Hands In The Dirt - Notes From a Vegetable Garden: From March 2025 (Extract)

A few early Spring entries from my 2025 gardening journal, Hands In The Dirt — Notes From a Vegetable Garden. Now available on Amazon.

Monday, 10th March 2025

My Garden Food Bank

I’ve had this self-sufficiency garden dream since watching the BBC comedy, The Good Life back in the 1970s. The idea of growing my own food, being self-sufficient, and saving money appealed. Now, I have a chance to do it.

Once summer arrives, the garden will be my own personal food bank. Here in England, with the cost of living rising, food inflation high, everything more expensive every year, there’s a simple pleasure in being able to grow some of my own food.

Seeing the price of fruit and vegetables in the supermarket makes me appreciate it even more. For the cost of a few pence in seeds, the garden will supply most of what I need for several months. And while it’s mostly vegetables that I grow, that’s still a big help.

Fruit, on the other hand, I find not so easy to grow. It often requires higher temperatures, and British summers aren’t always reliable. I’ve had some luck with strawberries, and I’m fortunate to live close to where wild blackberries grow. Very close, actually. At the bottom of my garden, a neighbour’s large blackberry bush spills over the fence, so all I need to do is pick.

Then there is a country park near where I live. Everywhere you look, there are blackberry bushes. For a couple of months in late summer, there are more than enough berries to go around. The best part is, they’re free.

It’s as simple as going for a walk and picking blackberries!

Tip of the Day: Use the garden (or part of it) to grow your own food and save money!

Tuesday, 11th March 2025

The Raised Beds

This year, I’ve been working on building three new raised beds in the garden. They’re fairly big (twelve by four feet, approximately), and I’ve been sketching out plans to split them, one half into a large section, and the other half into four smaller plots.

This plan might change, though, since some crops, like potatoes, will need more room. They do tend to need more space.

When it comes to the garden, I try to recycle where I can. The wood for the sides of the beds came from an old fence that was falling apart. It has seen better days, but the planks are perfect for giving the beds shape and structure.

Tip of the day: Don’t forget to rotate crops in the garden. Recycle wherever possible.

Thursday, 13th March 2025

No-Dig Gardening

Self-Publishing: Amazon's New Update for Kindle Users: From January 2026, Readers Can Download DRM-free Kindle books

 

In January of this year, Amazon made an important change to how books could be downloaded from their online platform. It's now possible to download EPUB and PDF versions of selected DRM-free Kindle books.

What’s New?

If you purchase a qualifying title where the publisher has opted out of Digital Rights Management (DRM), you will now be able to download an EPUB or PDF directly from your Amazon account. This means that Amazon is providing an official way to download Kindle content outside its usual platform.

Details to Consider

• DRM-Free Titles Only: This feature will only apply to books where the publisher has chosen to forego DRM. It’s likely that the vast majority of Kindle books still come with DRM, so many users won’t see a change.
• Self-Published Works: Most of the books eligible for these downloads are self-published titles from authors who prefer to leave their work DRM-free. For these authors, their readers now have an unrestricted EPUB or PDF version option. This can be used via the Manage Your Content and Devices page.
• Authors Have to Confirm: If an author published a book before December 9, 2025, they must confirm that they want their book available as an unrestricted download. There is now an option for the author to allow EPUB or PDF downloads.

What This Means for Self-Published Indie Authors and Readers

Now Available on Amazon: Hands In The Dirt - Notes From a Vegetable Garden - How To Grow Your Own Food

 Hands In The Dirt — Notes From A Vegetable Garden, publication date, 2026.

Gardening and growing food, like writing, is a passion of mine, so I put the two together. I turned my gardening journal, the notes I made as the 2025 growing season progressed, into a book.

Hands In The Dirt — Notes From a Vegetable Garden, is the end result.

For those who enjoy gardening and growing their own food, Hands In The Dirt offers insights and practical tips that can enhance your gardening journey and help produce a fruitful harvest.

Here’s the introduction.

Hands In The Dirt is about a vegetable garden, but it is about more than just growing food. It plots my progress through the gardening year, 2025. The planning stage, the Great British weather, learning from mistakes, and slowly building confidence in what the garden can provide.

Son of My Father - We All Did Dumb Things At School (an extract)

Just one of the dumb things that I did at school, when I was a lad. From Son of My Father.

