On a recent birthday my kids spoilt me with a whole bunch of how to books. Titles such as How to Blog a Book, Write a Thriller and Creative Writing.


In a later letter he described poetry to a Lady Hamilton as “Emotion recollected in tranquility”!

I wonder what was going down between Lady Hamilton and Bill….?

Albert Einstein is famous for this pearl: “Women marry men, hoping they will change. Men marry women, hoping they will not! So each is inevitably disappointed!”

Speaking of women! What about some famous women’s words: Loretta Lynn’s “You have to be different, great or first!” and Mother Teresa’s “Be faithful in small things, because it is in them that your strength lies!”
And then the course that keeps many men away away from the women most Saturdays:
Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech of August 1963 inspired most Americans, and the World! It was also a Prayer, which made it very special!
Facebook has again been the source of, this time the most beautiful photographic study of Wellington, New Zealand, inspiring a poem that, I hope, is worthy of the city itself, and of my youth growing up there!

Unmistakably Wellington!
My mind often wanders there
Leather clad on throbbing steed
Throttle wound at fullest speed
Sparks flying at every bend
Thrilling ride must never end
The long wait in Featherston
For fellow bikers slow to come
Then Sunday when the mood is right
A more gentle cruise in morning light
Around the bays which never end
To swim in icy water with the friends!
A City that turns it on: long sunny days that start at 4am, so cold in winter we slept with newspaper stuffed around us, when the wind blows, you know! The odd earth tremor kept us on our toes! Rain? Yep it can rain there! Party? Wellingtonians know how to party!
MarkTwain, whose writings are revered the World over, had the necessity to travel in order to grow with the World, truly sussed in his famous quote:
I was honoured to be given a copy of 2014 Man Booker Prize winner, Richard Flanagan’s The Narrow Road to the Deep North for my recent birthday. (My 4 x 16th…!) The book is a beautiful and sexy love story, but with lengthy moments spent in the jungles of Burma, building a railway for the Japs, many more emotions are incited within Flanagan’s words, than feelings of love or desire!
The man is an absolute master within his words, coming up with a parable just a couple of pages into the book: “A happy man has no past, while an unhappy man has nothing else!” This is one book you don’t loan out, as you must go back to search out the moments that brought you close to tears, and why! Later on Flanagan starts paragraphs with: “Of A day………..!”

F R David’s Words did it for us back in 1982:
St Vincent School for The Deaf, where words are taught to be heard!
St Vincent School For The Deaf