin
The Return of Reginald Perrin
The Better World of Reginald Perrin
Second From Last in the Sack Race
A Bit of a Do
Pratt of the Argus
Fair Do’s
The Cucumber Man
The Legacy of Reginald Perrin
Going Gently
Sex and Other Changes
Pratt à Manger
Cupid’s Dart
AUTOBIOGRAPHY
I Didn’t Get Where I Am Today
Second From Last in the Sack Race
The first Henry Pratt novel
For Dave, Chris and Kim
UPSTAIRS, IN THE
tiny back bedroom, Ada’s pains began. Ezra heard her first sharp cry at twenty-five to seven in the evening.
He shuddered and tried to bury himself in that morning’s
Sheffield Telegraph
. ‘Do women want careers or husbands?’ he read without interest. ‘County valuation officer dead,’ he noted without pleasure or regret.
The parrot listened and watched, unaware of its impending doom.
Silence reigned briefly in Number 23 Paradise Lane, Thurmarsh, on that night of Wednesday March 13th, 1935.
Ezra sat in front of the lead-polished range, in the rocking chair. On the floor, in front of the range, was a rag rug. It had black edges, and a red diamond in the middle. Ada had made it, out of old coats and frocks.
A burst of molten light came from the open-hearth furnaces of the great steelworks of Crapp, Hawser and Kettlewell, which lay on the other side of the main road, dwarfing the dingy, back-to-back terraces, and a dun-coloured Thurmarsh Corporation tram clanked noisily down the main road.
‘Bugger off,’ said the parrot.
Ezra examined the bird sadly. It had been a bad buy. Henderson had assured Ada that it was a master of Yorkshire dialect, and would amaze her visitors with comments like ‘Where there’s muck, there’s brass,’ ‘Ee, he’s a right laddie-lass. He’s neither nowt nor summat,’ and ‘Don’t thee
tha
me;
tha
thee them that
tha’s
thee.’ Ada had spent long hours rehearsing it. All it ever said was ‘Bugger off.’ Admitted, it said it in a south Yorkshire accent, but that was scant consolation to its disappointed owner.