There’s only one place that sparks off nostalgia…

My Shed. Sitting in my shed in the warm weather, tinkering with some do-hickey or writing poetry.

The reason that this is that when I was a small boy, my parents had a shed at the back of the garden behind a massive silver birch tree. I used to love playing in it or just getting away from the world. Then there’s my grandfather’s.

One was an engineer for Rolls Royce aerospace and had basically extended his shed by bolting two together, cutting through and adding electrical points for a chest freezer, which looking back is quite a feat while also being a health and or safety violation.

The other was a retired fireman. Who was a keen gardener, painter and handyman. His shed was standard sized with a rug on the deck and draws and boxes of things everywhere. Including things hung from the ceiling plant pots were stacked on the floor and it collected rain water into a couple of water barrels.

So, no I’m a grandfather myself I have my own shed. Mine has a rug and a chair, a nice workbench made from off cuts of the kitchen. It has a solar panel on the side that has a micro usb connector, which charges a solar (or mains) powered light bulb, or my phone, screwdriver etc. I love nothing more than sitting in there in summer and relaxing, or writing some poetry. When I’m in the shed I do reminisce fondly of times gone by.

Im a poet and photographer. So I’d say yes. Right..?

Well photography has been something I’ve loved doing for many years. I’m talking disposable flash cubes long, without ever seeing it as creative. I’ve always just seen photography as something fun and a way of documenting those cherished memories for my children and grandchildren. In later years I’ve had people comment on my pictures and style and say I have “an eye for it”. Truth be told I’ve no idea of what I’m doing. I’ve never studied it at any level, well I did one photography for beginners lesson, at the hotel we were staying at over Christmas (it was 2hr while on our honeymoon) I don’t know what settings do to a picture or what or what focal length etc is, actually i lie I googled it yesterday. You get the point though I’ve no clue how to set up shots. I just like to take pictures, and occasionally I get shots like this.

My poetry however is a completely different animal. I started writing poetry or scribbles as I prefer to call them twenty years ago. This started out as a way of dealing with my crippling depression and anxiety (which turned out to be Autism, and PTSD) it was supposed to be a form of therapy to help me process what was going on in my life. It was when I scribbled a little something for my nieces naming ceremony, that things began to take shape, as people started asking me who wrote it, where did I get it from. I realised that i might have a gift for this poetry malarkey.

Unlike photography where I have a knack for apparently (Mrs Bob thinks so) poetry is something I’ve had to work at as apart from being on the spectrum, I’m dyslexic to boot. This means I’ve had to learn and ask my (actually qualified) proofreading wife, Mrs Bob, (who hasn’t read this post prior to posting) to help me.

So I’d say, I’m not creative. I’m just hard working and I’ve used therapy to write some emotional stories while learning to heal.

“(Excerpt) I didn’t want to be a poet, I just wanted to be ok”

“My metaphors aren’t pretty, they’re practical.

Every line is triage…

Every pause is me checking for a pulse.”

The biggest influences in my life are a small group of poets that belong to the Button poetry stable. The reason is that when I first started writing my scribbles and trying to turn them into poetry I felt I didn’t fit in with what poetry was supposed to be. All I’d ever read was the stuffy “I wandered lonely as a cloud” style of classical poetry.

That was until I was scrolling through YouTube one night and came across button poetry and one of there poets called Kyle Tran Mhyre aka Guante, with a piece called “Ten responses to the phrase, Man-up” it was raw, emotional, and so passionate. What I’d discovered was slam style poetry and this was more my style. It didn’t have to rhyme, and you could use any language you wanted to get your point across. The more I watched of Guante and other Button poets, such as Neil Hilborn and Rudy Francisco, the more I realised that this was the style of poetry i wanted to write myself.

That was nearly twenty years ago.

Since then I’ve continued to write slam style poetry and I’ve found my own style and voice. I’ve written about some painful subjects and I’ve raised awareness of mental health, with poems such as “This poem Ends Every Forty Seconds” (statistically a person takes their life every forty seconds) The crowning achievement for me was probably having the people that inspired me, become more than just my peers and become virtual friends. I also (anonymously) took part in a No Kings event organised by Guante, where poets, artists etc all worked together and shared their work and ideas.

So the people that inspired are

• Kyle Tran Mhyre
• Neil Hilborn
• Rudy Francisco
• Jesse Parent

Stay safe Bc

The last thing I did for fun was get my new camera and start experimenting with its features and new shooting styles and effects.

So stay tuned and let’s see how this pans out.

There’s only one man I’d credit for being a positive role mole and influence in life, so much so that I took his name and used it in part for my pen name. That man is Walter S Christian. He was my maternal grandfather.

When my biological father (sperm donor) walked out the night before Mother’s Day. I was not even ten years old, and I didn’t really have a male role in my life, not that he was one before he left.

My grandad taught me so very much about what a gentleman should and shouldn’t do, from the little things like making sure your shoes were polished and you made an effort to look smart, to things such as helping your fellow man regardless of their faith or creed. He taught me the value of working hard, being honest, and above all being a stand up guy.

He was a retired firefighter and in his later years he’d become an excellent artist, sign-writer and gardener. He was always happiest in his shed or in the greenhouse pottering with his tomatoes. While I’ve never been very good either plants, I’ve certainly developed his love of a good shed, and can be found most weekends tinkering with something, writing poetry, or just watching the wildlife in my garden.

