Pitch and Toss

Draft book for review or comments

To our incredible children ...
Constance, Céleste, Victoire and Charles
who are all grown up now,
but who .... Once Upon a Time, ... really loved their father's bed-time stories....
To Bob Dylan,
In grateful thanks
for his astonishing talent,
for his inspiration for my choice
of chapter headings,
and for the many quotes from his songs
used by me within this book .....
And to my darling wife, Elisabeth,
for everything.
Printed by Tabitha Publications © Copyright 2023

Pitch-and-toss (noun): A game of chance. Immortalised by Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) in his poem " If ", in which the poet presents a list of challenges to his beloved and only son, including that:
"... If you can make one heap of all your winnings, and risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss..."
Kipling goes on, in the poem, to tell his son that, if he can face and overcome this and life's many other obstacles, in the end....
"Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it, And—which is more—you'll be a Man, my son!
His son grew up to become a man - but only just. He was killed in 1915, aged only eighteen, in the Battle of Loos, in the trenches of the First World War.

Chapters:

Simple Twist of Fate 4
Cold Irons Bound 5
Rambling, Gambling Willie 12
Girl from the North Country 16
Tell Me That It Isn't True 21
When I Got Troubles 25
Don't Think Twice, It's Alright 32
Clothes Line Saga 40
Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat 48
Boots of Spanish Leather 53
Sitting on a Barbed Wire Fence 49
City of Gold 61
It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry 67
When I Paint My Masterpiece 74 I
I Threw it All Away 96
Mozambique 106
It's All Over Now, Baby Blue 116

* Chapter headings with grateful thanks to Bob Dylan

PITCH-AND-TOSS
Prologue: Simple Twist of Fate
The Butterfly Effect (noun): a situation in which an action or change that does not seem important has a very large effect, especially in other places or around the world. It is used to express the abstract notion that fates can be changed by the merest beat of the wings of a butterfly.
This can also be illustrated by simple calculation.
987654321 ÷ 123456789 = a perfect 23, or 8 – except that it isn't, not quite.
By some extraordinary mathematical imperfection, it is very, very slightly off. In fact, it equals 8.00000007 – an amount of difference almost wholly inconsequential, the equivalent of gaining or losing one single grain of sand from a large seaside bucket.
The other astonishing peculiarity about this mathematical anomaly is that 987654312 divided by 123456789 is a perfect 23 - switching the two and the one somehow makes all the difference. A sleight of hand being the butterfly-effect difference between perfection and, well, being just off...
For us, in this adventure, the difference between winning and losing our own game of pitch-and-toss was, in the end, also settled on that butterfly-wing-fine line separating those two imposters, Triumph and Disaster...
4

Chapter 1: Cold Irons Bound
"Bollocks!"
The water, swirling deep below, looked ebony black, and icy cold, hard as pig iron. I had climbed high, high, high up onto the upper girders of Hammersmith Bridge, seeking a jump that guaranteed oblivion over London town. The Victorian iron struts, slippery with moss, encouraged the reluctant leaper to leap. I did not want to die, but could see no other possible way forward, nor any reasonable way back.
"Damn and bollocks!"
April was indeed the cruellest month. As I teetered, preparing myself for the final leap, my mobile phone rang, its tone almost swallowed by the easterly early spring breeze. Another impatient creditor, no doubt, chasing some part of the ten million dollars that I owed to suppliers, creditors, clients, investors and friends.
My business had seemed solid, respectable, profitable – until COVID-19 restrictions closed down my warehouses, delayed my transport, and golf courses and players around the world stopped ordering my specialist putting equipment.
My research and development efforts too, so encouraging of late, had been placed on hold. My long-time - but growing- ever-distant - girlfriend had walked out on me, in search of sunnier climes or dispositions.
5