The world is full of dead-end jobs and Andy Owens has had more than his fair share, from bagging clothes and assembling tumble-driers to packing Easter Eggs and sticking walnuts on Walnut Whips.

Urban Slave charts his varied minimum-wage career, ranging from under-valued retail work to mind-numbing factory work, taking orders from useless managers and idiotic supervisors, as he gamely struggled through thirty years in low-pay Britain.

Inspired by the great explorers from Mary Kingsley to Marco Polo, Andy Owens plans an expedition along Yorkshire’s river Aire – a soft option to the wild and dangerous river Congo.

Yet despite the absence of cannibals and crocodiles, he encounters a series of more urbane ‘dangers’ such as psychotic motorists, homicidal livestock, sarcastic bus drivers, eccentric birdwatchers and, perhaps most alarming of all, folk who get suspicious just because you don’t have a local accent.

Walking on Aire first published in 2010 to positive media and customer reviews – details at https://owensandy.com