So I’ve spent the last 20 years or so writing and creating under the name that reminds me daily to try my hardest, do my best, and to be a decent person that honours his memory the best way I can.

Stay safe Bc

There’s probably a couple of places I’d really like to visit.

One is Salem Massachusetts as it’s always fascinated me due its history with the witchcraft trials and the panic that it caused. Next up is the Antarctic circle as I’ve been to the arctic circle so I’d like to visit the other to complete the set. Finally the place I’d really love to visit but due to conflict etc is going to have to wait. The top of my bucket list is Pripyat.

This is a place many may never have heard of Pripyat. This was a town built from 1970 in parallel with the construction of the nearby Chernobyl nuclear plant. Initially it mostly housed the workers building the plant. Although since the reactor fire at the plant in April 1986 the whole area has become a ghost town for obvious reasons. The reason I’d like to explore the area is I love urban exploration and I find it fascinating to see like some post apocalyptic movie set what happens when people leave an area and nature takes back the area and humans are excluded.

My favourite physical activity is archery. I’ve been doing it on and off since I did a taster course in the midlands in the early 2000’s and I was hooked.

I have spent many hours and a lot of money on this sport, while I’m no Robin Hood I have had quite a lot of success. I’ve placed well in competitions and even became a member of The Sons of Archery, uk chapter.

While some might say archery isn’t exactly exercise or physical activity, I’d suggest you spend hours in the hot sun pulling back a string producing up to 60lbs of draw weight on only a couple of finger tips. I’d say why not look up your local club and try it out for yourself.

I work at the side of the river Dart here in Narnia (Twinned with Totnes) there’s a 8-12ft bit of land with lots of trees between my office window and the river, with a field on the other side. So I see lots of different creatures on a daily basis.

There’s a family of 6-12 pheasants in the field over the river, which makes me happy as I love pheasants. one will usually shout as I get out the car. I’m sure it’s fluke, but some days a pheasant yelling. “You got this!” Is what you need to hear.

On the river it’s self there’s two swans very regularly and lots of ducks and seagulls washing and feeding at low tide.

Then there’s the menagerie of wild birds that come and sit on my office window from Robins, to Ravens and even a very tame pigeon or two. This is because I have a window feeder for the small birds and the larger (and small) can eat off the window sill feeder.

There’s more. I also have a lot of tame(ish) squirrels who at times will wait on the fence by my parking spot or sit watching me through the window. This may (or may not) be down to the supply of whole peanuts next to my desk and a squirrel feeder near my parking spot.

So as you can see I’m very blessed to have such beauty and nature at work. It’s very calming sometimes when it’s busy. I stop look out the window while I catch up on paperwork. It’s so grounding.

One of the most memorable and truly magical places I’ve ever visited is Norway. In particular Tromsø for its amazing university, complete with science museum and planetarium, but a little further up the cost of Norway is the city of Alta, which is incidentally inside the arctic circle and depending on the time of year you visit you can experience some of the strangest phenomena mother nature has to offer.

Firstly there’s the obvious one, and the thing most people say is on their bucket list. Northern Lights or aurora borealis. This is caused by charged particles from the Sun (solar wind) colliding with gases in Earth’s upper atmosphere, interesting factoid. The Northern and southern lights (aurora Australis) should actually mirror each other. The meat time to see the northern lights is late sept to late march. 

Then there’s the phenomenon known as the midnight sun a natural phenomenon in summer. where the sun stays visible for 24 hours in regions near the poles (north of the Arctic Circle or south of the Antarctic Circle) because the Earth’s tilted axis keeps that pole continuously facing the sun as it rotates. This results in constant daylight, which can be very confusing as I found out on a cruise some years ago, when I woke up to daylight, made a coffee and sat on my balcony. Only to discover it was 0320hrs

There’s also the opposite of this which is polar night. Polar night is the period in polar regions when the sun remains below the horizon for more than 24 hours, plunging areas within the polar circles into 24-hour darkness. It occurs because of the Earth’s axial tilt, which points the polar regions away from the sun during winter. The duration of a polar night ranges from a single day at the Arctic/Antarctic circles to up to five months at the poles. in Tromsø, it usually lasts from late November to mid-January. This like its counterpart is a very disorienting experience as I’m sure you can imagine.

That’s why for the above reasons and many more I would recommend everyone visit, don’t worry if like me your Norwegian isn’t very good. As I found out in Alta, the locals leave school fluent in sometimes five languages and they’re super friendly so if like me you don’t mind the cold then Norway and Iceland are waiting to be discovered.

This is a tough one to answer, I could list things like poetry, but that would be showing off, so I’m thinking outside the box.

• Archery I have been shooting on and off (mainly off recently) since 2008 when I did a beginner’s course for fun. Since then I’ve shot in club comps and joined the uk chapter of the Sons Of Archery.
• Chess. I started learning chess earlier in the year instead of my regular German course. Since then I’ve found I’ve a nack for it and my ELO is between 8-900 which after three months isn’t too shabby.
• Photography. It’s something I’ve always loved to do and it appears that I have an eye for it. I couldn’t tell you how to set up a shot ie aperture, exposure etc, I’m just an able to get the shot.
• Making the perfect cup of tea for Mrs Bob, even though I don’t drink it myself and never have.
• Back rub is another talent I apparently have according to Mrs Bob I’ll take her word for it

I’m sure somethings on the list aren’t exactly talents but who’s counting