BOOKS

Books

Christmas & New Year  — Memories

To me the Festive Season begins at the very beginning of December when as children we would begin to talk about Christmas and anticipate its arrival. It extends through to New Year celebrations and the ritual of un-trimming the house and getting back to normal; to school and work and routine.


For me it is full of memories but I am increasingly aware that not everyone is able to access them or to share them with partners, family members and friends. That is why in recent times I have chosen to focus much of my charitable giving on agencies which seek to help those living with memory loss, Alzheimer’s and dementia.


Most (but not quite all) of the poems here have been part of my other published collections. Some have been altered slightly from their original form. The prose piece is an abridged version of a short story in “Nowt To Do With Me” - which was my first book of short stories published by peakpublish in the UK in 2012.


I am once again grateful for the skill and design expertise of Phil Robbie. Russell Hague - with whom I collaborated on both Crows in the Apple Tree and Around and About the Loxley Valley books, allowed me to use one of his evocative images on the cover.

Tusitala Victoria 2023   ISBN: 978-1-7390567-1-1

Around & About — The Loxley Valley

This collection of poems, a little prose and many evocative photographs - is specific to a valley to the West of the large city of Sheffield in South Yorkshire. On the foothills of the Pennines, it has pastoral beauty, a special and dramatic history and a plethora of stories and characters including Robin Hood and Frank Fearn’s bones rattling on the gibbet. The valley and surrounding area saw considerable social change in the 20th century but has somehow retained much of its essential rural character and community spirit amongst its villages and hamlets. 


The poems draw on the writer’s personal familiarity with the area and take us into his memories and interpretations of the local culture and natural environment. Much of that is reflected in Russell Hague’s photographic images which capture so much of the essence of the valley and the nearby places “around and about.” 


Sometimes, the poetry draws on the image and sometimes it is the other way round. We treasure this dynamic which continues but concentrates the working relationship which we developed when producing “Crows in the Apple Tree” in 2019. 

Tusitala Victoria 2023   ISBN: 978-0-9947794-8-9

Oak Bay — and not far away

This collection of images and words is specific to a place but has a resonance that extends beyond Oak Bay - and not far away. It is about mood and reflection and memory and more but is a deliberate mix. Frank has brought his poetry and prose together with Tony’s palette and artistically, each had fed off the other. In the main, the paint brush has opened up the opportunity for narrative but at times the connection has been reversed. We hope you enjoy both image and words - and that our collaboration speaks to you in some way.


Tusitala Victoria 2023   ISBN: 978-0-9947794-3-4

A Walk in the Park

Uplands Golf Club 1922 to 2022

This is a major departure in that it is a highly illustrated history of Uplands Golf Club Victoria, Vancouver Island. Designed by Phil Robbie and with commissioned photography from Leo Mah, it tells the story of the evolution of a club set against one hundred years of great social change.

Tusitala Victoria 2022   ISBN: 978-0-9947794-2-7

Village Lines

Sketches & Words from Rural South Yorkshire

This is a collaborative publication with artist Alan Taylor. All the poems, prose and evocative sketches focus on an historic village and parish in South Yorkshire. It tells of the landed estate, the village church, local places of beauty, the resident dragon and much, much more. Includes thirty-five sketches, thirty poems and four pages of prose.

Tusitala Victoria 2021   ISBN: 978-0-9947794-6-5


Nowt At All Like Home 

Travels of a Yorkshire Farm Boy

The stories in Nowt At All Like Home are all travel stories; some about the journeys but most about the destinations. In particular they are about people and experiences – actors and plays on diverse stages – and as such they reflect the writer’s good fortune at being able to journey so far and wide.


As with Nowt to Do With Me and Nowt To Do With My Wife they are mainly about characters; somewhat larger than life individuals around which the predominantly true travel stories are written.


Meet fellow-travellers en route by sea to East Africa, George, Charles, Ruhio and Samuel in Up-Country Kenya, Brian, Bill and Jimmy searching for livestock projects in Northern Nigeria, Friday Kapande and his escapades in a bank head office in Lusaka and Jerry the bad boy of banking in the Southern Province of Zambia. Enjoy a colourful collection of South Seas islanders as well as the family journey to meet them and then immerse yourself in the exotic mix that is India from Delhi to Kolkata to Lucknow and Agra. The Egypt story presents memorable people as well as places and the mini-drama of a late arriving aeroplane. The special nature of travels to Amman and Petra in Jordan and the West Bank and Israel are told in ‘Almost a Bridge Too Far.’ ‘Golf with George’ on Vancouver Island is more about George and his associates than it is about golf and the final book title tale is all about a reflective walk close to “home;” a place far away from the farm in South Yorkshire where it all began. 



Tusitala Victoria 2020   ISBN: 978-0-9947794-5-8


Nowt To Do With Me 

Rural Stories from the North of England

The stories in Nowt To Do With Me are all about characters; the kind of individuals who have peopled our villages and brought colour and spice to the pot that makes up our daily lives. People like the one of a kind post-man Harry, Jim, the loud-voiced local pig-killer and farm-worker Jack who gave the book its title. Add in Billy the eccentric clay-miner, Jane the cat-lady and Slipper Barker, the village school-teacher. Stir in two Derbyshire great-uncles, Ken the jovial bell-ringer, pub land-lady Sylvia and Albert the organ-blower. Season with Adrian the ever-worried choir leader, stuttering Ivan and flighty, flirty Brenda and we have the basis of a tasty country dish. Extra flavour comes from the likes of runny-nosed Jimmy, basin-cut Sam and a supporting cast of sundry cricketers, school mates, bell-ringers, singers and golfers.

