Showing posts with label aussie author. Show all posts
Showing posts with label aussie author. Show all posts

Sunday, August 26, 2018

A few of my scribbles--Tricia McGill

Find purchase links to this and all my other books here on my Books We Love Author page

It’s cold wet and dreary in my part of the world as I write, so here are just a few snippets of Aussie whimsy from my collection of scribblings to cheer things up.

Glorious Day

I set out for a walk on a fine spring day
The flowers I saw in merry profusion
Into a lake ran a stream so fey.
I thought it was a grand illusion
Beneath my feet the grass was green.
From new mown fields I smelt the hay
It really was a peaceful scene.
Oh glorious world. Oh glorious day.

Children ran by—so full of joy,
picking flowers and singing beneath the sun
I bent to smile down at a tiny boy,
but he took off away at a sprightly run
How carefree they were, these girls and boys
Like splendid shafts from a sunny ray
Not worried unduly, but sharing their joys.
Oh glorious world. Oh glorious day.

A horse in a paddock called out to me.
A dog barked from a farmhouse just over the hill
Some magpies flew up to the branch of a tree.
Kangaroos were feeding near a windmill
Some joeys amongst them prepared for flight.
A kookaburra laughed loudly, and then flew away
To soar on the wind to a magnificent height.
Oh glorious world. O glorious day.

The woes of the world are all left behind.
On days such as this my cares slip away
Problems disperse like dust in the wind.
Oh glorious world. Oh glorious day.

The Stockman

The bush and plains are the stockman’s home.
The pine clad mountains and valleys to roam
His hat rests low on his proud set head
and covers his hair of the brightest red.

His dog lopes close by his horses’ side,
and the pair never tire through a long day’s ride.
Old Irish has dreamed since he was a lad
of riding all day across this wide land.

His mother and father had both been rovers.
His dad was a man well known by the drovers
They’d died up along the Murrays’ side
and were buried near that great river so wide.

Irish knows well how to laugh and to cry;
to share life’s sorrows ‘neath God’s clear blue sky
He knows all there is about herding cows,
about riding all day when the wind just howls.

Once on a trek though the great desert land,
he almost got lost as for gold he panned
Old Irish has been where black parrots fly,
where the mulga and scrub reach well past the thigh.

Past rivers so dry that the cracks split the earth
and no one can say what the red land is worth
He’s been where the ‘roos jump high in the air,
where wallabies roam over land green and fair.

He thought once of settling, of taking a wife,
but decided with forethought that wasn’t the life
No drover would fit in a life in the city;
to leave all this space would be more than a pity.

In a place like Sydney or Melbourne or Darwin
where the people all flock and there’s plenty of sin
No woman in town would put up with his roving,
this need to be moving, and constantly going

To the back blocks and endless wide open plains,
far away from the city and shops and the trains
There’s no female around who’d put up with the hide
of a man who yearns just to be free to ride.

The man who knows joy in a good horse beneath you,
a dog for a pal and restrictions so few
The hard times and good times; the dust and the heat,
where no man gives in to a thing like defeat.

The bush folk have ways the townsfolk don’t know.
They’ll greet you with pleasure, and then let you go
To wander the wide open plains that you love,
where at night all the stars fairly blaze up above.

On a night when the air is crystal clear,
you’ll sit ‘neath a sky where the stars seem so near
You can reach out and touch them in the frosty sky
and be closer to God than you’ll be when you die.

A stockman knows all about drought dust and heat,
but in his way of life won’t put up with defeat.
His life’s filled with pleasures no town man would know.
Old Irish is off where the wanderers go.

This last one is set in the doc’s waiting room, where I seem to be spending far too much time of late.

The Doctor’s Surgery

Are you shorter than you used to be?
A strange but smart enough query
It’s listed there with many more
on the inside of my doctor’s door

With other questions about your health,
asked bluntly and without much stealth
Do you require a cholesterol check?
Or some acupuncture for a pain in the neck?

Perhaps the others that sit with me
In this my doctor’s nice surgery
Have bunions or wind, are feeling weak,
or maybe like me have come to seek

A reason for what is making them crook,
why they often feel dizzy while reading a book
Did that one over there wake up with a pain?
Perhaps she is simply feeling the strain

With a boy who plays up, shouts and screams
She’s probably coming apart at the seams
Ah, here’s the doctor, I think it’s my turn,
to unload my problems so I can learn

What’s wrong, what’s the trouble with me?
It will all be unfolded in his surgery
He’ll tell me I’m well, I’m fit and fine, 
and I’ll leave with a smile until the next time

When I want the assurance of someone so wise,
who’ll look in my ears, down my throat, in my eyes.
Some reassurance will see me right,
Some kind words of comfort; some doctorly insight

I’ll leave his office on jaunty feet,
glad to get out on the sunny street
It’s good to know that I’m fit and whole.
I know I feel fine for my doc told me so.
 
My Web Page


Wednesday, July 2, 2014

MARGARET TANNER - SECRETS


SECRETS - WE ALL HAVE THEM

How many of us have secrets?

I doubt if there would be many people who don’t have at least one secret. I don’t mean of the dark, dangerous variety, but some of us may well have a secret that could place us in danger. Fortunately, I am not one of those.

My secret – I am a chocoholic. How many times have I told my hubby that I no longer eat chocolates, then I sneak off to my several hiding places (not to be divulged on pain of death), where my secret stash is hidden. You should always have more than one hideout for your illicit goodies just in case one of them is discovered. I don’t want to be like Old Mother Hubbard – who went to the cupboard to get her dog a bone, and when she got there the cupboard was bare and the poor doggie had none. Change that to and when Margaret got to her secret stash, the chokkies were gone and she had none. A disaster of that proportion could not be allowed to happen, hence a few hiding places. I call it my insurance policy.

In many families there are secrets that will never see the light of day, except if someone in the family is into Geneology. My sister has unearthed some shocking scandals as she undertook research into our family tree. I swear, I could write a book about it. One of the most shocking secrets was the fact that my grandmother had a baby when she was unmarried and only eighteen years old. The baby died when he was only 6 days old. A couple of years later she married my grandfather. No-one knew that, it remained hidden for 120 years, until my sister unearthed the information during her research.

Another relative spent time in jail in the 1880’s for aiding and abetting Ned Kelly, a famous Australian bushranger (outlaw). Then there were all the “premature” babies that were born to aunts and great aunts. Not to mention one great uncle who had two wives. Then there was a cousin who ran off with a man who was older than her father. That caused a stir. Especially as the man had a wife and 4 children. Still, can’t be all bad, thirty years later, and the couple are still together.

In my experience, and I do have to quantify this by saying I mainly read historical romance because that is what I write, there are often dark secrets lurking in the background. Some of these could be life threatening, in any case at the very least they threaten the hero and heroine’s chance of getting their happily ever after ending.

In my novel, Allison’s War, the heroine’s secret is that the baby she is expecting does not belong to her husband.

 

In Daring Masquerade, my heroine pretends she is a boy so she can gain employment with the hero. Then, of course, she falls in love with the hero. I mean, what can she do about it?

In my novel, Haunted Hearts, (the only contemporary I have published), the heroine discovers that her father-in-law has been going through her cupboard drawers and stealing her panties.
 
So, you can see that secrets abound in my novels, and I am sure I am not alone in this regard. A secret can drive our stories along, add passion and drama, and keep the reader wondering what is this secret? How can it be resolved? Will the hero and heroine get their HEA?

 Margaret Tanner writes historical romance for Books We Love.


 


 

 

Popular Posts

Books We Love Insider Blog

Blog Archive