MAKER OF FOOTPRINTS BY SHEILA TURNER JOHNSTON

maker of footprints

 

by

 

Sheila Turner Johnston

 

Colourpoint 2019

 

https://blackstaffpress.com/maker-of-footprints-9781780732435

Meeting him was easy. It was knowing him that burned bone.  Paul Shepherd is dangerous.  He crashes into Jenna's life like an asteroid into an ocean.  Wilful and exhausting, he stirs feelings that make her confront all that has kept her safe - and bored.  Relentless and determined, he needs Jenna with a desperation she does not understand.  Jenna discovers that, although she can try to hide from Paul, there is nowhere to hide from herself.  But, he is married.

What do you do when you discover you are not the person you thought you were?

 

 

This is a love story, but not one that runs smoothly for all concerned.  Jenna is a plain girl, a good girl and a bit boring with it.  Her boyfriend, Adam, does not have the inclination to develop their relationship in a romantic way anytime soon. 

 

Jenna’s brother Luke is a typical student, turning up frequently at Jenna’s to crash out and ponder his plan to quit Belfast for Scotland, or even Outer Mongolia.

 

Paul, Adam’s older brother, is all ego, blunt, opinionated and insufferable more often than not.  He has returned to Belfast from London with his wife of a few months, Dianne, a snobby socialite who hates the city and is determined to return to England at the earliest opportunity.  Paul has no intentions of returning to London permanently.  Dianne has to find a way to get through to Paul.  She loves her husband but not his stubbornness.  

 

Paul and Dianne meet Jenna.  Dianne is not impressed but Paul spots something in Jenna, a challenge perhaps, a project of sorts, the main plot strand of this intriguing book.  There is a kind of slow dance between the two and their relationship develops romantically.  Initially, Jenna is cautious but Paul is determined that they will be together.  His marriage to Dianne is doomed to fail.

 

The push and pull of relationships, old, current and new, give the book depth and draws the reader into caring about what happens to everyone involved, even the ones hard to like. 

 

But just when you are comfortable in the story’s groove, the book shifts gear as events turn darker and more dramatic.  Amongst other things, Paul’s superego front is not all it’s cracked up to be.

 

Sheila Turner Johnston conducts her orchestra of characters beautifully.  This is a wonderful novel, truly a page-turner residing in the upper echelons of the very best modern fiction.

 

  

BACK AND FORWARD - 2021/2022

Looking back,

there were decisions I should not have made,

there were decisions I should have made,

things I should not have said,

things I should have said,

people I should have forgotten,

people I should have remembered,

situations I should have avoided,

situations I should have arranged,

jobs I should have abandoned,

jobs I should have done.

*

Looking forward,

there will be decisions I will not make,

there will be decisions I will make,

things I will not say,

things I will say,

people I will forget,

people I will remember,

situations I will avoid,

situations I will arrange,

jobs I will abandon,

jobs I will do.

*

American professional baseball pitcher, Satchell Paige's famous quote always comes to mind at this time of the year:

"Don't look back. Something might be gaining on you."

And to that, I add:

"Amen, and onward."

SOME CHRISTMAS POEMS

 

Season's Greetings, friends.

From hundreds of fun Christmas poems I have written over the years.

‘APPY CHRISTMAS

To gadget geeks – Appy Christmas

To bakers – Bappy Christmas

To dentists – Cappy Christmas

To good blokes – Chappy Christmas

To audiences – Clappy Christmas

To birds – Flappy Christmas

To Tube guards – Gappy Christmas

To motor racers – Lappy Christmas

To explorers – Mappy Christmas

To babies – Nappy Christmas

To urban singers – Rappy Christmas

To boxers – Scrappy Christmas

To make-up artists – Slappy Christmas

To crocodiles – Snappy Christmas

To plumbers – Tappy Christmas

To puppies – Yappy Christmas

To video game players – Zappy Christmas

WENCESLAS WEATHER

Good King Wenceslas looked out

And did a double take,

Despite all his initial doubt,

He rubbed his eyes awake.

Brightly shone the sun that day,

Sweltering hot and sticky,

He thought as this is Boxing Day,

The forecast’s a bit dicky.

