Dear Reader,

Growing up in a happy but almost bookless home, I avidly read whatever was available, namely several editions of the Observer’s Book of Cars and not a lot else.  I could rattle off the cubic capacity and brake horse power of almost every car.  Aged about ten, I saved my pocket money and was finally able to buy “The World Around Us” for a hefty twenty five shillings.   It had been heavily advertised and I had high hopes that I would find it riveting.  It proved to be a damp squib with a sketchy outline of how the earth came into being and even more speculative coloured drawings of dinosaurs.  

When I was nine, my elder brother started courting the lady who was to become his wife.  She kindly bought for me (from Woolworth!) R M Ballantyne’s The Coral Island.  Sadly it had several pages missing which dampened my enthusiasm, but she also gave me The Dog Crusoe which I read several times.  Then crucially, when I was ten, my brother bought me The Oxford Book of Birds which had beautiful colour plates of every British bird plus ample text.  That was a milestone.  My wife and I are still armchair ornithologists.

I studied Latin, French and German at A level.  I didn’t do well with German, but my German teacher had an inspiring love of literature.  Through him I discovered Jane Austen, useful because the lady I later married was and is an ardent fan.  But something else happened at school that was a turning point.  An American teacher joined the English department temporarily and, for reasons that none of her pupils could fathom, she asked us to write an essay about legs.  I tried hard to oblige but drew a blank….. until I decided to write comic verse instead.  I was half expecting my efforts to result in a detention, but the dear lady loved my offering and read it to the whole class.   It went something like this. 

Athletes’ legs, sprinters’ legs, springy and long distance legs;

Farmers’ and farm labourers’ legs with big knobbly knees.

Slender legs, voluptuous legs, beautiful and shapely legs.

You men in the corner, no whistling please.

Swollen legs, hairy legs, arthritic and rheumatic legs,

Varicose-veined painful legs, and legs with gout.

Sun tanned legs, attractive legs, lazing on the beach legs.

“You men in the corner, cut that out.”

Scarred legs, bruised legs, muddy after football legs,

Legs so toned and sylphlike that they are a showpiece.

Graceful legs, dazzling legs, elegant, curvaceous legs.

Cut that out or I’ll call the police.

Lithesome legs, willowy legs, legs-that-make-you-ogle legs!

Legs made to walk, to run, to saunter.

Policemen’s legs, blue serge legs, constables’ and sergeant’s legs:

That’s put an end to those men in the corner.

I read Latin at university with some Greek thrown in.  That sparked a love of epic poetry.  I read works like the Aeneid (in Latin) and The Iliad and Odyssey (in English) plus Milton’s magnificent Paradise Lost. Probably the finest “essay” I produced was a football commentary in the style of Homer.  Oddly it wasn’t until my mid-20s that I discovered C.S.Lewis’ Narnia stories plus his science fiction trilogy.  I read the Bible cover to cover and found it breath-taking.  I’ve read it many times since and am still hooked.

I married in 1981 and, with the arrival of our eldest son the poetry spark was rekindled.  

Three more sons followed and I used to read extensively to them at bedtime.  The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings were consumed plus of course The Dog Crusoe, The Wind in the Willows, Swallows and Amazons and so on.  I inherited a dramatic gene from my mum and enjoyed bringing characters to life as best I could.

I was commuting to London and it was my great nephew’s birthday.  I decided to write a poem for him.  Hence “Ode To A Monumental Person” took shape on the noisy, crowded Piccadilly line.  The original Keziah Rose verse was similarly created on the tube.  Several other poems followed, but it was only when one of my sons self-published an illustrated story in verse that I began to think along the same lines.  Now retired, I have no excuse for not testing the waters with adapted versions of some poems, starting with Keziah Rose.  Five poems about the monumental person, now christened Dai Jones, are set to follow, and then…. and then…..

It’s always been my aim to put a smile on both my readers’ and listeners’ faces. I hope that will happen for you.