Sitting Ducks

Publisher Marketing: Tipped off by a disgruntled local about the money to be made from a takeover of Wilberforce Original Brassworks, City speculator Mervyn Pusey decides to cast an eye over the sleepy family business in the heart of the Yorkshire Dales. As the board members turn to their London merchant bank for advice, their only slightly dotty personnel director continues to be more concerned about arrangements for the village show. While support from their London advisers lands them with the sarcastic behemoth Hugo Russell, whose entry to the village on the back of a tractor does little for his self-esteem, it also introduces them to Simon Beresford, guileless spin doctor, doting husband and welcome recruit to Bradburn's First XI. As each of Pusey's clandestine visits to Bradburn ends in ignominy, worse things befall his secret informant. Meanwhile, Splasher Shelmerdine's chimney cleaning challenge has mixed results, Miss Fitton's doily-napkins create a headache for Morris dancing academic Roger Spofforth, and it is left to the beautiful Julia Mowbray to beard decidedly potty Uncle Edwin whose shareholding could be the decisive factor in a battle the sets the guile of the City's money men against a family business with everything to lose. Contributor Bio:  Newman, Sam Sam Newman is a technologist at ThoughtWorks, where he currently splits his time between encouraging and sharing Innovation globally and helping design and build their internal systems. He has worked with a variety of companies in multiple domains around the world, often with one foot in the developer world, and another in the IT operations space. If you asked him what he does, he'd say 'I work with people to build better software systems'. He has written articles, presented at conferences, and sporadically commits to open source projects. He is currently writing a book, "Building Microservices", which should be available in the Autumn of this year from O'Reilly.