Full Bacon Jacket

Raybs came home from school last week clutching a signed copy of a book called Full Bacon Jacket personally inscribed by Tom Hathaway, the author, with a dedication to him and two of his friends.

It seems that Raybs, Alex and Dan had been sitting on top deck of the bus discussing - as teenage boys do - what would be the best way to conduct yourself if you were a bent under cover cop. When a guy approached them and asked their names they thought he might be a policeman who had overheard their nefarious schemes. It wasn't. It was an author who, having delighted in the gibberish that they were talking, handed over a copy of his book and thanked them for reminding him of the rubbish he used to talk when he was their age.

All in all, quite a classy gesture I think. I haven't read his book, but here is a plug anyway.

Nottingham gave the world Robin Hood, the English Civil War, the Salvation Army, Raleigh Bicycles, Boots the Chemist, John Player cigarettes, Speedo swimwear, Pork Farms, a dozen World Boxing Champions and many hundreds of thousands of pretty girls. Unfortunately, in 1987, it also gave the world 'The Chimneys' - the most barrel-famished, whore-thirsty, scapegracious, sociopathic, peace-torpedoing flange of desperadoes ever to lay siege to parochial decency. Luckily, the world escaped by the skin of its teeth. Just. How? Cover the budgie. Bin the mobile. Rig the room for impact and strap yourself tightly in for a white-knuckle ride through the true, larger than life chronicle of the girls, the gigs, the giggles; the boys, the bars, the birianis; the cars, the capers, the courtrooms - and be ready to laugh and cry and orgasm. Probably all at once.