Amanda Baker

Maybe I'm Not a Pigeon Amanda Baker

WARNINGThis book may make you dizzy as you ricochet from the author's creepy encounter with pre PM Tony Blair wearing can-you-really-walk-in-those tight trousers to a near-death toilet experience. Hang on as you are flung from hitchhiking with a ginger tom cat on a lead, via child-prefers-pear-to-Nelson Mandela shame, to accidentally becoming a stand up comedian. There is a house renovation that makes Grand Design look like a Lego project and finally a splat landing in the congealed spaghetti of the fostering process. And all in an off the map literary mashup from this mixed-race, mixed up, Brown Girl Outside the Ring.'Maybe I'm not a Pigeon' is sort of an autobiography and not. It's a stylistic mashup that follows the humdrum, painful, funny and sometimes fantastical events through the life (and ten houses) of a woman who is both ordinary and not. Bizarre autobiography wrestles for space with humorous anecdotes. Squirmingly embarrassing revelations, apocalyptic short stories, satirical blog posts, flash fiction and more make up this quirky offering. "...it was the shape of things to come. I'd been elected Newcastle's 1st black woman councillor despite having no personal political ambition. In the future I was to be a finalist in a national BBC sitcom writing competition despite not having a television, a quarter-finalist and finalist in two separate national Stand-Up-Comedy competitions, despite not being a comedian. In 2014 I voted YES in the Scottish referendum even though I am neither a Nationalist nor a Scot. The thing is never to let logic get in the way of the unexplored path..."Welcome.