Author: Thomas Kelly

Go your own way by Fleetwood Mac You can go your own wayGo your own wayYou can call itAnother lonely dayOr you can go your own way Go and take the coward’s way outIt’s not for you to brave the brick wallOr on the allocated day on a gurney strapped Not begging for redemption or…

“I wake in a dark flat to the soft roar of the world” She felt warm under the sheet that was pulled up high over her head. Her breathing gave away that she was alive to the watcher. He was sitting at the end of the bed, bow-tie draped around his neck, the once white…

20/1/2021: President Trump has granted a full pardon to Clarence Olin Freeman. Mr. Freeman was convicted in 1965 for operating an illegal whiskey still. He received 9 months imprisonment and 5 years’ probation. He died in 2019. The fly screen was swinging on rusted hinges. The house, long abandoned and silent, was typical of the…

Life and the direction that one is given, depends on the luck one makes and a determination to make ‘tomorrow a better day’, a phrase taken from Captain Tom. I moved to Somerset last spring to repair my life into the smallest house ever called The Reading Room. Originally it was built for the farm…

My mother is very near to her end now, her breathing slow and she refuses water and food. Her thyroid, devoid of medication constricts her throat and she lies on her side, shielding herself from residual pain from the hip operation though I am sure it was just patched up at her age. Her body…

Can it really be over 40 years since the Bedford 4 Tonners drew into the Fremington Adventure Training Camp. 26 potential officers in the various Foot Guard Regiments. In my thoughts it might well have been a white MOD coach loaded with the Brigade Squad 22 ready for being beasted, but the transport perhaps was…

Carib Islands 1778 The plague had transformed the routine of the plantation from one of hard work, beatings and sweat to a silent and weary charnel house. The few who could move shuffled to the creek to fetch tepid water that they would mix with meal flour to make a dull grey porridge; that was…

The window in the bedroom overlooked the town of Varenna and when the mist lifted off the lake she could see Menaggio and from there she would take the train to Dongo. This is where the war had ended and she wanted to see the fascists hanging, they who had taken away her youth, her…

Colonel and Mrs A. H Kelly, Egypt 1938 with my father James I never knew my paternal grandfather. A professional soldier and Colonel of his Regiment, he died in 1960 following complications from injuries sustained when he was shot by a machine gun storming a position in Fallujah, Iraq in 1943. So nothing changes in…

The metal door on the dirty white villa in Al Tafardi Street was sun beaten, any paint had long since faded and only rust seemed to be keeping it on its hinges. A bolt with a large brass padlock ensured that the inquisitive would keep away and not try to explore into what lay behind.…