Both new books now out on Amazon as paperbacks.
Codas, Cadence and clues – £4.97
More Anecdotes, Essay, Beliefs and Flotsam – £7.87
I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I enjoyed writing them. Full of passion, thought provocation and stimulation – wit, anger and a window into days long passed.
I’m in these books.
It’s a bit of a race against time.
I have been working on both of these books simultaneously.
I have finally completed the third edit on both and managed to get both of them up to publishing standard.
The question is whether they can go through their review and processing in time.
We’ll see.
In the meantime perhaps you would like to take possession of a unique artifact of the 21st Century – a luscious Opher Book – unique in every way. A treasure to adorn your coffee table. A work of art in its own right!
These are a couple of other of my poetry books.
If you enjoy my poems or anecdotes why not purchase a paperback of anecdotes for £7.25 or a kindle version for free.
Or a book of poetry and comment:
Rhyme and Reason – just £3.98 for the paperback or free on Kindle
My other books are here:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Opher-Goodwin/e/B00MSHUX6Y/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1457515636&sr=1-2-ent
Thank you and please leave a review.
While I was away on my voyage I wrote three books.
The first was my book of poems I Codas, Cadence and Clues –
The second was a Sci-fi novel that needs a lot of work before it sees the light of day – if ever.
The third was this book of anecdotes and other writing.
I have been putting a lot of this out on my blog and receiving very good responses. I thought that a number of you might like a second volume of anecdotes from life. This has me in the spotlight.
Some are humorous, some are sad. There’s Rock and Blues, sixties, childhood, love, sex, drugs and everything else.
You’ll find Jimi Hendrix, Son House and Roy Harper.
Extracts from my life.
It’s written with passion.
I have just completed the editing and it is presently in review!
In the meantime content yourself with other morsels of my life and imagination:
Do me an honour and purchase an Opher. There’s nothing like it. They are unique!
Be the first one on your block to come home with an Opher book!
These are a couple of other of my poetry books.
If you enjoy my poems or anecdotes why not purchase a paperback of anecdotes for £7.25 or a kindle version for free.
Or a book of poetry and comment:
Rhyme and Reason – just £3.98 for the paperback or free on Kindle
My other books are here:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Opher-Goodwin/e/B00MSHUX6Y/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1457515636&sr=1-2-ent
Thank you and please leave a review.
This is the artwork for the second book of anecdotes.
The first book of anecdotes had this cover:
I thought that it would be good to give its companion book the same look. I took the original artwork and changed the colour balance. The two will match.
Do you think it will work?
These are a couple of other of my poetry books.
If you enjoy my poems or anecdotes why not purchase a paperback of anecdotes for £7.25 or a kindle version for free.
Or a book of poetry and comment:
Rhyme and Reason – just £3.98 for the paperback or free on Kindle
My other books are here:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Opher-Goodwin/e/B00MSHUX6Y/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1457515636&sr=1-2-ent
Thank you and please leave a review.
Shocking the Isle of Man
At the end of the second year of my Biology degree we had to go on a field course. I do not know who made the decision but the powers that be had settled on the Isle of Man.
My Biology group were basically a bunch of Long-hair freaks, some girls who were not quite so extreme and a few guys who had come in from Africa and Pakistan and were a bit bemused by the radical sixties culture they had been thrown into the middle of.
The whole motley crew were put on a plane with lots of equipment and set loose on a quiet, sleepy town on the Island. It was like stepping back in time to the fifties.
We spent the days off round the cliffs clambering about and having a laugh. In the evening we had to produce a report on the wonderful research we had been carrying out.
At the end of the week there was a dance at the village hall and we decided to go along for a bit of fun. We all turned up at the dance wearing our best clothes. That largely consisted of jeans with colourful tops, the odd scarf and kaftan.
We were met at the door by a very stern looking gentleman who took one look at this bunch of long haired freaks reeking of London decadence, drugs, licentious sex and depravity and refused us entry.
We challenged the reason and he explained that we did not have the necessary jackets and ties to meet the dress code.
