Rant & Dawdle: The Fictional Memoir of Colston Wilmott

As Imagined by

Rant & Dawdle is a fictional memoir comprising thirty-eight interwoven stories from the perspective of a grumpy old man living on a small island off the west coast of Canada and an expectant young boy born into the poverty of WW2 English working class. The old man dreaming in retrospect, the young boy living a developing history, both to eventually rendezvous in the eighties. Filled with the humour and history of a post war generation nurtured on comic books, the Goon Show and jazz.

"The book has an unusual structure, interleaving first and third person narratives and alternating time periods, beginning at the extremes of life and simultaneously moving forwards and backwards towards mid-life. ...This style works best when musical anecdotes are triggered by travels or memories of shows seen. For example, The death of Paul Rutherford brings reminisces about London's Little Theatre Club, and a trip to new York City provides opportunity to describe the Greenwich village scene. ...the book's real strength is the honest and intimate account of a life."

—Lawrence Joseph, Signal to Noise.