“Bring me shorts Bermuda-style,

Bring me sun tan lotion,

Bring me cola by the crate

And ice cubes by the ocean.

Bring my sunbed by the pool,

I can’t believe this weather,

I can swim around all day

In the altogether.”

Good King Wenceslas’s dream

Ended with a bump,

He fell out of his bed it seems

And bruised his ample rump,

Groggy from his accident

And dazed and half-asleep,

He gaped out through the curtain gap

To see snow six-feet deep.

SANTA IN THE GARDEN

Santa likes to dig-dig-dig,

Santa likes to grow-grow-grow,

Santa likes to rake-rake-rake,

But most of all,

Santa likes to hoe-hoe-hoe

STRICTLY CHRISTMAS

Strictly come 

Dasher, 

Strictly come 

Vixen,

Strictly come 

Donner,

Strictly come 

Blitzen,

Strictly come 

Cupid,

Strictly come 

Prancer,

Strictly come 

Comet,

Strictly come 

Dancer.

CHRISTMAS SHOPPING

Christmas shopping,

Christmas shopping,

Really makes me dizzy.

Why can’t Christmas

Be in June

When the shops aren’t quite so busy? 

MOOEY

Two cows talking

In the language called Moo –

“Mooey Christmas”

“And mooey Christmas to you.”

Season's greeting friends!

RIP MIKE NESMITH - A POEM, BOBBLE HAT

 In the mid-60s, my mother knitted me an almost exact replica of this hat.

Bobble Hat

Mother’s skillset expanded out of necessity,

Back in the tight money days, post-Elvis, pre-Beatles.

Alongside kitchen and other housewifery talents,

She knitted in what seemed like every spare moment,

Aran jumpers a speciality, but also

Scarves, gloves and non-military balaclavas, hats,

Especially one unforgettable hat for me,

A bobble hat, green, an almost exact replica

Of a Mike Nesmith Monkees hat, cool woolly number. 

Should have seen my face! I was a believer. Still am.

THE LITTLE DRUMMER BOY (REVISITED)

The little drummer boy

Who featured in a song

From 1958

Has had to move along.

He was handy with the drum,

Even handier with the sticks,

But all that drumming took its toll,

So he retired at sixty-six.

 

BOOK REVIEW - MOVING ABOUT THE PLACY BY EVELYN CONLON

 

MOVING ABOUT THE PLACE

 

SHORT STORIES

 

By

 

Evelyn Conlon

 

The Blackstaff Press 2021

 

https://blackstaffpress.com/moving-about-the-place-9781780733104

 

 

This fine collection of short stories and a novella takes us on journeys geographically and emotionally.  The geography takes in Ireland, England, Australia, Italy, Monaco, Indonesia, Japan – adding useful background ingredients to the core stories in settings and scenery.  It all helps the reader to frame pictures and create imagery as the characters do what they do.  The emotion is in the spoken and unspoken words of people some of whom want to break free from life’s constraints, who dream of better lives elsewhere only to find that the grass is not necessarily as green as they imagined.

In one story, Hannah and her husband Simon emigrate to Australia only for Hannah to realise she is trapped in a foreign land with no immediate family and scarcely any local friends.  Her new life is one of challenges and struggles.

Violet, incarcerated in an asylum, smuggles out a letter in a bottle which washes up on a shore.  She had shot and wounded Mussolini and therefore was not considered of sound mind.  She tells the finder who she is, what she’s done and why. It is a moving outpouring.

Other stories involve unhappy relationships, new beginnings, one in particular featuring recently widowed Mary who leaves Ireland for Australia and evolves into a social activist, campaigning to improve women’s lives, and another explores turmoil after a visit to the Hiroshima Peace Museum.

So, geography, emotion as well as humanity’s foibles layer these excellent stories, and Evelyn Conlon is to be saluted for taking us on these journeys.  Some of them linger long after closing the book.  And that’s a skill not enjoyed by all writers.  Bravo.

 

ONLY YULES & VERSES - CHRISTMAS FUN

I wrote a book of Christmas-related funny stuff and a kind person posted these unsolicited comments.            

