How It All Started

For the first 25 years of my life, I wrote not a single rhyme. At school I had no interest in poetry nor in any kind of writing because I didn’t believe I could write well, and I definitely couldn’t, when compared to a friend of mine, Elaine, who could create worthy literature just writing a note to the milkman. The only essay at school that produced a positive comment from the teacher was when the subject of the essay was satire and I wrote a very funny piece in a schoolboy sort of way, as best as I recallWhen I was about 16 my cousin emigrated to Canada and I wrote her many letters which she reported back as being funny...I hope she didn't mean peculiar! I discovered I could write well…if comedy was involved. Later, my forte turned out to be the writing of funny rhymesLooking back, I was drawn towards the monologues of Stanley Holloway …They found 'Arold so stately and grand,Sitting there with an eye-full of arrowOn his 'orse, with his 'awk in his 'and.....and Flanders and Swann songs…I'm a g-nu,The g-nicest work of g-nature in the zoo…which I heard on Uncle Mac’s Children’s Favourites on Saturday morning radio. I’ve always thought that the seeking of a rhyme added additional humour , as in Albert and the Lion when the Ramsbottoms thought it awful that young Albert was eaten'And 'im in his Sunday clothes, too.'and'And after we've paid to come in.'I'll continue this, anon, when I've found my archives