'A COLLECTION OF VERSE by A WORKING LAD'

As a beekeeper I made many friends. My heart and soul and all my spare time energies were fully wrapped up with these wonderful insects and the flora where they busied themselves in ceaseless toil on warm sunny days.

Poetry I never read it, thought about it and never wrote it. Strange then how almost immediately after my wife Mabel died shortly after I retired I should pick up the pen A few favourable comments and the ink began to flow.

I was always a great D.I.Y. guy so I bought a computer to print the poems and then of course I had to make the books. So here I am 83 knee deep in reams of waste paper, and after nearly ten years, four computer upgrades I think this is as good as it is going to get.

About the Book

The two urchins on the front of the book are my sister Joyce and I when we were too young to realise how poor we were. Times were hard, dad was very likely on short time working and money was tight. Our attire is not exactly Saville Row but we were well fed and needed to be to with stand the wind, which was most often cold, and seemed to blow constant on the rugged side of Heaton Moor. Mother used to talk about being well wrapped up and we were certainly that. I was very proud of my clogs, and I do believe my sister was proud of me. Clogs were very fashionable in the northern mill towns in those days, mine were brown and had little brass domed studs round foe edges. However I am not meant to be writing about vintage clothing but I do tend to stray.

I suppose I am what you would call a " Jack of all Trades " and I have "tried my hand at most things, I am also a bit of a kangaroo style bod as well, jumping into another project before the current one is finished, seems as though I go looking for problems, and I assure you they do crowd in, strange how they all seem to happen at the same time. One thing it has done is to give me a great respect for skilled and talented draftsmen. Nowadays they are a rarity, and any way machines and high tech do most of the work, and most of the bodies are just machine minders. Oh I wish that I had a box of tricks that would fold me and assemble pages in the correct order, ninety per. cent of my worry would vanish. When I see pictures of a News paper print shop in full flow the mind boggles, and I realise I am still in the Fred Flintstone era. Well not exactly I do have this wonderful programme called Windows which in my opinion is the nearest thing to a miracle there will ever be, and without it I fear non of this would have been possible for Mr D.I.Y. Nutter. I hope you have enjoyed the poems or at least some of them.