Writing a meaningful synopsis is the hardest part of the book. The stories and poems were generated by thoughts in my mind that, if ever they were going to arrive at some closure, needed to be consigned to paper. I was often away a lot, staying in motels and this helped to pass the time. What came out were scribbled in old exercise books, even on the paper napkins in some outback restaurant, some bore the dampness from a pub bar. I laboriously one-fingered some on an ancient Royal portable typewriter I inherited from my Mother. It has since suffered a dunking in the 2011 Brisbane flood. I have restored it as well as I could but it is difficult, nigh impossible to buy typewriter ribbon. Children of school age cannot believe that it is how we produced documents. The road these stories have travelled has been arduous, through much white-out and the wilds of learning a word-processor. They have suffered the indignity of Optical Character Recognition and only that they were saved to a disc would now be just so much land-fill. This book is dedicated to all of us who do not march to the usual drum. Enjoy.