Beauregard of Ballarat

Prices (Taxes included):

Softback Post & Pack

AUD 19.95 5.00

USD 19.95 At cost

Beauregard narrates the story of his early years in the city of Ballarat where he chooses and takes charge of his very own human, a kindly old woman named Irene.

They share a warm and contented relationship until dark clouds gather over them.

While Irene is oblivious to the lurking danger, Beau is not, and eventually it falls on him to save his human with a solution as entertaining and hilarious as it is ingenious.

He narrates his story with gentle humour and a sharp wit and along the way, provides us with some thought-provoking observations of the human psyche.

With great perceptiveness he reminds us of many of the essential values that some of us may have forgotten. It is a book bursting with laughter, warmth and wisdom.

The author was born in India in the 1950s, a halcyon and happy period in Indian history, following the discovery of Penicillin and before the advent of the IPL. He attended 6 schools in 5 different countries due to his family's nomadic existence. His only notable achievement through his entire boyhood was that he once bowled 6 balls to Sir Geoff Boycott at the local cricket nets before being advised to take up Scrabble.

In his 20s, he moved to Australia and loathing real work of any sort, turned to Australian TV and Cinema, playing a string of doctors, lawyers and assorted head-wobbling sub-continentals. Later he joined a Melbourne advertising agency as a copywriter. For the next 40 years, he managed to avoid scrutiny or detection by the simple long-heralded advertising tradition of going out to an early lunch and staying there.

Eventually discovered hiding under a desk in 2018, he was summarily despatched into the timeless morass of tedium called retirement where he attempted to pass the time by writing, for the first time ever, without the misinformation of a brief, the misguidance of a planner or the misdirection of a client. Mr Batliwalla lives in Melbourne with his two daughters, two sons-in-law, two mortgages, two dogs, and two cats. He has however, in perhaps the only wise move of his entire life, limited himself to one wife.