I remember the headmaster because of the one time that I got into trouble at school. It was the only time that I owned up and got into trouble, and he got involved. For the most part I was not a troublemaker, I kept my head down. However, I admit there were moments of stupidity when I did something unbelievable that got me into trouble. This was one of those moments, but at least I owned up to what I had done.

I was playing football in the front school yard, and I recall that no one else was around. I kicked the ball onto the flat roof of a small building. For a moment the ball was heading towards the edge, but then it stopped and got stuck in the guttering. The building was a toilet block which had blacked out windows around the top of it. It was my ball, and I wondered how I was going to get it back.

How Son of My Father Found Its Name - The Story Behind a Book Title, and a Half-Forgotten Song

In 2022, I wrote a book called Son of My Father.

I remember the moment the title came to me. I was pacing around my home, thinking — searching for a phrase that might hold the whole story together. Titles can be elusive things, they are jotted down, forgotten, some look great, then they don’t. I had a handful of ideas, each discarded for one reason or another. 

None seemed to bring the chapters together in the way I wanted.

At one stage, I had an idea that I felt could really work — to open each chapter with a subheading drawn from a song of the time. A piece of music that had shaped not only my personal experiences, but also the atmosphere of the era I was writing about. I imagined each song acting as a lyrical thread connecting memory, mood, and meaning to the story.

Then reality intervened. Copyright.

Yes, “fair use” might have allowed me to borrow a few lines, but even that felt like a legal grey area. The deeper I looked, the more it became a potential minefield of permissions and costs. Reluctantly, I let the idea go.

Still, once music had entered the conversation, I couldn’t get it out of my head. Songs have a way of unlocking memory, and as I sifted through those from my past, one stood out: Son of My Father, a 1972 hit by Chicory Tip.

I can’t say the band were favourites of mine, nor that the song had any special place in my life at the time. I remember it being played on the radio and Top of the Pops, but I was more into music by T Rex, Slade, Sweet and ELO. Years later, the song — and something in its story — resonated. It felt as though it was an ideal title for the book.

Here’s the song:

I later discovered that the title had been used before — in books, in other contexts — but that didn’t matter. For me, it fit.

Because although my book isn’t solely about my relationship with my dad, he is the presence that runs through it. The man, the mystery. As he left my life almost fifty years ago now, the book is most of what I know about him.

Writing Son of My Father was, in part, an act of discovery — not just about the past, but about what remains when memory fades and imagination takes its place. 

Read more reflections like this here.

 

Image by Tibor Janosi Mozes from Pixabay

Son of My Father - Who Was My Dad? The Man I Never Really Knew

When I began writing Son of My Father, I realised how much of my dad’s story I never really knew. So much of who he was existed quietly in the background — unspoken, unseen. What I do remember, though, was his creative side.

From my memoir, Son of My Father

I know nothing about my dad’s childhood, his schooling, or whether he was academically bright or not. I don’t even know the name of the school that he went to. I’m not sure that I ever did. He probably left school with few if any qualifications. Questions like this were never the subject of conversation between us.

Son of My Father - The Funeral Service (an extract)

An extract from my memoir, Son of My Father.      

A very different time.

My Brother wrote the service for mam's funeral. He wrote the following.

“... when she was a young lady, it was the simple things like, helping her mam in the house, learning how to cook, wash and most importantly sew. Equally another happy time for her was her schooling, she was clever and bright and always managed to be in the top stream. It has been said that in other times she may have gone on to be a teacher.”

 It continues.

“From school she went into the factories (Freeman, Hardy and Willis) and later after becoming a mum turned to homeworking. The house always had Sewing Machines in it, Overlocks, Scissors, piles of leather, trim and fabric and things in the process of being put together. She was naturally creative and could turn any idea plucked from your imagination into a fully realised costume in hours.

She was soon promoted to sample machinist because basically she was the best in the trade.”

 

Her schooling was probably typical of that time for someone from her social background. Until her funeral, I was not aware of what she had achieved at school. She would have left school at around fifteen back then.

I Don't Have An Amazon Kindle - Can I Still Read Kindle E-Books? (Yes, You Can!)

You don’t need an Amazon Kindle device to enjoy Kindle books. Learn how to read Kindle e-books on your phone, tablet, computer, or web browser — all completely free and easy to set up.

No Kindle? No Problem!

Actually, I do have an Amazon Kindle — a very old one which once belonged to my mother. After she passed away, it was given to me in a box of old technology. I recall it was full of old mobile phones, calculators, various other devices, and a Kindle. I just thought it was a tablet, until I saw the name.

