Tall tales, biography, old friends, and stories of ordinary people doing extraordinary things

 … one thing is for certain: we all love a good story. As they say in Arabic, and as is said in all languages in all times and places, “ka-n ya ma ka-n bil ‘adim izzama-n wa sa-lifi al aSri  wa la-wa-n”‘ or, “there was, oh yes, there was, in the oldest of days and ages and times”. And the taller the story, the more unlikely the yarn, the better we appreciate it. During the closing scenes of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, the journalist says: “This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend”.  From: All along the long white road

Song of Myself 

• Back in the Day – my journey, in song and poetry
• A Window on a Gone World – London days
• Better Read Than Dead – the joy of public libraries
• Song of the Road (1) – my hitchhiking days
• Song of the Road (2) – The Accidental Traveller
• The work, the working, the working life
• Ciao Pollo di Soho – the cafe at the end of the M1
• One ring to rule us all – does Tolkien matter?
• The Boys of Wexford – memory and memoir 
• O’Donnell Abú – the Red Earl and history in a song
• Encounters with Enoch
• Tanks for the memory – how Brezhnev changed my life
• Something about London
• What’s Bob got to do with it?
• The Country Life 
• The work, the working, the working life
• McGoohan’s Blues – sunbathing in the rain 
• Blue remembered hills – a land of lost contentment 

Eulogies

• John Cleverley’s Long March
• The death of the singer will not kill the song
• The Strange Death of Sam Cooke
• A Parting Glass – farewell to an old friend
• Dermott’s Last Ride
• Yuri The Storyteller
• For Krishna Sundari -friends always and forever
• Journey’s end – photographer Tim Page’s wild ride
• Farewell to a Tarkeeth Tiger 
• When An Old Cricketer Leaves The Crease
• Blue remembered hills …  memories of my old pal Dave Shaw 

Stories

• Roman Holiday – The Perils of a Poet  in Nero’s Rome
• Lilith – a poem  of The Fall by Meniscus Diabetes
• Chanson – living next to Jim
• No Bull – beefy ballads 
• Small Stories – A Tale of Twin Pines
• Small Stories – the schools of the Tarkeeth 
• Small Stories – Crossing the South Arm
• Tel al Sabi – Tarkeeth’s ANZAC Story
• The Monarch of the Sea  
• The Odyssey of Assid Corban
• No Going Home – the refugee’s journey (1)
• Hejira – the refugee’s journey (2)
• Dark Deeds in a Sunny Land – a poet’s memorial to a forgotten crime  
• Tim Page’s War – a photographer’s Vietnam journey 
• The quiet tea time of the soul
• Bringing it all back home – the missing mosaic and other ‘stolen’ stuff
• It’s 3am and an hour of existential angst 
• Blue remembered hills – a land of lost contentment