Bloody Well Bothered

About the Book

The tale is set principally among the hills of the English Lakes by the fictional lake of Timemere. The imaginary village of Thatchcroft on its shore and the equally fictional market town of Constanton a few miles downriver from the Lake. A former sea farer, Will, now owns Grilsethwaite, an estate on the lakeside.

Will is summoned from the church one Sunday morning to deal with an incident of deer poaching. The first of several criminal acts to disturb to countryside they were to gradually increase through theft and violence to murder.

That first Sunday afternoon Will calls at the village shop and decides to call at Candides newly open Art Gallery opposite and wish her luck inspite of their casual acquaintanceship...

Candide was restoring a picture involving nude figures when Will arrived. Posing for her work becomes intimate and they make love... The developing of their relationship against the background of growing criminal activity along with the issue of preserving the value of the natural countryside against the profits to be made from expanding tourism, agricultural life, sailing, fishing, pony tracking and shooting flows throughout.

Culminating in the justification of the plans that Will and his friends and employees had made to deal with the criminal threat.

About the Author

Michael Lindsay-Parkinson was born in Willesdone, London, on the eleventh of March 1928. His father was a civil engineer and they moved frequently from one contract to another before the war. Five of the prewar years at Oporto in Portugal. During the war the family became based at Lytham in Lancashire and Michael spent the last four and a half years of school at King Edward VII school, Lytham. Here his interests in moral philosophy, social and religious history and boats developed more clearly. He joined the RAF almost as the war ended.

In 1947 he was severely injured in a road accident and the rest of his time in the Air Force was spent in Hospital and the Rehabilitation Centre at South Chessington.

In 1949 he and Elizabeth Samira Oliver were married and begun farming in the hope that this would help Michael recover fuller use of his arms and back, enable them to indulge their love of the countryside and sailing and Elizabeth to continue her art work. After four years on a smallholding in Scotland they moved to the shores of lake Ullswater and were founder members of the sailing club and became deeply involved in the battle to stop Ullswater being dammed and becoming a reservoir.

By the early 1960's it was clear that the days of dog and stick farming were over and that the computer was the key to agricultural survival.

A sailing friend, the Rev. Edmund Ivens, then Commodore of the Dunbar Sailing Club, introduced Michael to the Bishop of Edinburgh. Michael attended the Edinburgh Theological College and was ordained in 1967. After serving curacies in Edinbourgh and at Helensburgh he was appointed Rector Of Lockerbie and Annan in 1972. Elizabeth opened a gallery at nearby Lochmaben where they also sailed.

Ten years later they accepted the chance to work in South Africa and they went to Natal in 1982 where he became Rural Dean of East Griqualand working from Matatiele.

The troubles in South Africa were intense a this time and a little xhosa girl, barely three years old, who had been badly hurt and severely burned came into their care. They became her legal guardians and formally adopted Hilja after they returned in 1987 to Britain, where Michael became the Vicar of St. Mary Magdalene at Alsager in Cheshire.

Elizabeth died after a short illness in 1990.

Michael retired in 1993 building the boat he and Elizabeth had planned when they gave up their old 18 footer on setting out for Africa. He sails with Hilja and friends, mostly on Lake Windermere.