“Only Yules and Verses is one of those special little books that you happen upon serendipitously. I have read authors' blurbs before extolling the mirth to be found in THEIR book only to buy the book and be severely disappointed. What an unexpected joy, therefore, to pick up this little gem and read it to the end with smiles, a few laughs out loud and some headshakes at the ingenuity of Joe Cushnan. I thoroughly enjoyed this and wholeheartedly recommend it to everyone.

 

P.S. I am not a friend or family member of the author, but how I wish I were!”

You can buy this stocking-filler here.

https://www.feedaread.com/books/Only-Yules-Verses-9781784070823.aspx

RIP MASTER STORYTELLER WILBUR SMITH (9 JANUARY 1933 – 13 NOVEMBER 2021)

Wilbur Smith, Guardian obituary: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/nov/14/bestselling-author-wilbur-smith-dies-aged-88

RIP to this great adventure storyteller. I sent him a fan letter and a poetry pamphlet in 1999. He kindly replied thus: 

BLACK FRIDAY RETAIL BULLSHIT

This so-called Black Friday retail bullshit is due. Supposed to be a day, bit lasts much longer. 

So glad I am out of retail after 40 years. Do your worst, businesses and customer saps. 

Black Friday, get in a queue and wait,
dressed from head to toe in combat gear,
prepared, who dares wins, shopping with no fear,
eyes on bargains, gathered hordes salivate,

wearing elbow pads, knee pads, shin pads, hobnail boots,
the atmosphere rising to fever pitch,
the mild-mannered become bastard and bitch,
battering and bruising, not giving two hoots.

The luckiest ones hold their prizes high,
triumphant in their quest to win the day,
victorious survivors of the fray,
while unlucky ones hang their heads and cry.

And after all the sales are rung and checked,
both store displays and shop staff nerves are wrecked.

BOOK REVIEW - THE BLACK DREAMS: STRANGE STORIES FROM NORTHERN IRELAND

The Black Dreams:

Strange Stories from Northern Ireland

Edited by Reggie Chamberlain-King

Blackstaff Press

2021

https://blackstaffpress.com/the-black-dreams-9781780733289

Stories by:

Jo Baker, Jan Carson, Reggie Chamberlain-King, Aislinn Clarke, Emma Devlin, Moira Donaldson, Michelle Gallen, Carlo Gebler, John Patrick Higgins, Ian McDonald, Bernie McGill, Gerard McKeown, Ian Sansom, Sam Thompson.

This is the strangest, mind-boggling, challenging collection of stories (all in a good way!) I have read, so good in fact that I felt compelled to read them in one sitting.  In fact, it is obvious when you think about it that the backdrop link to all of the stories is strange, mind-boggling, challenging Northern Ireland. As a Belfast kid, I get this.

Although they reside under the Black Dreams umbrella, each storyteller has taken the central theme of strangeness and let creativity and imagination rip.  Characters look within, rummaging through emotions and memories, look out and sense things only they can sense, explore the past, consider what will be, sometimes dreaming impossible dreams and coming to profound conclusions about the value of their lives and the lives of others, the history of their surroundings and the shifting power of the landscape.

It is difficult to pick a favourite and I won't.  Readers will have to decide for themselves. Of the fourteen stories, there was only one I didn't care for, and I won't reveal that one either.

The Black Dreams is an excellent collection of stories by gifted writers unafraid to loosen the reins and take us on a gallop down twisty, turny roads.  It is quite a ride!

Indeed, creativity and imagination unleashed.

 

HAS ANYBODY HERE SEEN KELLY? A MEMOIR COMING SOON.

 

In 1960, my father, John Cushnan, left our Belfast home, his wife and seven young children, and vanished. The next we heard of him was when we were told he had died at 57 in Clapham, London in 1982. By this time he had reinvented himself as John Kelly from Derry. Apart from anything else, he left us with a mystery of 22 missing years. 

This book is the result of much research done by me to find out about his life post-Belfast. I found out a lot. It is also the story of my heroic mother, Rita, who raised her seven kids as a single parent.

Edited by Averill Buchanan

More soon.

