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Originally fromAuckland, I studied for a Diploma in Agriculture and spent several years working in a shearing gang, at the Ruakura Research Centre and sharemilking, before taking up a position as a Quarantine Officer at Auckland Airport, a job that saw me through to retirement. Along the way I have appeared in 50 or so TV adverts and as a TV and movie extra, but besides writing, a big passion is travel, and I have travelled extensively through the UK, Europe, Asia and the Pacific.
I began writing in verse some years ago, drawing on personal experiences and inspired by places I have been, people I have met and things I have done. Although I sometimes write on serious matters, much of my writing is humorous, including one story as seen through the eyes of my farm dog back in the 1960s.
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| In St Peter's Square |
They say that all roads lead to Rome.
Now I’ve been to Rome,
and I wasn’t there on my pat malone,
and yes, I’ve been to St Peter’s Square,
and seen lots of other famous buildings around there.
I have seen the Sistine Chapel, but I wasn’t all that impressed,
but St Peter’s Basilica, now that huge place is really blessed,
and to me that piece of Rome was the best.
I noticed that a side alley was barred,
by one of the Pope’s huge hulking Swiss Army guards,
and when he looked straight at me, I thought he was big and mean and hard,
and even though he was dressed in some old fashioned candy-stripped fancy gear,
I thought to myself, right,
I wouldn’t want to meet him in some back alley in the middle of the night.
Now I did find that in Rome, that you can’t get a decent pint of beer,
so the Pope has to drink glasses of ‘crème de menthe’ from what I hear,
and then they have to drive him around town,
and then we have to wonder, why they carry him home in his own sedan chair.
After our first day around Rome, we couldn’t find a place to sleep or rent,
so we went back to St Peter’s Square at midnight, and we pitched our little tent.
I woke up just as day was almost dawning,
and I found that nature, for me, as usual, was naturally calling.
Then I happened to look up and saw a man in white on a balcony was waving,
and I thought to myself, ‘what’s with all this raving and waving’.
Anyway, I was by now standing behind a tree,
having myself my first morning meme,
when this bloke in white went right up to our tent,
and seemed to be giving the wife some sort of Catholic sign.
In the mean time, I was still stuck behind this tree,
so by the time this bloke in white was gone, I was finally free.
So I asked the wife, ‘was that bloke in white giving us some sort of blessing’?
She said, ‘Nope. That was just the Pope’.
So I asked her , ‘what was it that he said’?
She said he raised his hand up and down, in the first sign of the cross,
and then he said, ‘you can pack up all your gear’,
and then, with one sweep of his hand across and back,
he said, ‘and get the hell out of here’.
‘Didn’t you see the sign, saying there is no camping allowed around here’?
Now I tell you no lies, as I thought I recognised the bloke in white,
but that ‘No Camping’ thing, for me, was certainly a complete surprise…………… |
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| Only Ever One of Me |
There is nothing like a good old fashioned family get together,
which just clearly highlights all the reasons why we can’t all live together.
The first problem is, they are a bit of a noisy crowd,
and when they all get together,
some of them are more than a little bit loud.
There is invariably plenty of nibbles and all sorts of other food,
and that all helps us get into, that good old summertime get together mood,
but then again, they have always had more than their fair of comfort food.
The thing was, last Christmas, there was only ever half of them all there,
even though dear mother Nola’s health was even less than fair,
as she was very sick in hospital, even lying there in intensive care in Napier.
Today, Nola has certainly survived,
and so the end for her, has certainly not arrived.
Everyone one of us is still carrying on, just as loud and strong,
so that it was almost, as if nothing was ever going to go wrong.
In fact, it seems to be to me,
that none of us is ever going to totally agree.
Others say that this is all normal, so robust and all so vigorously healthy.
All I can say is, I just go along with it all,
as it is personally, nothing to do with me at all,
as I have only married into this loud and noisy, nosey family.
I am only an outsider looking in, and so I know that I will never win.
In fact, I know it is never about which or who or what is what,
but we never do seem to get together, or agree a lot.
In fact, if I back track, we have almost never all met together,
as someone or some of us, has been off somewhere else or what ever.
Never having ever been part of a large family,
it makes no real difference to me,
but if this is how large families carry on,
I’m glad that there was only ever one of me………………….. |
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| Locked Outside the Outside Door |
Some people may well say that I am an independent thinker,
while others will say that I can’t agree with anyone on anything.
That all depends on whether you think your glass is half empty,
or you think a bit like me, and your glass is always over half full.
If you’re miserable, unhappy and upset about something or someone,
your glass will most likely seem to be, more than half empty,
and you will end up down in the mouth, your good old north and south.
Everything will seem to want to go wrong,
like when our black cat died, and the wife really cried,
and even worse yet, you cop it in the neck, even if it wasn’t your fault.
What was the stupid cat doing lying out there in the first place?
It may have been lying there, playing at being dead,
Well this time, it now has a very flat head, so why wasn’t it lying in its own bed.
I hear it said by some people, that cats are snooty and independent of people.
Well, I know that our black cat never did care for me,
BUT, when ever it came to feeding time,
that was a very different thing, believe you me.
Whenever it came to giving it food,
that mangy cat would hang around me and meow and purr.
I always knew that our black cat,
had been somewhere around the house,
simply because of all those patches of black cat fur.
I always knew that it would then mean,
it was time for me to drag the vacuum cleaner out and vacuum clean.
You know, if it wasn’t for that pesky cat’s hair,
I would only need to vacuum clean our house out just once a year.
I simply do the vacuuming,
because vacuuming cleaning was something for which, the wife doesn’t care,
and she doesn’t care a fig
about all that black cat fur that the cat had shed, here and there.
That black cat could do no wrong, while the wife and I can still barely get along.
That pesky black cat has slept here and there around here.
I know it does, because everywhere there is all this black cat hair.
Even my toilet bowl has its share of the cat’s black hair,
though I have no idea how that cat hair ever got up there.
I kept telling the wife that I just didn’t think that it was quite right,
but she got up for that cat to come in and go out, all through the night.
Mind you, I don’t really care, because I never sleep in there,
but, when ever she goes away, there is only one place that cat will ever stay,
and you can be very sure,
that our black cat was always locked outside the outside door,
but now he will never be seen around out there, any more…………. |
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| Copyright 2011 • All rights reserved |
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