Books – Nicholas Walker

Agony on the Ice

Nicholas Walker — Thu, 12 Jun 2025 21:33:44 +0000

The ninth in the popular series about the four paranoid ice dancers. Samantha collapses at the World Championships and is rushed away to hospital where it seems the stress has been too much for her. She finishes with Alex and it seems she has finished with skating as well! Morris retires seemingly leaving Benjamin and Belinda in the wilderness and even Alex is off dating a famous pop star…is it finally the end for our superstars?

Kiss Mommy Goodbye: Little Drummer Girl

Nicholas Walker — Wed, 11 Jun 2025 21:20:24 +0000

Fourth in the popular Kiss Mommy Goodbye series. This novel is set just after the acid attack on Bobby where the family are all recovering in Laguna. Peter is introduced to a wayward girl who is a passionate drummer and develops an interest in helping her find her talent. The rest of the family go on with their lives: Butch is now working for college, The Twins are learning to fly while the rest of the children are pursuing a feud with a local businessman. Getz meanwhile has finally left school and is going her own mad way when Peter asks her to get involved with a major new project he is interested in. All the time the new season at Peter’s hotel in Vegas is getting closer and closer…

This hilarious novel is a further journey into the mad life of the Webb family!

Going Mental in Mallorca

Nicholas Walker — Wed, 11 Jun 2025 21:07:59 +0000

This is the seventh book in the series that started with: Going Round The Bend On The QE2 and concerns the time when the never totally sane Nick is confronted by his own mortality and reacts in his typical fashion of running away. This time he takes his daughter and granddaughter with him to Mallorca where he takes a job in a posh school and reopens his dance and karate clubs. On this peaceful, holiday island, there are a number of spectres: conman Headteachers, hostile local teachers, racist locals and a gentleman who is sick over your car and offers to clean it up for cash! Covid is waiting in the wings and overnight Nick and his family lose everything and are left locked up in a tiny house with no money. Nick though, as always, can find the funny side of any situation and his mad battles with the school staff, fiery locals and indeed, the vomiting Barcellonian, will have readers in hysterics. As always the events in this book are absolutely true and it is a great contribution to the other books in this exciting series of autobiographical travelogues.

A Teen Guide To Sex

Nicholas Walker — Fri, 23 May 2025 10:20:50 +0000

Sex education is mandatory in United Kingdom State Schools and the same for most states in the USA. The fact is that you will have more than likely been receiving some kind of sex education since the age of eleven and often from a lot younger.

Now I was brought up in the Sixties when we were all supposed to be having sex but we never had any Sex Ed at all…even in Biology all we did was the reproductive cycle of the rabbit and then the nice lady teacher read an embarrassed list of the sexual differences between human beings and rabbits. We were supposed to learn everything behind the bike sheds so you can imagine just how wrong most of us got it!

The most salient fact still comes from towards the end of the last century when sex education was banned from schools in Wales…the teenage pregnancy rate went through the roof, in fact it became the highest in Europe!

So, the chances are you will have been receiving Sex Ed before you had your first real bike so you should know all about it? Yes? I’m the Science teacher who usually ends up teaching Sex Ed and I can tell you they’ve all got it wrong, they are all just as mystified, just as frightened as we were back in the Swinging Sixties!

So, everybody knows that the man puts his penis inside the woman’s vagina and ejaculates and that will cause a baby to grow, yes, they do all know that. But how does he do that? What does she do? How do they prevent her becoming pregnant? Does doing it standing up prevent pregnancy? Does she have to have an orgasm to become pregnant?

Two friends of mine during the age of free love, the Sixties, on their honeymoon sat on the bed all night long crying they were so scared. They later on had two daughters so I guess it all worked out in the end.

This book is intended to take all that worry away, to explain everything from achieving your first real kiss to your first orgasm.