Media contact: joecushnan@aol.com

EMERALD BLUE

 

I am dazzled by the knife blade in the sunlight,
my skin cuts easily but the pain is less than I imagined
and as my blood escapes I notice it is less red,
more emerald blue.

I see the history in it, the life and death - it is blood after all -
and as a delta appears on my hand, I resist the urge to lick
or press the wound, waiting for other colours in vain, continuing to
bleed emerald blue.

I hear songs and poetry, see old faces, hear breathing, sense spirits,
noises from a long-distance life, siren wails from wars on streets,
witness splashes of full-colour blood, sepia blood, black blood,
seldom emerald blue.

For this liquid is mine, my protective albumen, my defence, my roots,
an unstoppable slow-flow to mesmerise, to kindle feelings, to remind,
to stimulate a fondness for beginnings, to underline weaknesses, to ease 
feeling emerald blue.

WHERE HAVE ALL THE DECENT, HONEST, TRUTHFUL POLITICIANS GONE?

 I think of the future for my very young grandsons.

Where is today's inspirational leadership?

Name me one politician who eschews personal gain or publicity over giving a shit about the future.

Go on.

You can't.

Because there isn't one. 

ROSA PARKS 4 FEBRUARY, 1913 - 24 OCTOBER 2005

Rosa Parks summed up a significant moment 

in history with these humble words:

“I didn’t get on the bus to get arrested. 

I got on the bus to get home.” 

Montgomery, Alabama, 1955.

The shockwaves of a woman, 

a black woman, 

sitting in that seat

rattled the pedestals 

of the self-appointed white righteous. 

Arrested for “refusing to obey order of bus driver”,

nationality defined as “negro”, 

complexion “black”, 

build “medium”, mug shot “7053”,

this bespectacled 42-year-old, 

five-foot three citizen became an icon of resistance, 

a living symbol

underlining the right in civil rights, 

later awarded medals and remembered on Rosa Parks Day.  

"I got on the bus to get home."

SOME NON-FICTION SUBJECTS IN MY PUBLISHED WRITING PORTFOLIO

As a non-fiction generalist, I write about a wide range of subjects, although I am drawn to cinema-related topics.  Here are some examples over the past ten years or so.

On actor Stephen Boyd

On family matters

On Northern Irish humour columnists

On singer/songwriter David McWilliams

On the golden age of television

On actor James Ellis's short stories

On the closure of British Home Stores (BHS)

On my education

On the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC)

On an old Belfast tourism guide book

On Hollywood's biblical epic movies

On the 1959 film, Ben-Hur

On a 2019 trip to Japan

On autograph collecting

On famous people born on Christmas Day

On Coco the Clown

On actor/comedian Birdy Sweeney

On broadcaster/writer Alan Whicker

On early Hollywood star Thelma Todd

On actor Eddie Byrne

On actor Burt Lancaster

On homelessness and begging in Belfast

and more.

Researching and writing are probably the best fun of all.

Any features editors out there who would like to commission a piece, please contact me at joecushnan@aol.com I will consider any subject. Word count and fee both welcome.

FATHER TRIVIA

My father, for a short while, was a tailor,

not a job that suited him, if you'll pardon me,
but some nights he'd bring home triangular chalk,
the sort that marked cloth, the sort that was a toy to me.

It was velvety to the touch, not like stick chalk,
but great fun on a black or purple writing pad.
I remember little of importance about him
but I recall odds and ends, the trivia of my Dad.

 

 

GULP - A LOVE POEM

💔

My boyfriend swallowed an abacus,

It’s too long to go into why,

He seems a little weird to outsiders

But, though a little bit strange, he gets by.

I love him, I love him, I love him,

I love him in huge amounts,

Whatever this abacus has done to him,

It’s what’s inside that counts.

MOUNTAIN MIST

It is too easy to allow mountain mist to give permission

At times of grief, in grief, because of grief, to influence

And encourage thoughts of God’s winter breath, of angels

Forming a shroud of gauze, of spirits on pilgrimage, of wisdom

And poetic nonsense, when it is simply mountain mist.

But, you know,

Mountain mist is not the only mist.