: About Me

As of now, that is in June 2011 I am 72 years old, a retired forester living in Jeffreys Bay on the southern coast of South Africa. I have enjoyed writing creatively since my early schooldays, both in prose and in poetry, and was delighted to discover Helium as a potential avenue for a bit of international exposure, especially since getting work published in South African magazines is notoriously difficult.

I have a keen interest in astronomy - with a particular bias in favour of the stars of the south circumpolar regions - and nature in general.  These themes feature quite strongly in my writing. Also, I am blessed (or possibly cursed!) with a prodigious long-term memory, frequently recalling incidents from my very early childhood. Probably because of this, my stories very often center on the lives and experiences of young children or teenagers.

Late in 2010 I published a book entitled Voices in the Mind, which features 12 short stories and a 40,000-word novella entitled Then there was Harvey, based on my own rather wicked school career.

In the poetry field, my "magnum opus" is a 69-stanza epic inspired by a parody once read in Mad magazine on Coleridge's "Rime of the ancient Mariner."  It begins as pure parody, but after a dozen or so stanzas transmogrifies into something of genuine value in the field of nature conservation and which has won me a gratifying amount of approbation along the way.  (Too long for posting on Helium, unfortunately.) 

I have been married for 44 years and have two children, a daughter now living in Abu Dhabi (who has given me two delightful grandsons) and a son in Stellenbosch, South Africa, who is married but still to discover the joys of parenthood.

My passion is ...

The English language; creative writing; Shakespeare - his tragedies mostly; the stars on a clear night; cryptic crossword puzzles; Springbok rugby. And, of course, my two little grandsons

I know too much about ...

Very little and not enough about too much

My parents always told me ...

"Tuck your shirt in, Ronnie!"

My childhood ambition ...

To be a game warden in Kenya

My favorite memory ...

Getting a star for my first attempt at essay writing at age seven

Why I write ...

For personal enjoyment and gratification - and, let's be honest, hearing the accolades of others

What I am reading/watching/listening to ...

"Birds without Wings" by Louis de Bernieres - can't recommend it too strongly/my computer monitor/Mozart, Beethoven, Gilbert and Sullivan and Lloyd Webber

My first job ...

Clerk at a building society in Cape Town (hated it!)

My best moment ...

Meeting my infant daughter for the first time and watching my son being born

My inspiration ...

Dunno. My dad, I suppose - he taught me how to wonder

Creative Writing > Flash Fiction Flash fiction: Heroism

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Fair Exchange? July 1914: the unthinkable was suddenly stark reality. Britain was at war with Germany. Still two months shy of his nineteenth birthday, Charlie Mathews was among the first to sign up. Hell-bent on heroism from the beginning, the obligatory six-week training camp was a consummate bore – although, he was willing to concede, a necessary one. He applied himself with a will, accepting with good humour the stringent discipline that demanded that the toecaps of his boots be boned to mirror-brightness, that his bed be made up every morning to resemble nothing so much as a sha...

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