Not before time we have in one volume all of Chris’ contributions to Waterlog over the years he was involved with the magazine (1996 to early 2005), although sadly, without any of his ever-popular Vernon the Roach series, who amazingly enough had a fan club all of his own, through no fault of the editors’ whatsoever.

This really is a great collection of stories, written with all the magic that Chris could impart to words. Two things never ceased to astonish me about Chris: the first was that he could turn an encounter with a fungus-ridden teabag floating in a scummy pond into something near to poetry; the second was that he managed to combine the worst hand-writing in the world with the crappiest fax machine in the western hemisphere. Need I say more? Just buy this and wish you had kept all those back copies.