Living in diverse and interesting places and travelling quite widely has given me a bank of experience that provides me with material to write about. Reading widely, has helped me to develop patterns of writing down my thoughts that will hopefully appeal to others. In the 1970’s I was asked to inspire 500, 12 to 14 year olds with the desire to sell thousands of raffle tickets to raise funds for a school. I invented a lad called Albert and wrote stories about him that I read to the assembly to gain interest before the hard sell. They were very successful, served their purpose and gave me great pleasure. Regrettably I was too busy to do much more, although this was suggested by colleagues. As we age our friends tend to die and increasingly we attend funerals and listen to eulogies. I thought I might help my kids and write a brief autobiography. Some years and two books later I completed it. Oh the pleasure in calling up again the ghosts and spectres of my early life. And the even greater pleasure of secretly recalling again to memory, the unprintable. Then came the Waitakere Short Story competitions. I entered several without official success although I often thought my stories better than the winners – what glorious confident arrogance. This inspired me to write other short stories often loosely based on personal experience. I produced a couple of volumes of these for family and friends. And so to Waitakere Writers.