I’m a former teacher (English and Drama), and retired Civil Servant. My life-long love-affair with theatre means that early retirement gives me more time to act, direct, and write; I’m a member of the Company of Ten, at the Abbey Theatre, St Albans, and also of the Ver Poets.
My first poem emerged (by mistake) at the age of 26. My then wife and I set off for an adventure in the Bahamas, on an initial 3 year contract with the Ministry of Overseas Development, to open a new all-age school on one of the remotest Bahamian Out-islands. The charter flight from Stansted caught fire and made a spectacular emergency crash-landing. After some delay, we and all our belongings eventually arrived in Nassau, were put on a mail-boat for the 3 day voyage to the island, and 8 hours later were sunk in a ferocious tropical storm. We lost everything but our lives.
I started to write an account of these experiences with the aim of selling the story to the Readers’ Digest – £1000 for stories of “Real Life Adventures”. Complete failure, but what I wrote became a poem instead … and that’s what I’ve been doing for nearly 50 years: writing anecdotes, fragments, verse.
And we stayed in the Bahamas for 5 years, then divorced on returning to the UK to lead what passes for a normal life.
Feel free to get in touch via my contact page.