Product Description

'Your mind's full of rubbish, Morley, just like that pig bin.'

"The Pig Bin" is a laugh-out-loud novel about the embarrassing escapades of a war time adolescent. Morley Charles is a shy Catholic boy with a stammer. His mother disapproves of most of his friends; his father is away at the war; his uncle is a black marketeer, and the drunk lodger staying with them is a source of shame. Morley has started exploring his body, and is desperate to find the right word to describe the sinful pleasure he's just discovered so he can make his confession and not go straight to hell if a bomb falls on him. Things start to look up, however, when the American serviceman who's sweet on his neighbor gives him a brand new lumber jacket. May, his aunt, is generous with the affection his mother seems unable to show. If he pretends to be French his stammer miraculously vanishes, and his artistic talent might give him a future at the Balsley School of Art. With the war nearly over, all he needs to do now is find that word.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #761743 in Books
• Published on: 2000-04-03
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: .82" h x 6.82" w x 7.78" l, .57 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 272 pages

Time Out
‘Funny and touching by turns, it evokes that time and place with the authenticity of an old family snapshot’ (David Lodge)

‘Morley Charles, the just-into-long-trousers hero of Michael Richardson’s first novel, is a charming, comic creation.’

About the Author
Michael Richardson's first career was as head of art in Birmingham secondary schools. His paintings have been widely exhibited. In his third career he has had short stories, poems and articles published in The Sunday Times, Mayfair, Private Eye and London Magazine. This is his first novel. He has a grown-up son and daughter and lives with his wife in Rubery, Birmingham.

Winner of the Sagittarius Prize, 2001. Michael Richardson, was presented with his prize, for a first novel by an author over the age of 60, at the Society of Authors awards ceremony on 7th June.

Excerpted from The Pig Bin by Michael Richardson. Copyright © 2000. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved

Freshly dosed with malt and cod liver oil and wearing his best trousers and new lumber jacket, Morley Charles paused uncertainly at the end of his road, wondering how he could safely occupy himself for the next hour or two. With over two shillings in his pocket, the shops at Redhill beckoned and there would be schoolmates around to whom he could show off his new jacket. But Redhill village was dangerous territory. It would just be his luck to bump into one of his mother's friends or even, perhaps, his mother herself on her way to the Co-op. He sighed, turned his back on the roofs and chimneys of Redhill and the huge green-domed tower of Redhill Asylum to his right, swung left into Eachley Lane and walked briskly towards the narrow gully which would take him to the Ickley Hills. This was the second time he had missed confession. A month ago on his last visit Canon Reilly asked at the end, 'Are you sure that there is nothing else, my son?' Morley replied, quite truthfully, that there wasn't, but in the middle of his penance with the canon's curiously insistent question still reverberating in his head, it suddenly dawned on him that there was; and he had been doing it enthusiastically and regularly since the beginning of January. The gully ended at the foot of Redwell Hill, the smallest of the Ickley Hills. Morley decided against his usual route, which zigzagged up to the Scots pine-crowned summit. Although this would deny him the mild satisfaction of seeing the upper half of his distant house, it would avoid the risk of his mother recognizing his distinctive red lumber jacket, should she be looking out of a bedroom window. Instead, he took a rising, meandering path round the lower slopes that eventually joined the broad track leading to a point safely behind the summit. Carefully avoiding the wet bilberry bushes and bracken in case they soaked his trousers, he tried to organize his thoughts. He was sure that what he got up to most nights of the week was sinful, but how really serious was it? It might, of course, be only a venial sin, but if it was a mortal sin and he did not confess it, he ran the risk, should he die, of eternal damnation. 'This does not literally mean roasting in perpetual fire whilst being relentlessly pierced by Satan's fork,' Canon Reilly had often explained. 'This is a primitive image that was created for the benefit of our forefathers. No, what hell really means is experiencing all the most terrible, horrible and vile things that you can think of, but multiplied a billion times.' Searching for a crumb of comfort, he turned his thoughts to his new jacket. It was a genuine Yankee jacket. 'Made in USA', it said on the label. He looked approvingly at its intricately woven colours and glanced at his new long trousers. He was glad of both: it was chilly up here on the top of Redwell Hill, in spite of the recently emerged April sun. He hoisted the trousers to his knees to remind himself what it felt like to wear short trousers. Instantly, his legs became unbearably cold. Yet, he reflected, he had been happily bare-legged for most of his life, until last September, when Uncle Walter had handed down a pair of long trousers. His mother had shortened them but reducing the size of the waist was beyond her skill. This meant that he had to wear a belt as well as braces and, every time he put them on, painstakingly arrange numerous equal-sized tucks to make the enormous reduction as inconspicuous as possible. He also had to wear a well-pulled-down jersey or pullover to cover up his handiwork. 'They don't look too bad,' his mother said. 'Anyway, what do you expect? There's a war on.' But so voluminous were they, falling in such generous, luxuriant folds from beneath his jacket, that Maureen from next door said, 'I thought you was wearing a long skirt for a minute, Morley, when I seen you with your legs together.' And he didn't wear them again until Big Gwen Pinder performed major surgery on them with her Singer, for twenty Player's Weights. Today, however, he was wearing his best pair, bought new from the Co-op in Upfield. As he let them fall, his legs were immediately surrounded by deliciously warm air. He savoured the luxury. He did it again, this time hitching them up with some difficulty with his hands inside his pockets: a blast of cold air. He dropped them again: bliss. He continued doing this until he reached the bridle path at the bottom of the hill.