lendavies (Len davies)

The fourth eldest of eight children.left grammar school at16. held 2 jobs until starting in the coal industry at 20.redundant at 43.bought a small cafe which I ran with the help of my wife and family for 14 yrs until I suffered a heart attack which led to a quadruple bypass. Sold the cafe and retired in 2002. At this point I began to vegitate.I sat watching TV most of the day, and started scribbling notes about my past. Things that happened to me when I was a child growing up in the valleys of Wales. Putting the notes into chronological order, it began to read like the framework of a book.I never kidded myself it would ever be good enough to get published. It was just something for my children to read after I was gone. Things they never new about because obviously they were not around.
At the age of 64 I had another operation to remove a cancerous prostrate so stopped writing for a while and found it hard to pick up the thread when I did. Staring at blank pages became the norm until a friend said put it away and write about something else, poetry, anything just to get youself back into writing. Then you can return to the book again. Hence the start of my poetry writing. It has sidetracked me for a long time as I still find it hard when I return the book (where I have reached the age of 30)and have added very little to the 45,000 or so words so far. The book is probably a load of rubbish, but at the time I found it theraputic and its still there calling me occasionally.
The poems I feel are not very good either, but it occupies my mind. I'm not very good at making things up. All of the poems I've written are about true events with few exceptions.