Other writings
This is a place where I will upload a variety of non-garden related scribblings
A whisky Christmas tale
His hands were works of art; they were at the same time beautiful and terrifying. Big, powerful, well defined veins sprang from his wrists, flowing under and around cartilage and calloused knuckle, into fingers, purposeful and deliberate.
The morning after...
In the heady days of Distillery “press trips”, after a wonderful evening, I recall the not uncommon experience of the morning after. The “snapper” shall not be named!
Planning Dad's funeral
One of the things I learned some 10 years ago is that the process of working through the death of a family member is punctuated by moments of the surreal …
And the busy waves ...
A short “anniversary” poem, written after a late Winter break in Laugharne, South Wales.
Journey to Secondary school (1970)
A short description of a not uncommon 1970’s winter bus ride en route to secondary school in Liverpool. Those of a certain age will recognise this!
The man with the Jack Daniels tattoo
At that moment, in that hotel bar, in that small foreign town, on that tiny island, set in that immense ocean, there was a sense of order to the scene – A barman with one trouser leg rolled up, talking to a hapless yet happy drunken traveller trying hard to rewrite gravity?
The 1960's walk to Primary school
Involving a 200yd sprint along a rough track that ran parallel to a factory, and was invariably accompanied by attempts to trip each other, with the aim of leaving one of our merry troupe squirming, laughing and puking, held in the miasma of long dead animals.
The Sweet Shop (circa 1965)
Half full containers of blackcurrant and liquorice chews, parma-violets, flavoured bonbons (a hint of the exotic …oooh la francais!), sugared almonds and jelly babies, gobstoppers, cola bottles and white mice, they were all there … clamouring for our attention