Having rediscovered his gift for storytelling, Michael Walsh was struck by the thought that like pop music, storylines in novels had become unoriginal. It appeared that TV soaps, television drama and novels had one unimaginative strategy to boost sales.
Traditions, records and extraordinary ‘valentines.’
The oldest valentine in the world.
There is a legend that the very first Valentine card in the world was written by Saint Valentine before his execution. But the officially registered love note, dated February 14, 1415, belongs to the Charles, Duke of Orléans, who wrote love letters to his wife while he was in the Tower of London. This Valentine is now kept in the British Museum.
Helen Duncan was a Scottish medium who held spiritual séances during World War Two. During one of her November 1941 séances, she spoke to a sailor’s spirit.
FIRST HAND ACCOUNT: As a serving British seaman in the Merchant Marine, neither I nor my shipmates were flippant of ghosts on ships and ghostly vessels or strange supernatural happenings.
Each year, Michael Walsh, the people’s poet, receives thousands of tributes from romantics and he has thousands of social media admirers. You feel as though Michael through her verse embraces you. When you finally place your book down on the bedside table you glow from the effect of his sentiments being in perfect harmony with yours.
As an eleven-year old schoolboy I often travelled on the Overhead Railway (the Dockers Umbrella). From the windows of the rickety train’s carriages windows one (or in our case several schoolboys) enjoyed an unfolding panorama of docks and ships loading and loading in the many docks.
We have come a long way since 1960 when the censor’s dead hand was lifted off the D. H. Lawrence novel, Lady Chatterley’s Lover. I am not surprised that distinguished English author first considered calling his literary book Tenderness. The lovemaking between Lady Chatterley and her gamekeeper lover Oliver Mellors was sensitively portrayed. The language used was typically rustic without intending to shock.
THE RIVER, BAR AND BIGHT
Nostalgia for the life ashore,
But as a magnet drawn,
The gentle movement of the deck,
Tells me again I’m borne;
For distant shores I’ve never seen,
What better than to sleep and dream,
To lullaby of engine room,
Its song of fate, adventure, doom?
Without inspiration, there can be no communication. Every line we read be it a news report, biography or poem, is inspired by someone or something. Such was my inspiration when from my rooftop garden situated on the highest home in Mijas Pueblo I watched a sunset to die for. Yes, it was indeed Christmas Eve 2011. Inspired, I then scrawled my thoughts down. ~ Michael Walsh
Ships aren’t meant to sink, but sometimes you have to wonder what miraculous forces kept a vessel afloat. The SS Baychimo was such a ship. For nearly four decades after it was abandoned, this 1,300-ton cargo ship sailed the Arctic without fuel or crew, until it disappeared just over fifty years ago, but some believe she is still out there drifting among the frozen icebergs.
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