Category History
A necessary journey
One of the things we come across from time to time are slogans, neat little sayings designed to make us think about some point they want to make, and for a great many of us, they work. One I remember that came out during World War Two in England was, “Is your journey really necessary?” […]
Cap and gown
When I reached the magical age of 14 I had had enough of school, and left. It was my hope then that Dad would be happy for me to learn a trade, either as a plumber or bricklayer, but for some reason that didn’t happen. So for the next three months after I left school […]
Passing time
“Now lad, you don’t want to go wishing your time away. It’ll go fast enough without that.” That was the comment I got from my father when asked what I was thinking about one day. I must have been wishing it was the next day and then I could…..whatever. Anyway, he’d sown another seed in […]
I am here
I wrote this poem in 1994 after I was prompted to think back to when I was still a Minister of Religion at Mt Eden Baptist Church, Auckland, some 30 years prior. As part of that role, I became a visitor at the nearby Mt Eden Prison, where I was free to come and go, […]
From the windows
Travelling with my eldest sister, Hilda, from our home in Preston, Lancashire, to the golfing town of Lytham St Annes, was great when I was about 11. The journey, usually by double-decker bus, gave us a super view from the top deck as we sped out of the busy town and along narrow country lanes. […]
Camping in our street
An officer in the Roman Army of occupation is said to have named the place where I spent five colourful and informative years of my boyhood. On seeing the whole district from a commanding rise, the officer said, “What a long ridge of hills!” From that time on the place was known as Longridge (a […]
It was among some unclaimed papers
No one seeing James Worthington outside of his own home town would have given him a second look. He was just an ordinary man. Everything about his outward appearance said so. Even he himself, one month short of his 25th birthday, would have agreed, had he been asked. Yet deep within his heart there lay […]
A word to the excluded…
I think tonight of those excluded from the normal company of others by whoever and for whatever in village, town or city… I think of you. * Somewhere tonight some are excluded from the family of their birth gender and cold ignorance robs them of their true worth… I think of you. * Some are […]
When I was a boy
Here are some various memories of my boyhood. Sometimes a song on the radio takes me back to when I was a boy, back to before transistor radios and TV which were still progressing through their pregnancy, back to the days of monotonously grey Sunday afternoons. There was one thing that lifted my spirits though, […]
The writings of a Lancashire lad 
Enlightenment
England, in the spring of 1574, saw a greater number of monks and pilgrims than usual, making their way from one shrine to the next in search of religious enlightenment. Many of them called for food and shelter at abbeys, monasteries and religious houses dotted throughout England. Waltham Abbey, in the country of Hertford, came […]