Once I figured out how to turn it on, I noticed that she had an extensive collection of mostly crime fiction books. She liked a good detective story. I did read a few chapters of my own book on the Kindle!

Having written a book, an e-book that is available on Amazon (The picture, top right of page), I sometimes get asked.“But I don’t even own a Kindle… How do I read it?”

It was a good question, one that, at the time, I didn’t have an answer to.

So, I looked it up.

The good news? I discovered that you don’t actually need a Kindle device to read Kindle e-books.

Amazon has made it easy to access Kindle books from almost any device — smartphone, tablet, laptop, or even straight from your web browser. These are the main alternative to Kindle device options.

1. Use the Free Kindle App on Any Device

Surprise, surprise, there is an app for it. The easiest way to read Kindle books without a Kindle is to download the free Kindle app. It’s available for iPhone and iPad (App Store), Android phones and tablets (Google Play) and Windows PCs and Macs.

Once installed, sign in with your Amazon account, and your Kindle library, showing the books you have bought or downloaded for free, will then appear.

2. Try Kindle Cloud Reader — Read in Your Browser

Son of My Father - A Story in Twenty Chapter Headings

The memories of a sixties’ child. Everyone has a story to tell. Here’s mine in twenty chapter headings.

Chapter One — Just a Small Funeral.

Chapter Two — The Mysterious Cyprus Album.

Chapter Three — Mam and Dad.

Chapter Four — Life at Number Thirteen.

Chapter Five — Tina.

Chapter Six — Little School.

Chapter Seven — The Little Old Lady Next Door.

Chapter Eight — The Divorce.

Chapter Nine — Son of My Father.

Chapter Ten — Big School.

Chapter Eleven — Related to a Film Star?

Chapter Twelve — The Family From Hell.

Chapter Thirteen — The Girl With Beautiful Eyes.

Chapter Fourteen — A Face From The Past.

Chapter Fifteen — Holidays In The Sun.

Chapter Sixteen — The End of Big School.

Chapter Seventeen — Making Plans For…

Chapter Eighteen — Exit Door.

Chapter Nineteen — Whatever Happened To…

Chapter Twenty — Frank.

Available on Amazon as an e-book, or if you are a member, it is “free” to read on Kindle Unlimited.

The link: Son of My Father

 

 

The Twelve Posts of Christmas - Day Three: The Author With A Billion Kindle Unlimited Reads and 9.5 Million Books Sold

Just to say right at the start of this Christmas post, the billion reads on Kindle Unlimited does not refer to my book. I wish! No, it refers to a tweet I came across on Twitter X yesterday (I'm still going to call it a tweet regardless of what Elon says). 

Here's the tweet.

That is over one billion reads, which is remarkable. Even at a fraction of a penny that Amazon pay per page, that has to be a decent return.

Son of My Father - A Further Extract: The Bully and My Aston Martin

From Son of My Father.

When a friend turns out to not be a friend at all.

I had a friend at school by the name of Colin. Although we were the same age, he was quite tall and a lot bigger than me. I suspect that because of his size no one picked on him at school. We would often play football in the street opposite Number Thirteen. There were several garages with pull down sliding doors which we used as a goal. I’m sure the residents were overjoyed with the noise every time the ball hit the garage door.

Colin seemed a decent lad, but as the saying goes, appearances can be deceptive, as I was about to find out.

One day I invited him over to my house while mam and dad were out, and we ended up playing with my toy car collection made up of Matchbox, Dinky, and Corgi cars. Pride of place was a new car that Dad had just bought me, a James Bond 007 Aston Martin. A quick check on the internet tells me that back in 1966 this cost all of 3 old pennies. I think I was about seven or eight at the time, so I would have got mine in 1967 or 68.

Son of My Father Kindle Countdown Deal. (Now expired).

For the next seven days. Son of My Father is available on Amazon for £0.99. (Now expired).

It can be found here.  Son of My Father

Son of My Father - An Extract - “They Think It's All Over, It Is Now...”

                                           

They think it’s all over…it is now. The famous last words remembered from England's 4-2 victory over West Germany at Wembley Stadium.

I was too young to remember that game, but I do have my own personal football memory from the 1960s. It would have been the late 1960s, and I was playing for the school football team on council run pitches.

Not quite 1966 World Cup level, but I played.

From Son of My Father, a further extract.

I played for the school football team, but it almost didn’t happen. We played on a Council run park that was on the outskirts of the city. The facilities were basic at best, and there were three football pitches.