Undeterred we set off round to the back entrance. The doorman was smarter than he looked. He had seen what we were trying to do and hurried through the place to the back entrance.
‘Did you know you’ve got a twin brother on the front door?’ John Smith quipped. The doorman was not amused.
Plan B was called for. We went back to our hotel. The overseas students were always attired with jackets, ties and shirts. All we had to do was borrow some for the night.
We returned to the dance-hall in an assortment of ill-fitting jackets and ties. Ties did not go with kaftans or the type of paisley clothes that we were wearing. We looked weirder than weird. But we were in high spirits. This was indeed the best laugh we’d had all week.
The ill-tempered doorman inexplicably could not find a reason to refuse us entry. In his eyes we complied with the letter of the law and although he was not at all happy he could not come up with a reason for refusing us entry. He was a man who followed procedure to the letter. We had complied.
We had not been in for more than minutes when we were asked to leave. The dance had turned out to be some out-dated type of Disco playing some ghastly Pop songs. We had taken to the floor and were prancing around like loons much to the amazement of the rather staid, old-fashioned looking local youths who appeared to consisted of bewildered escapees from the fifties. To them we were a bunch of wild freaks from London more strange that a shipload of monsters from Mars. Their eyes were bugging!
Evidently we were not allowed to prance! We were being much too wild. Our behaviour was unseemly.
Outside the dance-hall we negotiated a return. We had to guarantee we would not freak out the dance and prance. We agreed.
This was getting better by the minute.
We were back on the floor dancing in slow motion like sloths on mogadon and sending the atrocious music up no end.
We were asked to leave again by the group of stern faced parents, led by Mr Doorman, who were acting as bouncers.
Once more outside the dancehall we complained and argued that we had complied with instructions; we were no longer prancing wildly.
We were told that it was not good enough. On the Isle of Man there was a convention that you danced with girls. We were in breach of the convention. Once again we negotiated our way back in and promised not to dance on our own. I think they let us back in because they were worried what trouble we might cause if they left us outside.
Back inside we found that the local girls, much to the annoyance of Mr Grumpy, his retinue of trainee grumpies, and the local youths, who, thinking they were the height of cool, all looking like extras from a documentary on Merseybeat, all wanted to dance with us. We had a great time delighting the girls with our wild moves while the local lads glowered at us. The girls loved it.
It didn’t last long though. Mr Grumpy had seen quite enough. The local constabulary arrived and we were escorted out. The girls came with us and we all went back to our hotel for a party.
It certainly made for a memorably night out. I’d never been thrown out of a dance five times before that night.
If you enjoy my poems or anecdotes why not purchase a paperback of anecdotes for £7.25 or a kindle version for free.
Or a book of poetry and comment:
Rhyme and Reason – just £3.98 for the paperback or free on Kindle
My other books are here:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Opher-Goodwin/e/B00MSHUX6Y/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1457515636&sr=1-2-ent
Thank you and please leave a review.
Steamed and trained
My home backed on to a railway embankment so I was used to trains. Old steam trains like the Mallard and Brighton Belle used to charge past my house all the time. I did not notice them.
Things were easier back then. There wasn’t the same frenzied pace, obsession with health and safety and personal indifference. Back then people were friendly. The older men would stop and chat, give you a sweet or show you how to throw a hoop and make it come back to you without being suspected of being paedophiles. People were friendly and kids had freedom. That worked both ways. When we were seven or eight Jeff and I used to climb over the back fence and play on the railway embankment. We didn’t go up to the rails and were perfectly safe. But a train driver must have noticed us there and actually stopped the train to shout at us to get off.
Our road was equidistant to two railway stations. Jeff and I would go along to the station at Hersham and chat to the engine drivers. They were very friendly. They let us go on the engine and do all sorts. They would even take us along on the footplate and drop us off at Walton station where we’d walk home. We were allowed to shovel coal into the furnace and pull various levers. When we went past our houses we were allowed to hoot the steam whistles. They made a hell of a din. So technical, at the age of eight I suppose I could say I had driven a steam engine. I am sure that Jeff and I were a great help.
