... to be able to read this book as it comes in a "Kindle Edition" only!
It's a fast-paced romp about the day-to-day experiences and adventures of On-Site Hotel Rep. Mo Swindlehurst. Our heroine works at the Bali Batik five star hotel on trendy Sanur Beach on the ‘Island of the Gods’ – Bali – caring for visitors from all parts of the world.
Mo mainly looks after the more ‘senior’ guests from the North of England (as she is) most of whom are visiting the property for at least the fifth time – insisting on having the same rooms, eating in the same restaurants, sitting on the same pool-side loungers and drinking in the same bars as last year – and the years before that.
Add a few Aussies and Continental Europeans and you have a gathering of people and carryings-on to keep the reader smiling for a very long time.
The characters are warm, fun and friendly … from the singing Flower Sisters who perform in the nearby Laughing Komodo Dragon Pub with great regularity to twins Beano and Dandy (named after their father’s favourite comics) who finish off each others sentences.
Then there’s the recently widowed Queenie who brings her husband’s ashes along for a burial at sea – during which he refuses to go…and newly-wed gay boys Romeo & Julian (who insist on a balcony with their honeymoon suite) whose wedding reception on Blackpool sands was very ‘moving’ – as they had to keep moving the sandwiches when the tide came in to save them from getting soggy.
The two Blackpool sculptors have Mo’s not-keen-on-her-at-all and ‘common as muck’ aunty with her new toy-boy husband as honeymoon block neighbours – he being a past fiancé of Mo’s! The atmospherics are somewhat cool during a peace-talks lunch Mo arranges and are followed by the newly-weds being rushed to the Intensive Care Unit of a local hospital and Mo being placed under an ‘Attempted Murder’ charge.
Missing Zimmer frames and a missing member of the Warrington Widows group cause confusion around the hotel as the Fleetwood Formation Dance team waltz into the place in sensible ‘Come Dancing’ travel refinery. They are quickly followed by the Macclesfield Morris Dancing squad – with bells on their fingers, nose and toes.
In the midst of the Attempted Murder enquiry Mo has to organize the Hotel Sports Day…and cope with the arrival of ‘supporting’ family members from Manchester, not all of whom are on her side.
Meet the Aussie Cozzie boys Ludo and Roo (in their sixties) who click with two sisters from Eccles and it’s a riot as the ‘girls’ (of similar vintage as the ‘boys’) go out in a surfboat and encounter a deep-sea rescue that doesn’t require the kiss of life, more like the kiss of death!
Then there’s the hotel resident pianist Noel Coward (not his real name but this one could catch on in time, he feels) who is pursued initially by Russian Cosmonaut In-flight Entertainment boys ‘Da’ and ‘Niet’ and then by an Arab Prince willing to trade in his favourite camel for the ivory tickler, and it’s a minefield of mirth just waiting for the reader to set the jokes on each page off.
Take a holiday with ‘Bali & Chips’, it’s good old English Humour at its best…a little risqué here and there, big on double meaning delights and all in all a fun read that comes with a guarantee to make you smile…till your next holiday read!
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