Category Quotes
My lone search
It was a cold December day when I walked from the bus stop towards the church where my mother and father were married. St. Nicholas’s church was about five minutes’ walk from the bus stop and I had to walk briskly to keep warm. I’d made the journey from New Zealand back to England in […]
Sowers of seed
One of the things I enjoy is reading, and like many people I can lose myself in a good book. Looking back, three events stand out as having some significance in this respect, starting with my time as boy between seven and eleven years of age, living in Longridge, a small village seven miles from […]
Mind your own business!
“He was spreading it around.” “A bit of ‘How’s your father.’” “A little bit of Hanky and plenty of Panky.” As a boy I was constantly reminded not to ask questions: Mind your own business That’s got nothing to do with you Shut up What did you say? (said in a threatening sort of way, […]
Angels guard thee
Sometimes in my sleep, when I am least on my guard, somewhere just below the fully conscious surface of my mind, I realise that I am weeping. Not the surface weeping restricted by thoughts of what people would think of me, but a deep sobbing, as if some control gates have opened releasing a built-up […]
I believe that …
I believe that the greatest gift bestowed on a human being is not beauty, intelligence or wealth. It’s the ability to make a story live. To take a tale and know instinctively what to leave in, what to leave out and when to lie a bit. If you do not have this, then you should […]
The writings of a Lancashire lad 
Quotables quotes
This is a jumble of jottings from my diary in 1997; things I heard, read or variously discovered, that I thought worthy of noting down. “People hate those who make them feel their own inferiority.” Lord Chesterfield Jonathon Swift: “Satire is a sort of glass wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own; […]