Genre ~ travel humor
Publication Date ~ October 18, 2023
Est page count ~ 251
Get your copy on Amazon ~ https://amzn.to/3xi8ziY
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I am delighted to share an excerpt today ~ thanks to Rachel’s Random Resources for organizing.
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Excerpt:
By the time the fourth and last child is due, and after the addition of another girl to her family, I am home in Australia to have surgery to remove the metal rod from my lower leg after a car accident. I am staying with my parents in the oven of Townsville. The middle two kids, Angus and Leisl, fly up to be with us during the days before their Mum is due to deliver.
Less stress for my sister.
More bonding time for me.
After my surgery, I must spend one night in the hospital as the pain in my knee is at least as bad as giving birth to triplets. Post-surgical pain goes straight from a 1 to a 10, bypassing all the other numbers. Normally I adamantly refuse pain medication for any amount of pain. Headaches, sprains, strains. Will not take anything for any of it. During my post-surgery hospitalization, I plead for heavy-duty narcotics the entire night.
The next morning, I receive a phone call at my hospital bed that I have another nephew. Another child added to the list of people I must somehow teach to be at ease with me around the dog. Later that morning, I am picked up at the hospital by my parents and we go straight to the airport to drop off my mum and the two kids to fly back to Brisbane.
Leisl, who is 24 months old, was the only child born so far who had no issues with me being her uncle straight from the word go. We bonded immediately, and she thinks I am the coolest uncle she has. She only has two. We were introduced was while I was in the hospital after the car accident. She was one at the time. There was chocolate in the fridge near my hospital bed that she would point at as she lay on my chest.
Sitting in the waiting area of the airport, while my mother checks herself and the kids in, I rest the ankle of my aching leg up on their luggage. To elevate my swollen knee. Leisl and I are chatting away. I am explaining to her all the things she will come to take for granted when she is older: the undying love of her uncle; outrageous bank fees; and surging petrol prices on holiday long weekends.
“Uncle Simon?” She asks.
“Yes, Leisl.”
“Why does your knee hurt?”
“I had an operation on it.” I tell her honestly.
“I bet it hurts a lot, doesn’t it?” She offers sympathetically.
“You have no idea, sweetheart,” I groan.
“I’m sorry,” my niece says.
I had never appreciated how sweet and understanding little children can be to the trials and tribulations of being an adult. I give her a smile. Leisl responds with an enormous sigh.
Then, she belly flops directly onto my knee causing it to hyperextend under her body weight.
Forget the pain of giving birth to triplets. The agony unleashed on my knee is like expelling quintuplets. Simultaneously. Who had all matured in the womb to their early teens.
I bellow the F-Word at the top of my lungs into the half-filled Qantas terminal at Townsville airport. The shock my shriek gives my niece is nothing short of hand-caught-in-a-garbage-grinder traumatic. She is bawling her eyes out, and it takes her grandparents ten minutes to calm her down. Another traumatized child for my sister to have a go at me over.
Everyone in the airport is focused on my squealing niece. While I writhe on the floor in torment. The shock flushed the air out of my lungs so quickly I could not breathe to make a sound. Once Leisl has calmed down, I am the one that gets a stern word from my mother.
“What are you doing making a scene like that at the airport?”
“Sorry, Mum,” is all I can answer.
How was I the one in trouble? If my niece takes a joy ride in my car when she is eight and runs over a dog is it my fault for purchasing the vehicle?
A year later, my niece embarrasses me again.
Except worse this time.
Book blurb:
Book 1 of a hilarious series of travel misadventures and dubious personal introspection by Australian author Simon Yeats, who from an early age learned that the best way to approach the misfortunes of this world is to laugh about it.
Simon shares his comedic insights into the unusual and uproarious elements of living life as an Aussie ex-pat and having a sense of Wanderlust as pervasive as the Spanish Flu in 1918.
From how to keep yourself entertained when unwittingly forced to watch 11 hours of live sumo wrestling in Japan, to surviving heartbreak in India at the hands of a French flight attendant, to 48 hours spent in Nepal that qualify as the funniest most gut wrenching travel experience since Captain Bligh was set adrift in the Pacific, to his unsuccessful attempts at avoiding going to a brothel in Thailand.
Simon Yeats has gone into the world and experienced all the out of the ordinary moments for you to sit back and enjoy the experience without the need to break a leg or rupture a pancreas.
Purchase Links
Author Bio – Simon Yeats has lived nine lives, and by all estimations, is fast running out of the number he has left. His life of globetrotting the globe was not the one he expected to lead. He grew up a quiet, shy boy teased by other kids on the playgrounds for his red hair. But he developed a keen wit and sense of humor to always see the funnier side of life.
With an overwhelming love of travel, a propensity to find trouble where there was none, and being a passionate advocate of mental health, Simon’s stories will leave a reader either rolling on the floor in tears of laughter, or breathing deeply that the adventures he has led were survived.
No author has laughed longer or cried with less restraint at the travails of life.
Social Media Links –
TIK TOK – https://www.tiktok.com/@authoryeats
INSTAGRAM – https://www.instagram.com/authoryeats/?hl=en
Giveaway to Win 1 set of all Three Books in Simon Yeats Lesser Known travel tips series in paperback and 1 set in epub (Open to UK / US / Canada).
Prize includes copies of:
How to Start a Riot in a Brothel in Thailand by Ordering a Beer and Other Lesser Known Travel Tips
How to Avoid Getting Mugged in Rio de Janeiro by Singing Songs by The Police and Other Lesser Known Travel Tips
How to Survive Making Yourself Look Silly While Dancing with the German Mafia at a Bavarian Nightclub and Other Lesser Known Travel Tips
2 winners – first winner will win the paperbacks, second winner will win the epubs .
*Terms and Conditions –UK / US / Canada entries welcome. Please enter using the Rafflecopter box below. The winner will be selected at random via Rafflecopter from all valid entries and will be notified by Twitter and/or email. If no response is received within 7 days then Rachel’s Random Resources reserves the right to select an alternative winner. Open to all entrants aged 18 or over. Any personal data given as part of the competition entry is used for this purpose only and will not be shared with third parties, with the exception of the winners’ information. This will passed to the giveaway organiser and used only for fulfilment of the prize, after which time Rachel’s Random Resources will delete the data. I am not responsible for despatch or delivery of the prize.
Enter here ➡ http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/33c69494585/?
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