I am delighted to introduce my second book.  As with my first book, Time and Tide, these poems are sequenced in chronological order, just as they first appeared under the heading of Honddu Valley Herald.

The starting point then, was the summer of 2019 and the run up to my daughter Kath's wedding.  The thirty-nine pieces then cover that very wedding; losing our dear labrador Woody; an epic road trip through eastern Europe and Scandinavia; and finally, travelling to Portugal for what should have been a couple of months in the sun but which unfolded into practically the entire year as the pandemic and its travel restrictions came to bear with the resulting, unexpected feelings of homesickness and a longing for some normality, before our eventual return home to West Cornwall.

As if that wasn't enough, within that strange period there was also a U.K. general election, Donald Trump lost his job and I was persuaded to cut my wife's hair!  All these experiences are covered in this book.  However, the underlying backdrop was one of increased restrictions, isolation and a total absence of clarity whilst all the while clinging on to one enormous positive:  that when this jarring disorder was finally over, our new normal would carry within it a resetting of our values to more fundamental thinking; the appreciation of care-workers, the clapping of the N.H.S. the looking out for neighbours, and the acceptance and respect of the overwhelming forces of nature, and that this would leave us more considerate, more careful, more caring, and more appreciative of others goodwill too, a kind of cleansing and returning to our original factory settings.

In hindsight, this ideology now seems over-simplistic and somewhat naive; but it could also be the case that over time our factory settings have themselves shifted, and that what we have now defaulted to (post pandemic), really is our new basic platform, our current reconfigured processing format, our nuanced contemporary styling, and our very best reinvention. These are the underlying questions posed in Factory Settings.

I sincerely thank you for your support and very much hope that you enjoy this collection.