Sample:
Michael Stephens decides it’s time for a change. He had been working in a boring dead end job in a sorting office when he thought that there must be more to life than this. More to it all than standing around putting mail into a wall of pigeonholes and sorting parcels into different sacks.
He needed something different, he applied for a job in Pembrokeshire at an educational field centre and before long he was on his way to the remote village of Dale in deepest west Wales.
In these three stories we follow him from the long train journey to Milford Haven, through his settling in to his new job and life, and the events he becomes involved in.
He soon realises that things are not always as straightforward as they seem. Life can get complicated when a mad farmer mistakes you for one of his sheep and chases you half way around the county. Michael wonders how he managed to get involved in a tense stand off situation, involving hostages, which seemed to originate over a lack of cake.
A second set of three stories set some years after the first have see the Director trying to track down all his old staff for an anniversary dinner to mark his 25th anniversary of being in charge and his imminent retirement. Despite intricate planning and attention to detail second to none, the dinner does not go to plan when some of the uninvited old staff shows up.
The dinner ends in a shambles but once the announcement is made the race is on for his successor as director and general supremo. We follow the two main contenders as they use any means possible to establish an advantage. In a bid to bring the staff closer together, and gain some local recognition, they form a drama group and enter the Pembrokeshire Drama and Arts Festival. Some are better actors than others are and it is not a smooth ride through rehearsals but they somehow manage to hold it together until the day of the performance.
Profound Regrets
One
The next stop will be Milford Haven where this train terminates, please make sure that you have all your belongings from inside the carriage and on behalf of everyone here enjoy your stay in Milford Haven.
Michael had been waiting all day to hear the guard utter those words, he had left at 7.00 that morning to go down to Dale Fort Field Centre where he was to work as a general assistant. Throughout the day on various trains he wondered if he was doing the right thing. It was fair comment to suggest that there was no reason why he shouldn’t go but to go so far away from anywhere else he knew to do something he didn’t really know much about might have seemed a bit of an unusual thing to do. Yes, as he thought of some of the other unusual things he had done in recent times he wondered if this was one he should have thought about a bit more, once more he took out the letter that had dropped through the door a few days earlier.
Dear Michael,
Thank you for your application, I am pleased to say that we can offer you a job but let me tell you about the setup here.
Dale Fort Field Centre is a residential field centre specialising in courses in Marine Biology and Geography for A level and University students as well as accommodating older groups during the summer months that go on walking, and photography holidays. The centre is situated in the heart of the Pembrokeshire National Park in the isolated village of Dale, which is around 12 miles from the port of Milford Haven
There are 15 full time staff, including five general assistants of which you will be one, staff work on a rota system and work 5 1\2 days a week. In their free time staff are able to participate in the activities of the centre if they so wish, there is a boat which visits the numerous offshore islands which is also available if there is room.
If you could phone to advise when you will be arriving at Milford Haven station I will arrange transport to collect you and bring you back to the centre.
Yours sincerely
Winnie Johnson- domestic bursar
The letter said isolated but he had no idea, he did not think it was possible to be sitting on a moving train for this long and still be in the same country. It went through place after place and still it continued, he went though Chepstow, Newport, Cardiff, Swansea, Carmarthen and then smaller places where the railway station seemed to be all there was. Most of the remaining passengers got off at Haverfordwest so by the time it eventually rolled into Milford Haven there were only a handful of people left.
At last. He was off that train and in theory, if the letter was to be believed there would be somebody to pick him up. He saw about 10 cars in the car park but which one was the one he was supposed to get in. As he watched and waited the cars gradually filled up with people, one by one they all went leaving him on his own at a railway station he had never been to before in a town he knew nothing about. There wasn‘t even a public phone to ring up to find out what was happening.
At least it was not raining, the sun was out, and it was actually quite warm, a typical September afternoon. So what if he was marooned in the town at the end of the line, and it certainly was the end of the line. Milford Haven is a big port with oil refineries; a bit of a fishing industry and that is about it. The main commercial area consists of one street with a handful of shops and precious little else. In fact, the only time he had read about Milford Haven was the case of George Evans that merited a few paragraphs in the paper once. He went into a mental institution aged 23 believing he was Benito Mussolini and was let out 20 years later under the impression that he was King Juan Carlos of Spain, which might be seen by some as a slight improvement. But the reason he had made the national press was not this. It was Christmas Eve, and while most people were either at home with their families or at Midnight Mass, George Evans had sneaked round to the Town Hall with a pot of bright red paint and in six-foot letters written Arse . By all accounts it was an impressive effort but it didn’t take long for the relevant authorities to figure out who was responsible for this outrage. When he appeared in court the judge asked him what happened to which he replied Pass me the custard jug , a remark that sealed his fate. George was taken back to the unit and given a room with quilted wallpaper and a nice view of the refineries.
So, anyway, Michael was sitting on a rickety wooden fence wondering what his next move would be, no phone to ring up, no taxis in the taxi rank, not exactly sure which way he should be heading in and lumbered with a big rucksack. It must only get better from this point on. Then, as a big green discovery Land Rover came screeching round the corner and came to an abrupt halt in the car park leaving a trail of dust in its wake he realised that the afternoons excitement was only just beginning.