Stories

• 'The Power of Advertising' (12th July 1992)
  A piece of my GCSE coursework which I did in Fourth year at Adwick School. Unsurprisingly, it was part of an assignment about advertising.

• 'Future Vision' (22nd March 1992)
  A piece of my GCSE coursework which I did in Fourth year at Adwick School. This was a set piece of work, in which we did some research into developing countries and then were presented the task of writing a story based on either that research, or one of a set of words we were given. I chose the word Vision and completely ignored the work on developing countries. The story I began to write (Blind Vision), became overly long and I couldn't have finished it in time for the deadline. So instead, with about 4 days to go, I wrote this.

• 'Blind Vision' (22nd March 1992) [Unfinished]
  A piece of my GCSE coursework which I did in Fourth year at Adwick school. This was originally a set piece of work which I did based on a single word stimulus - Vision. However, it became too long and I had to write Future Vision instead. I've not finished it, and I'm not likely to, so don't pester me.

• 'Under Your Thumb' (28th January 1993)
  A piece of my GCSE coursework which I did in Fifth year at Methwold High School. I'm not overly proud of it on reading it now, but at the time I thought it was rather good.

• 'A story in a letter' (November 1992)
  One day when I was feeling a little down after splitting up with my girlfriend I decided to write a story. It quickly summarised how I was feeling at the time, and how my life had gone from meeting her to splitting up. It wasn't very good. You can read it if you like. It really isn't that good.

• 'James' (1997) [Unfinished]
  A partial story I found handwritten in one of my old boxes. There's a taste of 'Threads' in there, and a couple of other ideas, but at the present time (2010), I've got no idea where I was going.

• 'Chloe' (15th February 1998)
  A short story I wrote after walking home late one night from University. It has its roots in a few other things I was reading at the time, but I can't for the life of me remember what they were.

• 'The Last Days' (9th January 2000)
  I felt like writing 'something'. Just to see that I could still write things reasonably well. So, what you have here is a story made from the initial thought of 'it was raining' and built around that. It's short and although it's not all there and it does have a few bits I don't like, it works quite well.

• 'Edward' (9th January 2000)
  After 'The Last Days', I decided to do something else. To make something short and quick. Not a story so much as a scene, or instant in time. 'Edward' is that instant.

• 'The Beach' (20th June 2005)
  It seemed a long time since I wrote anything, so I wanted to try to write a short story that could just be itself. It's a conversation between two old friends when they meet up on a beach. A pretty one-sided conversation, admittedly, but still they're both there.

• 'Night' (8th March 2006)
  Not so much a story as a moment in time. I couldn't sleep and wanted to write something and essentially wrote about how I felt right then. I'm not really sure that makes it a story, but it was an intentional writing rather than a diary writing.

• 'A Walk In The Forest' (18th July 2008)
  Whilst on a train, I wanted something to do and filled in the time by writing a paragraph to Caroline as a short story. It's intended as a quick and a little whimsical mini-story.

• 'The Ship' (16th September 2011)
  I began writing short snippets at the start of the report on the Nightly tests. This was one such snippet.

Poems

• 'The Dream Of A Life' (February 1995)
  I split up with Caroline and was pretty upset. I wrote this poem for her. It wasn't really meant to change anything, but I had to say what I felt somehow and I never did find talking to people that I cared about particularly easy. Somehow a little poem made sense. I rather like it, even still. It says something to me.

• 'She' (22nd December 1997)
  One day, whilst at university I awoke from a dream that was so vivid to me. For the whole day I believed that I had a daughter and that I would see her. It was only in the evening whilst I was with Chris that I finally realised that it was not real. Some time later, I wrote this poem for her.

• 'Insomniac' (22nd December 1997)

• 'The Fool' (22nd December 1997)

• 'The One' (22nd December 1997)

• 'Teddy' (22nd December 1997)

• 'The Wanderer' (28th December 1997)

• 'The Candle' (28th December 1997)

• 'Only You' (29th April 1998)
  In order that I wouldn't write pointless little emails to Helen, I decided to filter off such mails into a separate mailbox. Anything I sent which was addressed to her would instead end up going around in a little circle and never leaving my machine. This poem was in one of those messages which never made it out.

• 'Summer' (6th October 1999)
  Whilst testing the CVS logging, I submitted a number of test changes to a file. In order not to be bored senseless, lots of random things were used as the change message. One of them was this poem.

• 'The Screws Are Loose' (6th March 2002)
  A silly poem I wrote on the spot for submitting to a competition, but found that the form was broken so it wouldn't submit. So here it is in all its glory.

• 'This Morning' (10th January 2000)
  I think this was just an amusing poem that I wrote on the spur of the moment for the diary.

• 'The Rain' (6th August 2003)
  I heard some rain on the Window. And quickly composed this little ditty. It really isn't worth it. But I think it's quite fun. Imagine I'm 8 whilst reading this.

• 'Lonely Simon' (16th June 2005)
  This was a little Haiku for Simon who was finding nobody in the room where he was working. A whole page for a haiku seems excessive, but it's still a poem.

• 'Flowers' (6th July 2005)
  I was trying to write something for Simon's birthday card. I needed something strange, and started writing. This poem came out. It's not really a poem for your brother's birthday, so I didn't use it for his card.

• 'A Mother's Kiss' (3rd November 2005)
  Whilst writing an email, I was taken to write a little poem because I had a couple of lines in my head. It could do with more work, so maybe don't think of it as a poem, but as a short passage of comfort. Or something like that.

• 'Joseph's smile' (6th June 2008)
  Lucy and Martin had a little boy called Joseph. In an out-of-character move, I bought them a congratulations card (I usually forget), and wanted to put something inside that was special. I wrote this little poem for him.

Songs

• 'All I need this Christmas is your love' (4th December 1997)
  As songs go, it's not great. But it was fun, and it wasted the time whilst I was walking to university on those cold winters nights.