Agony on the Ice

Nicholas Walker — Mon, 21 Feb 2022 21:35:01 +0000

It was a sunny day but Samantha was past feeling anything. The garden was very large and she wandered off down to where the pond was, there were chairs there and she was still feeling exhausted, she was flushing the sleeping pills Dr Lewis had prescribed down the toilet every night. There was a large swinging garden chair by the pond but when she reached it someone was already sitting in it. She froze and Alex rose to his feet. ‘What the hell?’ she demanded. ‘I thought I’d drop round,’ he said, trying to find something innocuous to say. ‘I told you to stay away,’ she said, ‘I told everybody I didn’t want to see you!’ ‘I wanted to see you.’ ‘Would you just go? Please.’ ‘This isn’t fair,’ he said. He tried to walk towards her but stopped when she flinched away from him. He spread his hands in appeal, ‘You owe me more than this.’ ‘I don’t owe you anything! We were partners, that’s all. Skating partners and now that’s all over and done.’ ‘We were more than that and you know it. I love you.’ ‘Well, I don’t love you! I don’t even like you.’ She held her head in her hands, ‘Just sod off why don’t you?’ ‘You’re my fiancée, we’re supposed to be getting married, planning our wedding.’ ‘Marry you? I’m not going to marry you!’ it was almost a snarl. She wrenched at the ring on her finger that he had given her, his grandmother’s ring, the expensive one. It stuck and she had to use her teeth and she finally dragged it free leaving her finger bleeding. She hurled it savagely at him and it bounced off his chest and into the flower beds. ‘Now just sod off!’ she said, and she turned and bolted back towards the house.

AutoB of a Short, Fat, Ugly Man: The Making of an Author

Nicholas Walker — Mon, 16 Aug 2021 20:47:29 +0000

I remember another incident much later on with Mr Griffiths. I sort of invented skiving off in about the third year but right back in the first year I stopped going to Geography. I hadn’t done a project as it was homework so as the teacher was very scary I hid in the toilets then I didn’t like to go back the following lesson and the more I stayed away the more the consequences piled up so the more I stayed away. I stayed away until the Fifth Form and then tragedy happened, Mrs Dark the teacher I was staying away from was tasked to write a report on me. She professed to having no idea who I was and I received the long awaited summons to Mr Griffith’s study.

He was standing there reading the report with a stunned expression on his face.

‘Walker,’ he said and now I knew I was in real trouble if he was calling me Walker.

‘Good Morning sir, and isn’t it a lovely one?’ I tried. He gave me a look.

‘You have been cutting Mrs Dark’s Geography lessons since the first year, correct?’

‘Spot on, sir,’ said I with nothing to lose.

‘I see. Well, as far as I can work out that means you have cut somewhere in the region of 348 lessons, yes?’

‘I can’t really help you there sir, I’m not very good at maths.’ I thought it better not to tell him I had recently been cutting Maths lessons as well.

‘Well, Nicknack…Walker,’ he said clutching at his forehead, ‘this leaves me with a bit of a problem. You see if a pupil cuts one lesson, they are made to copy up the whole lesson during detention.’

‘Seems fair enough to me, sir.’

‘Nicknack, shut up!’ he shouted losing it. He took a deep breath to bring himself back under control and after a minute continued in a more level tone, ‘For two lessons they are given the cane. For three they are put on home report.’ He lost it and started to dance around at this point, ‘I don’t know what the hell I am supposed to do about 348!!!’

I couldn’t think of anything to say that would improve the situation at this point. Now he seemed to have some sort of stroke and I watched him anxiously as he leaned over his desk fighting for breath, after all he wasn’t getting any younger. Gradually his bright red colour faded and he raised a trembling hand and pointed it at the door:

‘Go away you horrible boy!’

Like I said we all liked Mr Griffiths!

Autobiography of a Short, Fat, Ugly Man: A Kind of Immortality

Nicholas Walker — Sun, 15 Aug 2021 01:01:26 +0000

Apologies: I could read when I was three. It’s not unnatural, some children just seem to teach themselves to read, we think it’s by a process of copying adults and interpreting pictures. From the age of about six I was reading a book every day, that is finishing a book every day…a practice I have continued all my life. I’m not saying I read War and Peace in one day but I tend to finish an average sized adult’s book most days. When I was eight I was reading James Bond and books by Alistair McLean and Neville Shute. Mind you I was still reading all the children’s books as well, still do now: Bunter, William, Jennings, The Famous Five and all the others. I read all the heavy stuff in my teens and now regret wasting so much of my time digesting crap like Wuthering Heights and Tom Jones…give me a break. There is nothing in those old fashioned dirges that you cannot find ten times better in a modern book…literary insight my ass. Most of them were written by middle class virgins who knew nothing of life and the only reason they got published was because there were so few people writing during the last century. I took a year to read: The Fall and Decline of the Roman Empire, then there was Boswell’s Life of Johnson both of which were okay. Then there were all the Nordic folk tales and stuff like that. By the age of fourteen I had read the whole of Kingswinford Library half a dozen times. Then when I was thirty eight I was at Exeter University and a professor told us we should read the Aeneid if only in translation, I had always avoided it like the plague because it was in Latin. But I knew about the Aeneid from the Bunter books so I read it and wasn’t that impressed but while I was reading it I had a kind of revelation: I was reading words written by an ordinary bloke some 2000 years ago! A living, breathing man who maybe had just had an argument with his wife or had an upset stomach or was just feeling ticked off with the world. He was communicating with me over huge scans of time and appearing on my page as alive as he had ever been…the thought took my breath away, anything I read or indeed wrote was not limited by the mere lifetime of a man, it could go on forever…it was a Kind of Immortality!

