There is a saying that goes 'When life gives you lemons make lemonade' but in E. James Chapman's hilarious book, The Plane Now Standing at Platform 3, this keep positive in all situations attitude is stretched to beyond breaking point as we follow his family's journey from Spain to Canada and back again. Heaven knows what the Chapman family did in a past life, but 'bad karma' doesn't come close as they encounter mishap, mayhem and Murphy's Law and learn never to say the words 'well nothing else can go wrong now'.
When E. James Chapman made plans to take his family on holiday, he ended up getting a lot more than he bargained for...Murphy's Law states that whatever can go wrong, will go wrong, and has claimed almost all of us as a victim at one point or another. However, there are several other laws that can strike and cause havoc at any time. Like many others before them, Chapman and his family fell prey to the lesser-known 'law of the journey', which states that the longer a trip is, the more likely things are to go wrong. As they were travelling nearly 4000 miles from Spain to Canada, it couldn't have happened at a more inopportune time. After run-ins with an extremely badly behaved family, a riot in the baggage hall, a bout of food poisoning and finally the pilot announcing that he has 'lost' the runway, it seems that nothing else on their trip can possibly go wrong. Or can it...? The Plane Now Standing at Platform 3 is a hilarious tale which details the extraordinary events that followed the Chapman family halfway around the world and back again. It will particularly appeal to those who have suffered at the hands of inefficient public transport, unhelpful fellow passengers and sheer bad luck.
E. James Chapman started his working life as an apprentice goldsmith and progressed through the jewellery trade to qualify as a gemmologist. An article he wrote in the English D.I.Y. magazine started him off on a journalistic path; after moving to Spain with his wife and children, he wrote regular weekly reports in the local press about Spanish football.
