The Charlatans # 10 - A series of 40 satirical short stories exposing the shenanigans of South Africa's business and political elite.

The Charlatans is Not The Bored Room's new book containing 40 satirical short stories exposing the immoral, unethical and other character failings of the business and political elite in South Africa. Over the coming months, I'll be posting brief whet-your-appetite summaries of the stories, now moving to the tenth story, titled Fortune and the Sweet Dreams of Slumber Land.

In Fortune and the Sweet Dreams of Slumber Land, we meet Innocent Khotso Klippies-Kwena who, following a decade's unemployment, has just landed his first job as a miner working the Pandora Deeps operation near Rustenburg. Innocent and his girlfriend Fortune, and the couple's toddlers Fancy and Promise, live in New Horizons, a squatter camp on the outskirts of town.

Innocent is excited by the opportunities offered by his first payday, going into town one Saturday morning to buy a proper bed for their humble homestead. Outside Slumber Land, Charlatans, Inc.'s specialist furniture retailer, Innocent is mesmerised by the window display of Sweet Dreams, a king-sized teak-veneered bed, bedecked with a plush, purple crushed-velvet spread and matching inlaid headboard.

Inside the store, according to salesman Bradley Buster-Booysen and his administrative sidekick Marie-Antoinette Smaak-Oosterlaak, a Sweet Dreams bed represents excellent value for Innocent. Together the two charlatans conspire, using every old sales trick in the book, to dupe Innocent into an R13 000 purchase, the beginning of a steep, upward hire-purchase compound interest calculation which over time almost costs his family their meagre livelihood.

To find out how the story of Fortune and the Sweet Dreams of Slumber Land unfolds and concludes, and the many other ways that Charlatans, Inc. goes about its bad business, buy a signed copy by the author and illustrator of The Charlatans. The book is available for purchase @ R250 per copy including postage. Just pop us an email - [email protected] - and we'll do the necessary.

Not The Bored Room has developed a short in-company corporate communications product, The Charlatans Shockshop, aimed at reminding people throughout an organisation not to get up to unethical, immoral and criminal mischief-making, or suffer the consequences thereof. This is in the vein of Robert Fulgham's marvellous New York Times bestseller, All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. The Charlatans Shockshop is two hours in duration, uses entertaining and informative storytelling, with intense audience involvement. Participants, up to sixty in number, get an informative and entertaining attitude change experience, a personal, signed copy of The Charlatans, and a 'Don't be a Charlatan!' memento.

If you're a leader with good character and keen to keep or get your employees on a clean moral, ethical and character track, please email us at [email protected], and we'll send you more details about The Charlatans Shockshop.

Here below is the illustration of the story of Fortune and the Sweet Dreams of Slumber Land.