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Roly Tells His Story

The True Adventures Of Rover Glenradin
The Small Dogs From Africa – Book One
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“They say we dogs are telepathic. I don’t know anything about that but one day, how wonderful, Sylvia came to visit my family in Africa and I knew right away that I would be able to tell her my stories. So I did! And here they are!”
Roly and his friends live in a small and often eccentric community in a remote part of Central Africa, a world filled with wild animals, from crocodiles to cheetah, from lions to warthogs. They survive by working together, a group of quite disparate dog friends. Roly speaks simply and with remarkable understanding and empathy, stories for younger readers and the adults who read with them – illustrated by the legendary Takashi Masunaga and the talented Colombian artist Daniel Arce-Lopez
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When he was an old dog, Roly asked my mother to write down the stories of his life. He was a wire haired terrier who was born and adventured in a remote area of Zambia. Their adventures went far beyond the wilds because they lived in a small and often eccentric community. Black Africans. White Africans. And the leftovers of the former colonial regime. With the exception of one or two of these leftovers, everyone – dogs and humans – loved their lives and their homes and these stories are filled with humour and affection.

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Fishing for Crocodiles III

Fact and fiction in Southern Central Africa: in 1963/4, with Northern Rhodesia on the verge of Independence, two African boys, one Black and one white, set out to make an impossible cross country pilgrimage from Barotseland to Lourenço Marques, home of Southern Africa’s greatest rock ’n roll radio station.

3^rd edition

“I first wrote this book many years ago, too fast and too carelessly and in an unsettled state of mind. A few years later, I edited it to correct some historical and musical references. Now, in 2025, I look at the material in a different light and while a great deal of the original stands, I have made a lot of changes, expanding the fact and cutting down on the fiction. “ P.L.

Reviews from Amazon

Highly recommended. This is a perceptive, beautifully-written memoir about a colonial childhood that throws a light on a place – Africa – and time – the sixties – that now seem both exotic and impossibly distanced…. In turns funny, terrifying, exciting and touching, Fishing for Crocodiles is a rollicking adventure that would make a great indie movie. Highly recommended.

Charming, vivid and poignant. This charming, vivid and poignant tale is set in such a time, before the African dive into the waters of the 20th century became such a mighty struggle for survival. Growing up in Africa, as this author apparently did, has enabled him to describe in detail the simpler time and self-reliant life style that has long disappeared from almost all parts of the globe. A simple and sincere relationship with his African playmate, a naive expectation that leads to an incredible journey across a still wild continent that leads to an entirely unexpected and dangerous encounter, all add up to a touching tale of remembrance and, finally, of redemption.

A must read. In the vogue of realistic African story writing made popular by Alexandra Fuller, this is a must read for all who are drawn to the now enlightening continent.

The 1960’s. Central Africa. The Winds of Change, sweeping down through one of the last great wildernesses on planet earth. Landilane, Black, and Rex, White, not yet teenagers, run away from their home in a remote corner of Northern Rhodesia, on the eve of Zambian Independence, 1964.

Their quest: to meet their idol Sam Cooke who, by all accounts, is to be interviewed on Southern Africa’s primo rock station, LM Radio. Cooke’s iconic song, ‘A Change Is Gonna Come’, has a strange power over them. Their destination: Lourenço Marques (now Maputo), capital city of Mozambique, nestled comfortably on the warm, welcoming shores of the Indian Ocean. They’ll journey down the mighty Zambezi River, through remote and game-filled bundhu, train hopping through neighbouring Southern Rhodesia, into Mozambique and into the hands of the mythical freedom-fighter, Alice N’Karta, fighting for her people’s independence from Portuguese colonial rule.

The journey will force them to confront and come to terms with their ethnic and cultural differences, putting their friendship to a critical stress-test, imposing, unwillingly, a 50 year hiatus to their profound connection. Little do they know that their idol will be shot to death in a Los Angeles motel room before they even arrive in LM.

Nothing will ever be the same.

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SHANDY TELLS HER STORY

The True Adventures Of Shady Smoothflow Of Coneve
Two Small Dogs From Africa – Book Two

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When the world is a quite different place, a small dog adventures in Central Africa and then travels to England where she has a whole new life. Many years later she sits down to tell her story to the human she owns – who happens to be my mother. Illustrated by the legendary Takashi Masunaga and the talented Colombian artist Daniel Arce-Lopez these more or less true stories are told in Shandy’s own words. Stories for young readers and the adults who read with them.