My mum bought me a train spotting book. It was basically a list of engine numbers. All the trains had their own number. When you see it you underlined it. I played in the back garden and tried to note the numbers as the engines went past. But that was useless. I was so used to them that I didn’t notice them coming.
There were a keen group of train spotters at school. I joined in for a bit. I liked the bit where we went along to the footbridge across the line. We’d stand on there as the trains went by and become enveloped in the smoke and steam. That was great fun. I also enjoyed going through the tunnel at Hersham. We’d shout and get echoes and wait for a train to thunder through overhead and deafen us.
The culmination of my brief flirtation with train spotting was a trip up to London. A little group of us ten year olds went up to the big train sheds. I don’t know how we got into the place but we spent the day wandering around the sheds underlining numbers to our hearts content. We climbed up onto footplates and went from train to train. It was wonderful. There were lots of people around but nobody seemed to pay us any attention as we walked across the tracks and watched engines shunting around. There were hundreds of them. I had pages of underlined numbers.
I lost interest after that. Trains were OK but I preferred animals. Looking back it seems amazing that things were so free and easy. Nowadays our children are strangled with safety. They don’t live.
If you enjoy my poems or anecdotes why not purchase a paperback of anecdotes for £7.25 or a kindle version for free.
Or a book of poetry and comment:
Rhyme and Reason – just £3.98 for the paperback or free on Kindle
My other books are here:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Opher-Goodwin/e/B00MSHUX6Y/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1457515636&sr=1-2-ent
Thank you and please leave a review.
Rebena’s little ploy
Rebena was not a nice lady. In fact I’m not sure that Rebena was a lady at all. She looked like an extra from Prisoner – Cell Block H and I’m sure she would never have made the Olympics, at least not in the female category. She probably had more testosterone that the rest of the boys in school.
Rebena must only have been fourteen but she looked like a grizzly bear with short brown hair. She ran a little gang of girls who, despite lacking the necessary musculature, all aspired to be like her. They had the swagger down and weren’t short of attitude.
For my first weeks in school it seemed like a game. Rebena’s ‘girls’ would chase us around all over the school. Every break-time was a game of chase. I enjoyed it.
Then it ceased to be a game. A bunch of them cornered me and frogmarched me off for a private conference with Rebena. There were a lot of arm twisting and tight grips with some pinching and punches. It was apparent that the young ladies had not found the enterprise as much fun as me. To them it was business. They did not like being given the run-around. It had certainly ceased to be quite so much fun for me.
They escorted me to Rebena’s ‘office’. She held court behind the bike sheds where it was nice and quiet.
Rebena had quite a persuasive way with her. She was very quiet and softly spoken, with a husky voice well beyond her years.
Rebena had a comb. It was quite an unnecessary implement for any practical use. Her hair was so short it hardly needed combing. It was one of those girls combs; an aluminium job with a handle. Rebena had modified it by sharpening that handle to a sharp point.
The Hench-ladies delivered me and two took the job of holding me still by forcing my arms behind my back and jamming me back against the wall. Rebena regarded me with a cool stare. She pushed my head up against the wall and put the point of her comb under my chine. I was soon standing on tip-toes as she raised the comb up to dig into my flesh.
When she had got me pinned, much to the amusement of the girls all gathered round, she began to make me that offer that was hard to refuse.
It seemed that Rebena had my best interests at heart. She knew that some of the older boys could turn nasty. She knew that some of my classmates could be trying. She had the answer to all my problems.
I tried to explain to Rebena that I really didn’t have any problems in school with anyone. That was hard to do with a sharp point jabbing into your throat. Rebena assured me that I did have problems. I was definitely in need of protection… I didn’t need telling twice. I could not only see the point but I could feel it too.
Rebena’s solution was quite simple. All I had to do was to make a reasonable contribution. Every morning I would pass half my dinner money to one of her girls. I could report anyone who was giving me a hard time and my problems would all melt away.
It certainly seemed a reasonable offer to me. I was getting fed up with arms being twisted and having pointed objects poked into my flesh. I readily agreed to this very sensible request.