The first story sets the scene and we meet a number of locals at the wake for the death of one of the village pubs. One of them features strongly in the second story as the troubled but never to be forgotten junior school teacher as does Jim and his pig-killing and pig-chasing expertise in the third story. The fourth chapter which draws heavily on the author’s early farm life is wrapped around the colourful Jack and the Cat Lady story that follows comes directly from the retail milk delivery days.

Story number six introduces Billy, a distant relative and also paints a picture of village cricket over half a century ago. This is followed by a short story devoted entirely to a local Methodist chapel and a quiet little man carrying out a menial but important task. This is followed by a Christmas story all about grumbling, chain-smoking Harry and then by a tribute to two old men who made a big impression on the author when he was “nobbut a lad.”

The last three stories bring us closer to the present day. The Music Makers is about fun and games on a choir trip to a singing completion and Bells and Cannonballs has a happy ending after more home- generated entertainment. The last story is full of only slightly larger than life individuals – most of them wielding golf clubs.

peakpublish UK 2012   ISBN 978-1-907219-31-3

Nowt To Do With My Wife 
Country Tales from the North of England

The collection of stories in Nowt To Do With My Wife continues the combination of truth and untruth which was the basis of Nowt To Do With Me. Everything in the book has something to do with me and I claim credit, guilt and responsibility for all of it – true or not. This is not a memoir. Memoirs are I believe, supposed to be entirely true.

The twelve chapters can stand alone but are linked together by geography and also to a less extent by recurring characters such as Jack - who creeps into a number of the stories. I am the main link of course; from a small boy going to his first professional football match at the age of seven (chapter one) through to the age of sixty-four (chapter 12) when I wrote my last magazine article before moving to Canada. With the exception of Chapter 9, the whole book is set in South and West Yorkshire. It is wrapped around people – often larger than life characters – who play key roles both big and small in the stories.

An encouraging number of those who have told me how much they have enjoyed my first book of short stories said that it told them a lot about the old rural ways and the colourful players who walked onto my personal stage. This book is in a sense a continuation of that. There was more to tell and here it is. As with Nowt To Do With Me, I use dialect speech here and there and hope that you find this to be interesting in itself as well as reasonably authentic. Now and then I provide a translation.

The title of the book comes from one story and has nothing whatsoever to do with secrets I may want to keep from my wife. Any important secrets that I may have (and right now I cannot think of any) will not get into a book. For some this book will help you remember similar or familiar places, situations and characters. For others it may provide an insight into very different times and perhaps very different places. Whatever it does I hope that here and there it makes you smile.



peakpublish UK 2015 ISBN   978-1-907219-16-0

Chasing Crows

This collection draws from my poetry writing accumulated over two or three years. Following on from a similar successful fund-raising venture for the Multiple Sclerosis Society in the north of England, I approached the MS Society of Canada shortly after becoming resident with an idea for a further volume of my new poems. As my previous volume was illustrated, we developed the idea of combining with some of the output of members of the Victoria MS Society Art Therapy Group.

Collaborating with members of the group was a heartening and enjoyable experience. In most cases the artists produced new work to fit one of my poems. In three cases I wrote a poem to fit a painting. We used seventeen paintings and combined them with forty-three poems. Scott Wingfield of Art Ink was the designer. Financial support came from the Chadwick Foundation.

Of course, we wanted to raise much needed funds for the essential work of the MS Society, but this little volume goes beyond that. I believe that it is an important positive signal about what can be achieved by those who work their way around the difficulties which MS brings to produce paintings of beauty and charm.

I am proud to be associated with this initiative and very grateful for the opportunity to work with the artists.

Tusitala Victoria 2013 (reprinted 2015) ISBN 978-0-9947794

I was extremely grateful for the support I received following the publication of Chasing Crows. Many have said encouraging things about the poetry but equally importantly, many have expressed the pleasure they have had from the accompanying illustrations.

The poems in Apple Man are in the main, developed in the narrative style in which I am most comfortable. They are meant to be accessible and amenable for reading out loud. They are diverse and some are more serious than others. Some have a “home” on the West coast of British Columbia and some are rooted in the foothills of the Peak District of South Yorkshire and Derbyshire. Others are from everywhere or anywhere. I hope you enjoy them and also of course the illustrations with which many are accompanied.

Apple Man has 47 poems and 23 illustrations. 

I am pleased to acknowledge the skill and interest of past and present members of the Victoria MS Art Therapy group, the generosity of my three guest illustrators and also the cooperation and skill of Scott Wingfield of Art Ink Print. This has all been made possible through the continued financial assistance of the Chadwick Foundation which enables me to assure all who buy the book that every dollar or pound generated will go directly to assisting the cause.

Tusitala Victoria 2016 — ISBN 978-0-9947794-1-0

Crows in the Apple Tree

This new collection draws poems from here, there and anywhere. As is unavoidable, some sit in the South Yorkshire and Derbyshire hills and valleys and others have their place on Vancouver Island where I now have mine. Others draw on locations far away from my homes.

The collection contains 50 poems and 25 photographic illustrations from Russell Hague. I am most grateful for Russell’s involvement and the opportunity he has presented for me to collaborate with such a skilled interpreter of landscape. Although I am now far from the place where I was born, Russell still lives close by. So much so that he has only to go a few steps from his home to look across the valley to what was once the Wilson farm.

My approach to my kind of poetry is to write in a way that most will find accessible. Because I am a short-story writer many of the poems are in effect, condensed stories. Some are far from serious and some to my surprise, are a little more than they first appear. I hope some make you smile, reflect and remember. I know that you will enjoy Russell’s illustrations and I hope that you will find that they complement the poetry well.

Tusitala Victoria 2019  ISBN 978-0-9947794-4-1

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