About me.

Of the baby-boomer generation, I was educated at Glebelands Secondary Modern, at Cranleigh in Surrey, The son of a farm worker; my education was limited entirely by my own lack of ambition. This was remedied to some extent by the Army Education Corps at Bovington Camp in Dorset where I served for three years with the Junior Leaders Regiment (RAC). Discipline has had some wonderfully unexpected benefits! It was here too that I discovered Thomas Hardy who has remained my favourite author to this day.

I served with the 1st Royal Dragoons, mostly in Germany from 1965 until their amalgamation in 1969. Return to civilian life then led to a restless few years with employment as varied as that of a fireman, motorcycle mechanic, lorry driver, assembly fitter and much more. The settling influence arrived in the form of my wife Olive who I met in 1974. In 1976 we moved to Somerset where we raised a family and looked after a dairy herd for nearly twenty-five years. I retrained as a driving instructor in 2000 and ran my own driving school until the end of 2009.

So how has all this led to me writing poetry? Well after a lifetime of compulsive reading, novel after novel, I started to have this silly idea about writing one of my own. You know what they say, everyone has at least one novel in them.

In 2008 I decided to test the water as it were by trying a short Open University course: A174 ‘Begin Writing Fiction’. To my amazement this went well and also filled me with ideas for stories, I was hooked.

I followed this up with: OU A215 ‘Creative Writing,’ with similar results. This course had poetry as one of its compulsory elements, something I was apprehensive about, although I did occasionally read poetry. My apprehension was unfounded as it turned out and I took to poetry like the proverbial duck to water. However for the final component of this course, I wrote the first chapter of my intended novel ‘The Stars Look Down,’ a story that spans the years 1912 to 1919, set in rural Kent and in the trenches of the First World War.

I have just finished OU A363 ‘Advanced Creative Writing,’ to complete my diploma and now the intention is to get on and complete my novel. The second chapter is now in draft form. Whether it will ever be finished or published remains to be seen.

Poetry is my release from the discipline and routine of writing fiction, my escape from the dreaded writers block. It is not unusual for an idea for a line to wake me in the middle of the night, such is its addictiveness.

So there we are then, my mish-mash (I just love alliteration) of employment and life experiences have left me with a huge reserve of ideas to draw on. Now I just have to get on and get it all down on paper.