French Flea Bites (Mill of the Flea)

For fifteen years, humourist, writer, raconteur and generally funny man George East and his wife Donella lived in the remnants of an old water mill in the heart of Normandy's Cherbourg peninsula.

The former night club bouncer, radio presenter, seamstress and professional bed tester's accounts of the couple's life and times in and around the tiny village of Néhou have been enjoyed by millions.

This is the FOURTH book in the best-selling Mill of the Flea series, continuing the often farcical and always entertaining adventures of the author and his wife as they attempt to make a new life in rural France.

In French Flea Bites, new characters and bizarre situations encountered by our innocents abroad include a man who believes he died in 1979, a cat who becomes a werewolf at full moon, and a plan to turn a farmyard compost heap into Néhou's answer to the Millennium Dome.

Totally unlike any other book in the genre, French Flea Bites covers another eventful year for our hero and his wife as they stumble knee-deep through the rice pudding of their lives in darkest rural Normandy and at the Mill of the Flea. This episode introduces another galaxy of weird characters and situations - and a number of distinctly distinctive recipes, such as the favourite dishes of an (alleged) Ancient Egyptian god and his travelling companion!

WHAT OUR READERS SAY

Every type and age of reader from the confirmed Francophile (or Francophobe!) to the armchair adventurer…or anyone in search of a rattling good and very funny read will LOVE this book.
Funny, clever, often poignant and always hugely entertaining. Above all, so true about life and people anywhere on the planet.
As usual, George has given us his beautifully idiosyncratic view of life in rural France. As ever, it is very, very funny and achingly true throughout. For those with the ability to understand that observation is much more important than actuality, this is another masterclass in humanity...

George East does not fit in with most people's idea of a novelist. He is, however and as he says, more than qualified to be the author of a crime series as he has had his fair share of brushes with the Law. He racked up a number of court appearances in his early youth, but as he says in his defence, the charges were only for violence and he never did anything dishonest. George added to his knowledge of police procedure when running a tough inner- city pub in Portsmouth in the 1980s. Though completely fictitious, the central character of Death Duty is a composite based largely on a dozen or so CID officers who used his pub as a local. This was, he says, handy on Christmas Eve or stag night runs as the Leopold Tavern was number nine on a list of ten pubs which made up a classic Portsmouth stag run. Once, he picked up the phone in the bar and a voice asked for the Murder Room. Later, one of the cops explained they were working on the killing of a working girl in the docks area, and had left the pub number with officers from other parts of the county in case something developed while they were in the pub. To start at the beginning, George East was born on Hayling Island but grew up in Portsmouth where his mother ran a boarding house for fairground workers, circus entertainers and other interesting itinerants. He left school with no qualifications intending to become a rock god, and his band met with early and moderate success when they performed as a support act to Billy Fury, The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. After coming second to a 14-year-old trumpeter playing selections From South Pacific in the Butlin's All-England Search for A Star, The Rockin' Hot Rods struggled on until a short-circuit in George's home-made guitar resulted in a catastrophic loss of all the group's equipment and the burning down of a village hall. Deciding to seek his fortune abroad, he ran away to sea in 1963, but got only as far as the Isle of Wight before becoming homesick. Back on the mainland, George worked as a brewer's drayman, private detective, night club bouncer and gravedigger (often at the same time) before meeting and marrying Donella. Settling down to marriage and determined to take a more responsible approach to life, George helped launch one of Britain's earliest commercial radio station, working as a producer and DJ with, among other more well-known names, Kenny Everett. He left the company shortly before Radio Victory became the only ILR station to lose its licence to broadcast, at which point Donella decided that as George was obviously unemployable, the best way ahead was to work for themselves. There followed a succession of diverse business ventures which included a pickled onion manufacturing plant, entertainments agency and clothing repair company. In his spare time the budding author wrote storylines for Jackie and Bluejeans teen magazines under his wife's name, while also submitting scripts for more than a hundred books, films and TV dramas. All were rejected. In 1983, the couple decided to try and make a living out of George's favourite hobby, and bought a public house. In his three years as mine host, George was voted The Worst Landord in Britain (twice) in a national newspaper competition, and finally found fame as the world's only professional bed-tester following an embarrassing accident at The Leopold Tavern. Deciding their future lay in making other people famous and successful, George and his wife set up a PR and marketing company. While escorting a thousand publicans on a memorable day trip to Cherbourg, George and Donella fell in love with rural France and decided to move across the Channel. After a disastrous attempt at trying to live off their wits and the land at a ruined water mill in Normandy, the couple published a dire warning to other Francophiles in the form of a book entitled Home & Dry in France...