Boys in the school team or close to selection played on the main pitch. The game was usually between two sides picked by the school football captain and the football coach. I was never picked, probably because I wasn’t a mate of the captain, and the coach hadn’t seen me play. I went and played on one of the other pitches. Pitch number three it was called. I played against boys who were not very good. At that level I was pretty good. I seemed to have a knack for scoring and most weeks, against inferior opposition, I would score several goals.

During one game I noticed that the coach was watching from the sidelines. I thought nothing of it until the following week when, as the teams were being picked for the main game, he pointed his finger at me when it was his turn and he said, “come on lad, you are too good for the other game.” Then he said, “Oh, what’s your name…” I told him, and he replied, “right, I’m playing you up front today. Good luck.”

The rest, as the saying goes, is history. Admittedly not that big in the greater scheme of things, but big for me at the time as no one had ever picked me for anything before. I wasn’t in with the right boys that would ever pick me for their sides, whether it was for games or playtime in the school yard.

I must have done something to impress the coach because when the school squad was picked for the first game of the season, I was on the subs bench. The other players on the team looked at me as if to say, who are you?

And so began my school football career. Was it life changing? Not really, but just to get picked I must have done something right. My dad never watched me play football. It never crossed my mind at the time that he wasn’t there. It was years later when it did occur to me.

That’s just the way it was.

                                            

Son of My Father: "Fancy Man" - An Extract

I’m in the back seat of a car parked down the road from a pub. This pub was in the city, but some way from home. It was the pub where, according to dad, “this is where your mother meets her fancy man”. It was a cold, dark night and the streets were empty, other than the occasional drunk singing the night away.

In the car, my dad was in the front passenger seat. In the driver’s seat was a man who I didn't know. He must have been one of dad's mates. He was tall and broad. He looked like a man that you would want by your side in the event of trouble. It's possible that he was there for a more sinister reason. Given that dad’s plan was confrontation, this man may well have been there to back him up if things turned nasty with “fancy man.”

I was about nine years old at the time.

Self-Publishing: Traditional Publishing or Self-Publishing? Which Should a Writer Choose?

When I had the idea to write a book, one big question had to be addressed. Would I approach a publisher or an agent to do all the leg work involved in getting a manuscript accepted? Both of these options seemed like a lot of hard work and time-consuming.  You also have to prepare yourself for rejection.  It is great to think that your book will be the next bestseller or can't miss read, but a publisher or agent may have other ideas.  They are also very busy.

I chose to self-publish.

The Writer's Life: Spared - A Royal Life Story v A Real Life Story

2023 has started with a bang in the world of books.  Spare is a memoir written by the British Royal who chose to step back from his role, Prince Harry (ghost-written by novelist J. R. Moehringer.) Released on the 10th January 2023, it has caused a stir, and not just in Royal circles.  

This is my first blog post, and it is not my intention to review or write about Harry's book, as I have not read it.  Instead, I write about it in the context of my own memoir writing experience, which coincidentally meant that my first book, Son of My Father, was more or less published at the same time.  

Actually, my book was published as an e-book on Amazon the week before Christmas, 2022.

Now, the first big difference between my book and Spare is that mine was self-published with no fanfare. Self-publishing used to be called vanity publishing and not encouraged.  The traditional route, if the book is any good, is to go through a publisher.  That can be a lot of hard work.  Many a good author has had their work rejected only to eventually find success. Self-publishing was the easy option for me, and Amazon (and others) do make it reasonably easy to do that.

There is one big drawback to self-publishing.  Your new book is one of thousands. How do you get it noticed?  I did not publicize it at all.  It sat there in the Amazon store waiting for someone to take notice and buy it.  Compare that with the 400,000 copies Spare sold on the first day.  No surprise in that given all the publicity it received and the fact that this was a book spilling the beans on Royal life. 

The BBC report that it has become the UK's fastest selling nonfiction book since records began.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-64226729

I would have been happy with forty copies sold on the first day.  Over the moon.

Any book about royalty, written by a royal, is bound to be popular. They do live a somewhat fantasy life. I suppose, it is a sort of real life, with different pressure. But they are not worrying about paying the rent, or gas and lecky bill. Or whether they can afford a holiday. I was writing about a different kind of life, one where every penny counted. There again, that's what an ordinary life is often about, and it's a more difficult sell.

I will have more to write about Son of My Father in due course, but for now here is the Amazon link.

Son of My Father