Book excerpt: This book, The Langley Boy To Be Better Than The Best! Part 3 of the Langley Boy Trilogy, is the story of the authors ultimate success in fulfilling his long-held ambition to become a chief officer in local government, responsible for engineering, architecture, land management, and direct labour organisations. It details the David and Goliath struggle between local authorities and central government to prevent the privatisation of essential services such as refuse collection and cleansing and the maintenance of highways, sewers, vehicles, parks, and open spaces. It outlines the authors leadership and management skills, his philosophy that failure is inconceivable, and his successful reorganisation of the councils workforces at Swansea and Rushcliffe to protect employees jobs, pensions, and conditions of service. The book contains family anecdotes of moving homes, creating new gardens, a wedding, the joys of grandchildren, the sadness of parents deaths, taking children to theme parks and pantomimes, and the fun of dressing up as hippies, punk rockers, and clowns at family parties. There is a fund of stories involving the author and his wife Hilary, hiring a narrow boat with friends to cruise the Cheshire Ring, buying a caravan to tour parts of the UK, travelling to Germany to sample its wines, and suffering from chateaux fatigue in the Loire Valley. It covers a trip to Spain to solve the first recorded incident of bearnapping, events in Langley, and creating T-shirts and specialty cakes for family special occasions. As a former member and president of the Rotary Club of West Bridgford, the author organised a series of charitable fashion shows, duck races, Christmas collections, and other events to help the less fortunate in the UK and overseas. In retirement, he became chairman of governors at West Bridgford Infant School, during which time the school was designated as outstanding by Ofsted.