I was expecting an instant release. That was not quite what happened. The arms were twisted a bit more and the comb raised a half inch.
Then Rebena explained very slowly just what would happen should I miss a payment. I was entering into a contract. If I failed to keep my side of the bargain there would be repercussions. There would be no nice, kindly interviews like this. As I was not finding this an either nice or kind interview I think I was beginning to catch on – if I did not give Rebena half my dinner money then she would beat the shit out of me.
There did not seem a lot of options. For the next couple of weeks I paid up and went hungry. I was one of many. Rebena was raking it in.
Fortunately this came to an end. I still do not know what happened but the last I saw of Rebena she was in the back of a police car being driven out of school. She never came back. I assumed that Rebena’s nefarious activities were not restricted to school playgrounds.
If you enjoy my poems or anecdotes why not purchase a paperback of anecdotes for £7.25 or a kindle version for free.
Or a book of poetry and comment:
Rhyme and Reason – just £3.98 for the paperback or free on Kindle
My other books are here:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Opher-Goodwin/e/B00MSHUX6Y/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1457515636&sr=1-2-ent
Thank you and please leave a review.
Scrumping
They say that stolen fruit is always tastier. I can confirm that is true.
As a young lad I used to go scrumping and it was always delicious. We had two main places to scrump. The first place was with my friend Dave. He had a peach tree in his garden that was always laden with the most enormous, juicy peaches. It was one of those trees that had been trained to go up walls and covered the whole wall of the garage. It was jealously guarded by Dave’s mother. So we had to use intrigue. As she worked in her kitchen a lot of the time she had a clear view of the peaches. We used to sneak along the side of the house, climb up onto the roof of the garage and crawl across the corrugated asbestos. We were only small and didn’t weigh much so we didn’t fall through. When we’d reached the edge of the garage we’d reach an arm over and grab a big, juicy peach. Then we’d retreat to the other side to devour it. I have never tasted peaches as succulent and delicious as those stolen gems. By the end of the season the roof of the garage was littered with peach stones from our clandestine operations.
I can still remember the flavour of those peaches. They don’t make them like that anymore!
The second fruit we scrumped was apples.
We had to go further afield for that. There was this farmer who had an orchard. We used to cycle there and throw our bicycles into the long grass while we pillaged the orchard.
The only trouble was that the farmer seemed to take a dim view of the whole enterprise. To start with he had the whole orchard surrounded with a high wall topped with shards of glass. Secondly he would tour the orchard with his dog. It was reputed to be exceedingly vicious.
None of this deterred us. It was a challenged.
We went equipped with thick hessian sacks. We’d throw these over the glass and then boost one of us up on the wall. If the coast was clear he’d help the others across. We’d hide the hessian sacks the other side and make a bee-line for the trees. We’d scamper up into the upper branches and begin plucking the fruit of our labour. We felt safe up high in the foliage. If the farmer came by with his dog we remained as quiet as mice and watched them from on high.
Those apples were the best apples I had ever tasted. My mum bought apples but they sat in the bowl uneaten. But these ones you could eat your weight of.
The farmer spoilt it all.
He put a box of apples outside with a sign saying ‘Help Yourself’. It took all the fun out of it. We stopped going.
If you enjoy my poems or anecdotes why not purchase a paperback of anecdotes for £7.25 or a kindle version for free.
Or a book of poetry and comment:
Rhyme and Reason – just £3.98 for the paperback or free on Kindle
My other books are here:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Opher-Goodwin/e/B00MSHUX6Y/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1457515636&sr=1-2-ent
Thrown out of my O Levels
The O Level exams were the big exams at the end of the Fifth Form (Year 11). They were the important ones, as important as A Levels. Universities used the grades you achieved at sixteen as an indicator of your future potential.