Autobiography of a Short, Fat, Ugly Man: Tears in the Rain

Nicholas Walker — Sun, 15 Aug 2021 00:39:21 +0000

The final book in this series takes Nick right up to the time he had a breakdown and ran away around the world on the QE2. The eight years he was married to his beautiful second wife when he was to learn just how disarming looks can be.

The Way To Wimbledon

Nicholas Walker — Sun, 09 May 2021 00:29:52 +0000

Penny gritted her teeth. She had lost the first set and was 4 – 5 down in the second. This new girl only had to hold her serve to take the match. But Penny had been there before, there was no way she was going to let this tournament slip away from her. Her opponent, Moira Lloyd-Roberts, was waiting placidly at the base line as Penny took up her position, standing well back, praying that just for once this remarkable service would break down. Moira served, the ball dipped over the net, hit the very inside of the service court and was gone. Penny blinked. She had hardly seen it, let alone got around to playing a shot. ‘15 – love,’ said the umpire. Penny trooped over to the other side but the same thing happened again and it was the third service before she even got her racquet to the ball. She returned it cross court and, as usual, Moira waited on the base line and just pushed it back over the net. Penny came charging in and volleyed and Moira lobbed it beautifully over Penny’s head into the very back of the court. ‘Out,’ shouted the girl who was the line judge on Penny’s side, but she wasn’t in the best position to see because there was only one line judge per side. Penny relaxed and waited for the score to be called. The umpire cleared his throat. ‘No, the ball was good,’ he said. ‘40 – love.’ ‘What?’ demanded Penny. ‘It was called out.’ ‘The ball was good,’ the umpire repeated. ‘Play on, please.’ ‘It looked out to me and I’m nearer than you,’ Penny protested. ‘At least play a let.’ ‘The ball was good!’ the umpire said, this time more sternly. Penny marched over to him. Moira was still standing behind her base line, idly bouncing a ball on her racquet. ‘Now listen here,’ Penny said angrily. ‘You can’t do that now. It makes it match point!’ ‘I can’t take into consideration what stage the match has reached,’ the umpire said. ‘Now, if you don’t play on I’ll have to award a penalty point.’ ‘A penalty point? On match point!’ Penny stormed. ‘Why, you, you…’

Last Tango

Nicholas Walker — Fri, 07 May 2021 00:40:54 +0000

The edge of the door came closer but now the control of the crowd was breaking and the order of earlier was slipping away and people were pushing in front of her. Then Rabbi Ariel spoke to them severely and they listened to him. Angel knew that he had believed her earlier but he was over eighty and almost crippled by arthritis so he was hardly going to be able to jump from a train. Then at last she was at the door and she pulled it back against its lock. A good two inches let her feel the blast of air and she gulped it thankfully but already she had the handle of the bucket in her hand and she eased it through the crack and reached for the latch. Angel had studied the latch on the door when they had been bundling them inside but it was only designed to keep cattle in and it was easy. She caught it first try with the handle and the door slid open to reveal the rushing darkness outside. ‘What are you doing?’ a man demanded. ‘I’m jumping from the train,’ she said loudly. ‘If anybody else wants to join me now’s your chance.’ ‘You’ll be killed,’ said a woman. ‘Don’t be so stupid.’ ‘I’ve done it before, if you relax and roll you should be okay,’ she said. ‘We’ll all be punished for letting you escape,’ said the woman. ‘Don’t let her go.’ And immediately strong arms were holding her from behind. ‘Just lock the door after me,’ she said not bothering to struggle, the man holding her was too strong. ‘They won’t check the individual cars.’ ‘No!’ shouted a man and others were agreeing with him now and Angel could see her chance slipping away. ‘Let the child go,’ came Rabbi Ariel’s wonderful voice…a voice that had once captivated a synagogue. ‘I said let her go!’ The hands holding her slipped away. She looked at him and nodded. ‘Go my child and may God protect you,’ he said. ‘Quickly now, the train is slowing for a bend.’ ‘And God be with you all,’ she said and arms wrapped around her head she hurled herself into the darkness.