Home | In The Small Hours
Mary is shocked by what she sees when she goes to visit her sister Helen.
John Waddington-Feather continues his finely woven tale of the fortunes and misfortunes of a Yorkshire mill-owning dynasty. To read earlier chapters please click on http://www.openwriting.com/archives/illingworth_house/
Continue reading "Chance Child - Part One: 42 - A Nasty Cough" »
John Brian Leaver contemplates the workings of time as, by chance, he passes the house where his parents once lived.
Beware of banshee winds when you’re on guard duty in the Egyptian desert, John Brian Leaver warns.
John Brian Leaver tells of a glorious wartime practical joke.
John Brian Leaver tells of finding a treasure in the snow - and of a family who lost the greatest of all treasures.
John Brian Leaver tells of the intense joy of childhood in chillier times.
John Brian Leaver's poem is a reflection on mortality.
John Brian Leaver tells of the day when an old bike was bested by a cob of best Wigan coal.
For more of Brian's choice words please click on In The Small Hours in the menu on this page.
Time waits for no man. True, oh so true, as is confirmed by John Brian Leaver's poem.
John Brian's Leaver's lyrical poem concerns an undeniable urge to right evil deeds.
With great good humour, John Brian Leaver tells how he became a Printer's Devil - without having to don a trilby hat.
...Days are for living,
let few slumber or idly pass...
John Brian Leaver's poem contains the best advice for this, and every, year.
John Brian Leaver's poem tells of the desolate wait for a son who will never return.
Oh for the days when the high branches of a beech tree served as a topgallent, as in your imagination you ploughed the waves of distant oceans...
John Brian Leaver's poem is a valediciton to lost youth.
John Brian Leaver writes of the bemusement and anguish of a man embroiled in the folly of war.
...But if the weather was wet, which it always seemed to be, I would board a tram and hide under the stairs whilst the conductor was upstairs collecting his fares. Eventually I would be found and put off, but at least I had reduced my run. On one occasion I slipped under the stairs and there beside me, propped up, was a little white coffin, the parents frowned at me from the lower deck, they would be going to the cemetery some stops up the line....
John Brian Leaver tells of Lancashire schooldays during wartime - and a tram conductor he called Old Balaclava.
John Brian Leaver imagines cold seas and Northern Lights while ruminating in one of England's historic churchyards.
Continue reading "St Mary's Churchyard, Whitby - Late October" »
...Who is this climbing Primrose Hill
with water from Saint Cecilia's Well?
In summer dress and hat of straw...
An old sepia photograph awakens memories for John Brian Leaver.
As we drift down into golden autumn John Brian Leaver's poetic thoughts are of the leafy greens of spring.
A soldier, thousands of miles from home, imagines his father ploughing Lancashire land with a Clydesdale team.
John Brian Leaver's poem is as natural and everlasting as the scenes it describes.
John Brian Leaver's marvelous poem conjures up memories of boyhood days during wartime.
