Some Items May Have Shifted In Flight: A life aloft, abroad and occasionally adrift

Product Description

Some Items May have Shifted in Flight is the perfect scratch for your travel itch.
Eighteen laugh-out-loud stories, both on and off the beaten track, take you on unusual journeys in twelve countries. They run the gamut of a lifetime of adventures and misadventures, from hitching a lift for 2,000 miles on a road-train across Australia, to a surreal encounter with Sir Richard Branson. Some are touching, such as retracing the steps of two escaped British Officers in World War Two; others celebrate the spirit of adventure – traveling across India by steam-train, or rescuing a friend from an African jail. Some Items May Have Shifted in Flight celebrates how the rich and varied cultures, landscapes, people and experiences we encounter on our journeys transform and shape us, occasionally altering the course of our lives forever. At once inspiring, nostalgic and entirely contemporary, Some Items may have Shifted in Flight is a richly descriptive and entertaining memoir that laments the way we have come to take travel for granted. It inspires us to set forth with renewed awareness of our journeys, to which fragments of social-media can never do justice. This book will catch the imagination of those looking for an original, authentic new voice in travel writing.

Review

“Superb writing … eloquent and highly enjoyable. Ranks up there with some of thebest travel writing I have read”. Bob Wallace – Executive Editor, Rolling Stone Magazine & St. Martins Press.

“Weston Smith writes with sensitivity, wit and good humor about how and why wehumans travel. A timely reminder that every moment should be treasured.”James Bradley, Author of NY Times bestsellers Flags of Our Fathers, Flyboys, & The China Mirage.

“Don’t leave home without this witty and insightful memoir by Richard WestonSmith, whose recollections of a life in travel would make anyone want to hit the road. A perfect in-flight read.” Barbara Peterson, Wall Street Journal contributor and author of Blue Streak:Inside JetBlue, the Upstart That Rocked an Industry

“The autobiographical short stories in this book are pure delight: vivid, moving, funny vignettes of a life well lived, a planet well explored, fascinating people and exotic places. If you want to know what it felt like to be a stockman in the Australian outback in the 1970s, on a house-boat on Dal Lake in Kashmir, in a Maharajah’s crumbling place in Delhi, being followed by the Secret Police in Botswana, or encountering Richard Branson in St. Thomas, this is the book for you. An evocation of time and place in prose P. G. Wodehouse would have been happy to own. Highly recommended.”Gavin Scott, Emmy award-winning screenwriter, broadcaster and author of theDuncan Forrester detective thrillers, Age of Treachery &c.

“Give yourself a treat and read this richly entertaining and absorbing book. A wonderful trip, guaranteed” Michael Deeley, Producer of The Italian Job, The Deer Hunter, Blade Runner

About the Author

Richard grew up in England. As a child, he was allowed great freedom, and generally had to create his own entertainment. Being a poster child for Attention Deficit Disorder, this was never diffic … ”
oh look, a badger!” He could bicycle anywhere he wished without a helmet, fall out of trees, set fire to stuff (occasionally himself), upset tadpoles, shoot things with an air rifle (occasionally himself), and frolic irresponsibly through fields and woods in a way that would now be thoroughly disapproved of and quite possibly illegal. He first got a taste for travel when he was sent to Australia at the age of 17 to survive working on a cattle station. Against all odds, he did, and by age 23 he had travelled through India, and, in 1982, settled in Johannesburg, where he married his wife, Kirsten. Working in corporate marketing allowed him to travel throughout Southern Africa. He moved in 1989to California, where he and Kirsten set up a marketing services company, Brainstorm Creative; t