The hilarious memoir about Australia in the 1950s.
When a naive young couple marry, romance clashes with reality and just about everything goes wrong - and right.
When a gormless just-married couple rent an impractical shack at Avalon, twenty-six miles from Sydney, they face, among other things, an endless commute in a broken-down car. Soon they have no time for anything except keeping on the road.
This memoir, constructed from journals, provides a laugh-out-loud chronicle of how it was then - and keeps you chuckling to the end. The Smiths has delighted readers everywhere and is now available as an eBook (59,500 words)
REVIEWS OF NO TIME FOR THE SMITHS:
"A fascinating peek at an innocent time in Australian history."
THE SENIOR
"This is a delightful reminiscence on the beginnings of a marriage, the lack of money and the efforts required to 'keep the show on the road'."
MOSMAN MAGAZINE
Excerpt: The just-married couple are so strapped for cash they decide they have to find better jobs or start some money-making scheme. Now read on:
Rina had no formal medical training but she had spent so long in the pharmaceutical field that much had rubbed off. And, one night, sitting on the bus, she glanced at the paper of the man beside her and spotted a small ad for a pharmaceutical rep: 'sound knowledge of medical terminology a must'.
She bought a copy of the paper the moment she reached the shops. Female reps in those days were almost unknown. There were perhaps two she knew in the industry. 'But anyway,' she thought, 'I'll apply. Another iron in the fire. I'll write the application on the weekend.'
The next Sunday afternoon, when weekend house maintenance was over, we had two precious hours of sunshine to ourselves. So we went to the beach with pens, paper, dictionary, clip-boards and my Remington Model Five portable.
On the few occasions we'd made it to the beach, we usually took the office. And to avoid upsetting people who merely came to swim we would retreat to a hollow in the highest dune where we could labour unobserved. Besides, Rina thought I could write.
'You should write, Mia,' she constantly told me. 'You have a real gift that way.'
This I found far-fetched. Yes, I could scribble. But couldn't everybody? So, to justify her hope in me, I tried to write a radio serial - naively having decided that the lowest common denominator wouldn't take much time and might even drag in desperately needed pelf. We were ready to try anything by then.
I raised my Parker 51. Such beginnings, I thought, led on to greatness. 'It's got to be a maiden's madness thing to suck the housewives in. I'll call it Wild Wisdom. How's that? And there has to be a heroine. I'll call her Melanie Strange.'
'Mmm,' she said, not listening, thinking about her application. 'Ben Mia.'
'Mmm.'
'What should I say in this application?'
'What application is it this time?'
'The thing I saw in the bus. I know they want a man but if we write it the right way... Here's the ad. See? Look.'
I read the scrap of paper. 'Okay. You need qualifications. What have you done?'
'Let's see. In my other job I helped the sales manager with a trade paper they put out for doctors.'
I wrote down, 'Assistant editor of medical magazine'.
'You can't put that,' she said. 'I only helped wrap them up.'
'Doesn't matter. You helped. That's the main thing.'
'Oh, and I had to run round town with him, carrying bundles of stuff to the printers. He'd always walk on the inside of the footpath because he said that women should protect men. So I'd complain and change places with him. And then he'd skip across to the inside again. People must have thought he was mad.'
'Did you complain?'
'Of course I did.'
I wrote down, 'Responsible for guiding editorial policy'.
