Turlough
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I have 240 stories published in
7 collections on the site.
My stories have been read 979710 times
and 342 of my stories have been cherry picked.
992 of my 3,431 comments have been voted Great Feedback with a total of 1076 votes
Terence Mullan
I shaved my head again today. I shave it every couple of months to disguise the fact that I’m going bald.
My stories
Me and My Muezzin
When I was a lad I worked on big ships. Here I describe the Suez Canal stretch of a sea passage from Quebec City in Canada to Colombo in Sri Lanka round about 1977. Our ship was loaded with a bulk cargo of poverty relief grain financed by the United Nations Fund for Population Activities (UNFPA). Some of my writing is an embellishment of the truth and a little bit of it is the result of pure imagination, but this poem is as near to the truth as I could get whilst attempting to remain poetic.
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- 3691 reads
Jacques in the Box
A mysterious woman’s trunk of treasures.
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- 32 comments
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The Fall of the Mountain King
The best laid plans of teenage dreamers often go awry.
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- 12 comments
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- 3224 reads
Beneath Cnoc Daod
It would be hard to find a place more beautiful, peaceful and welcoming than the Beara Peninsula in West Cork.
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You Never Said
For someone I loved a long time ago, you know.
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- 12080 reads
And without skates.
Posted on Fri, 28 Feb 2025
And without skates too, which is just as well because they'd struggle to fasten them up.
This is a great poem. And I like your choice of song too.
Nice one Jenny!
Read full commentPosted in Skating Without Ice
Ras Gombo
Posted on Thu, 27 Feb 2025
Unfortunately I never went to Ras Gombo. I just sailed past it in the night... three times actually during the course of my seafaring days. Those waters around the Horn of Africa are a dangerous place to be now. I doubt if I'd be falling into a...
Read full commentPosted in The Lighthouse Keeper of Ras Gombo
Roberta Flack
Posted on Tue, 25 Feb 2025
That's a wonderful song.
Her other huge hit 'The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face', written by Salford's Ewan MacColl, is a very moving piece to read as poetry even without the music and Roberta's beautiful voice.
Read full commentPosted in In Twilight Years
Without moons
Posted on Tue, 25 Feb 2025
Gustav Holst in written word. Lovely lines of great mysteriousness.
I smiled at the concept of Top Tweet Tuesday. It gives the impression that Elon Musk has a fluffy side to him. I tend to forget about Mr Blue Sky. I'll go and have a look...
Read full commentPosted in Pluto’s Ode To Charon
And it would last 'til the end of time...
Posted on Tue, 25 Feb 2025
I get this Jenny.
Roberta Flack's passing a few days ago brought heaviness to my heart as another morsel of reality morphed into mere nostalgia.
Read full commentPosted in In Twilight Years
Bullied bullies
Posted on Sat, 22 Feb 2025
From my experience it seems that the bullied often go on to be bullies themselves. A real 'vicious' circle. Maintaining constant awareness of the problem's potential is probably the best approach.
An interesting read Jane.
Read full commentPosted in Nicola's Privilege
The phone and the IPA
Posted on Sat, 22 Feb 2025
Your woman with the phone and the IPA is much more a hero than the likes of Robbie Williams or David Beckham have ever been. How many people's heroes are true heroes? How many truly brave people have gone unrecognised?
This is a wonderful...
Read full commentPosted in Like dolphins can swim
Twilight
Posted on Sat, 22 Feb 2025
I wish my brain had a record & playback facility
I wish that too, for remembering those dreams that are dreamt in the half awake half asleep no man's land and which are lost the second that the waking up process is complete,...
Read full commentPosted in Half Remembered
Limericks
Posted on Fri, 21 Feb 2025
A nice bit of rhyme that really made me smile.
Good luck, especially with the prune soup.
Read full commentPosted in So Much To Lose
School
Posted on Fri, 21 Feb 2025
Hello Jenny.
Foxwood School had been only for boys when it opened in the late 1950s but the year group I was in was the last before they opened it up to girls. So there were always girls around but not in my year. When I reached the sixth...
Read full commentPosted in The Sogginess of the Long-Distance Runner
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