I’m not sure they were any indication of my potential. I was in an extremely difficult class where learning was not anywhere near as important as fighting or as much fun as winding the teacher up. I had made it a religion not to do homework and had not produced a shred for three years. I’d found that as long as I kept my head down I went unnoticed. The teachers had enough on their plate trying to keep order in the classroom. My twin interests were girls and Rock Music. I hadn’t yet discovered Beat poetry or serious literature. My world revolved around discussing Rock and Blues, chatting up the girls and deciding which party to go to at the weekend. Peripheral to that were my hair, beard and clothes. I liked to look right. Unfortunately these preoccupations tended to bring me into conflict with a numbers of teachers and the school hierarchy. They were busy trying to hold back the tide with a flood barrier and I was making waves. The school thought that my carefully nurtured appearance was a scruffy mess. I thought it was a triumph of individuality and expression of my underlying ethos.
My parents were in despair they thought my long hair, anti-establishment attitude and casual attitude towards my studies were going to prove detrimental to my future career. They were right. I seemed to enjoy making it difficult for myself. I despised fitting in. I always have and always will.
Even so I managed to achieve. I always did enough to get by and that infuriated some of the teachers no end. They liked the ones who played the game and worked hard. They thought I did not deserve any success. Once again they were probably right.
On the first day of my O Level exams I thought I’d try it on. Instead of donning the requisite school uniform I put on my black hipsters, and Cuban heeled Chelsea boots. I fluffed up my shoulder length hair and wore my denim shirt with button-down collars. There were a few young ladies I was out to impress. I can’t say my mind was fully focussed on the forthcoming maths exam.
The basis of my mind-set was that the O Levels were too important for them to kick up much of a fuss. I might get bawled at but they’d let it go.
I was not taking Mr Morrell into account. He hated my guts. His ethos and my ethos snarled at each other whenever we met. He hated seeing me hanging around with the prettiest girls. He hated my long hair. He hated the fact that I always came top in his Biology exams despite the fact that he knew that I did no work at all. It was personal. We did not exactly see eye to eye.
It was just my luck that he happened to be on duty that day when I walked in. He was a bit of a coward. Rather than confront me himself he called the Headteacher over and complained, pointing out the rules and regulations. The Head was left with no choice but to send me home to get changed. I missed half an hour of my Maths exam.
I scraped through. I managed seven passes, all grade C with just one B in Biology.
I bet that rankled. I would have loved to have gone back as a Headteacher to meet up with Mr Morrell. I’m sure he would have loved to see that I had turned out successful after all. I’m certain he would.
If you enjoy my anecdotes why not purchase a paperback of them for £7.25 or a kindle version for free.
Or a book of poetry and comment:
Rhyme and Reason – just £3.98 for the paperback or free on Kindle
My other books are here:
Thank you and please leave a review.
The spider and the bench
Within the confines of the warehouse there were many spiders. They hid among the boxes and probably roamed the empty building at night in search of prey.
A monster of a spider, as large and hairy as any tarantula, though possessing much longer and spindly legs, had been captured by one of the regular lads. He kept it shut up in a box. It was his special pet and he delighted in tormenting us with it.
At tea-break we would all go along to the canteen. There was a great long trestle table. We would sit along the sides on benches and share stories and jokes while we drank our tea.
The discourse was nowhere near as erudite as I was later to find among the council workers. The road-sweepers and bin-men seemed a hot-bed of socialist politics and were well-read into the bargain. In the café with the council workers I was bombarded with illustrated accounts of social history and urged to read C P Snow and Robert Tressell. In the warehouse there was no such content. The humour was of an earthy nature and level of conversation mundane.
My sixteen year old body was merely grateful for a rest. My muscles ached from hefting heavy boxes.
But that place was rarely restful. Most times the lad would bring his box to the table and release his pet spider to scuttle up and down. He delighted in the shrieks it produced from the girls. The lads did not shriek. They merely watched it with bored expressions and drank tea from their mugs.
Despite my terror of spiders I feigned the same indifference. I well knew that if I was to let on that I was uneasy about that monstrous, evil arachnid I would have been the focus of special attention and my life would become unbearable. The last thing I wanted was to have that monster thrown in my face, or worse, put down my neck.
Tea-breaks were an ordeal.
If you are enjoying my anecdotes why not purchase one of my books – my book of anecdotes is only £7.25. You’ll love it.