Shandy was a wire haired terrier who was born and adventured in Zambia before she made the long and difficult transition to England. Where her brother Roly’s adventures involved many dog friends, Shandy’s were more focused on her family and the two very special dogs in her life: the tragic Great Dane Emerson and the indomitable rescue dog Mungo.

Toward the end of her long and varied life, Shandy asked my mother Sylvia Lawrence to write her biography. It wasn’t that she could speak like some cartoon dog. It was that my mother could understand exactly what she was saying. As Shandy herself put it “Some of us really do understand more or less exactly what humans are saying, and I’m one of those lucky ones. The problem is that even those of us who understand human talk can’t actually talk back. So that’s where telepathy comes in. That’s how you understand me and how you can tell my story; but you’ll need to explain this to the humans who read it because otherwise they won’t believe this is really me!”

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ThunderCats Episode 1: It began in Portugal

Digressing: I was in Portugal, at one of Jerry Mason’s famous library shoots. Jerry was a good friend, a talented no-nonsense advertising and sports photographer who would have been a lot more visible and successful had he thrown the temperament and indulged in the bullshit of so many celebrity photographers of that time. Every year, at least once, Jerry assembled a team of models and took them to an exotic or interesting location where he shot stock pictures which photo libraries sold for ads and promotions.

This year he chose a beautiful castelo with terraces, patios and a huge pool. I lazed around while Jerry, his assistants and the models went to work. An aside: Jerry was a funny, charming personality, not excessively educated academically but worldly wise and dialled in. He had served his National Service in the navy and, I believe, came to photography by accident. He wore cowboy boots, a Western-buckled belt, had a slight overbite and an almost spectacular nose. Nothing in his appearance hinted at the extraordinary charisma that charmed us all and bewitched so many beautiful women. He was a gentleman, great company, generous and always optimistic. I miss him.

Jerry and the models were somewhere on the property quick-changing an astonishing range of costumes, some classic and some provocative, and I was lounging by the pool with a drink. The phone rang in the house. I ignored it. I had joined the party at the last minute and no on knew I was here. Actually, divorced and between relationships, I was renting the small apartment above Jerry’s London studio, which we nicknamed The Transit Lounge because so many of us passed through it from one life to another. I only mention this because very few people knew where I was parked. The ringing phone, therefore, would not have been for me.

But it was, one of Jerry’s harried assistant telling me that Jules Bass was on the line.

My first thought was how the hell did he know where I was – and how did he get the castelo’s number (a mystery I never solved and for some reason I never asked Jules); my second thought was what could he possibly want?

I had met Jules a couple of years earlier when I was contracted for seven days to rewrite a Movie Of The Week Rankin Bass had sold – a take on The Sins Of Doran Gray where Dorian was a female model and the picture was her showreel.

Jules had hired a friend of mine to direct. He had wanted to modify the screenplay and recommended that I do the work. I too was not impressed by the script but had no idea what I could do with it in seven days. However, Jules and the director weren’t really looking for my ideas. Jules and my friend descended on each page as it emerged from the typewriter and as often as not would have notes scribbled all over it before I had finished the next page. I’ve never seen the movie but if it’s any good, none of it is my responsibility. That’s how I met Jules, who was very hospitable and introduced me to sushi, for which I am almost as grateful as I am for ThunderCats. And the director introduced me to Gregory Peck, for whom I wrote a Capra-eque monologue. What an amazing experience for a neophyte.

Jules called: “We’ve sold an animated show and I need some scripts.” Me: “Jules, I don’t know anything about animation.” It was true. The only animation I had ever written was for a Firestone tire instructional, funnily enough directed by the same friend who brought me into Dorian. “Just get over here.” “I can’t ‘just get over’ there. I have stuff I have to do here.” “What stuff?” And, come to think of it, what did I have that I couldn’t put aside? “Come over and see how it goes.” Put like that, it seemed like a trip of a couple of weeks and who would pass up a free two weeks in New York? But one last question: “How much are you paying?”

“Two thousand dollars for 30 minutes. 20-23 on the page.”

I turned him down.

More next week…

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