A: Welcome back.
B: It’s been a little while I know, again, but …
A: Busy… busy… busy.
B: Absolutely.
A: So, what’s new?
B: Well, what’s new is that my book is finally, nearly, here.
A: Excellent – and it’s called ….
B: ‘Tales from the Front’.
A: ‘Tales from the Front’? An interesting title.
B: Well it’s a combination of 2 titles – Tales of the Riverbank ..
A: …and something with ‘front’ in it?
B: ‘All quiet on the Western Front’.
A: I see, an anti-war novel written by Erich Maria Remarque about the horrors of that war and also the deep detachment from German civilian life felt by many men returning from the front.
B: Yes, a classic tale of several schoolmates who represent a generation destroyed by the dehumanization of war.
A: And a TV series about Hammy Hamster.
B: Featuring his mate GP the guinea pig… but that’s another story…
A: A question springs to mind – why? Didn’t you originally call it ‘A Trainer’s Diary’?
B: I thought the title would evoke an image of those olden days – conjuring images of the trainer as explorer, trail blazer, hero, trend setter.
A: Trend setter?
B: Well perhaps not trend setter but a title that suggested a sense of loneliness, the danger, the humanity and the inhumanity of it all.
A: Um….
B: Whilst still retaining the old-fashioned charm of a happier, more innocent age where animals talked and had fascinating, but fifteen minute long, adventures.
A: So you thought of all this?
B: Well not exactly – my publisher thought of it.
A: Still, It is a ‘Weekly Diary of the Laughs, Tears, Stresses, Triumphs, Fortunes and Misfortunes of a Management Trainer’. Did you write that?
B: I refer my honourable friend to my previous answer.
byron kalies 