You Are Not Alone

A collection of honest, vulnerable poems written from the perspective of a heart-broken nurse. Through faith, and by taking one day at a time, she learns to overcome her struggle with mental health and faith, and to finally accept that it’s okay to not be okay. Through a mixture of written poetry, hand-illustrated artwork and photography, You Are Not Alone examines experiences and understandings of struggles with mental health from multiple angles and aesthetic mediums, drawing to the surface the rich emotional details of our inner lives.

By turns, a riveting exploration of mental health, the importance of seeking help, guidance and reassurance, and a profound reflection on the challenges of faith in God through meditations on scripture and prayer, these poems will help readers to better understand their own struggles and to find a path to happiness and to God.

You Can't Beat a Good Laugh

When a man opens the car door for his wife, it’s either a new wife or a new car.

Sit back, relax, and enjoy some of the funniest jokes and one-liners ever told.

After reading some of these hilarious jokes you will realise that you can’t beat a good laugh.

You Don't Have to Be a Champion... to Be a Winner!

From fitting wheels to wheelbarrows in a builders’ merchant, Brian rapidly climbed the business ladder and became a Xerox salesman. He was unaware that the professional selling skills he was learning would one day propel him into the glamorous and overtly commercial world of F1.

A disastrous debut at a racing driver school was the spark that lit his passion for motor racing. Aware of the need for some serious financial backing to be able to take part, Brian embarked on a variety of highly innovative and often extremely entertaining ways of securing sponsorship, including working with the cast of a top 1970s’ BBC sit-com, as well as with John Cleese, of Monty Python fame.

A chance meeting on a plane with Max Mosley offered an opportunity of managing one of the most popular F1 Grand Prix circuits. This, in turn, led to the heady heights of a factory drive for Mercedes and the establishment of South Africa’s first racing driver school.

It was only a matter of time before Brian’s exceptional sponsorship-acquisition skills took him to F1, where he quickly made a name for himself by securing multi-million pound deals with three of the most sought after global corporations.

However, Brian’s greatest achievement in motorsport was to establish the Motorsport Industry Association in 1994, in a bid to secure government recognition of the industry in its own right. Once again, Brian’s sales skills played a key role.

Without ever becoming a household name as a motor racing champion, Brian’s story of how he most definitely became a winner is not only inspirational, but highly entertaining, amusing, often irreverent and informative.

You Don’t Have to Be a Champion... to Be a Winner is the story of Brian Sims, who left school in 1963 with just 5 GCE O-Levels and a shattered dream of following in his father’s footsteps as a Royal Air Force pilot.

Young Samuel, An Ancient Story Retold

Can you imagine a time many hundreds of years ago when you slept on a pallet on the floor, ate fruit, yoghurt and flatbread that your mother baked in a small outdoor adobe oven, and you travelled everywhere by foot or donkey back?

Come along with me on this journey to this far-off time and land and watch young Samuel begin an extraordinary life that can still affect people today. His story might even make a difference in your life. Who knows? Would you like to see for yourself?

Your Face My Light: Maurice Zundel, the Gospel of Man

Maurice Zundel (1897-1975), Swiss writer, priest and theologian, addresses himself not only to practising believers but to all those who, in a humanity and a Church in crisis, are seeking for a transcendent meaning or purpose to existence. Marginalised by the Catholic Church for his unorthodox, modernist views which present the individual as the source of his own freedom and becoming. Zundel's existential approach to 'being' is complemented by a profound spirituality of interiority and discovery of one's 'person' as the route to true encounter with the 'other'. The 'self' is also the 'creative source' which seeks itself through creative and artistic endeavour. These multiple facets of a theology attuned to the modern world and psyche, combined with a strong ecumenism embracing Islam encountered through long periods in Egypt and Lebanon, have ensured Zundel a huge following. Yet he is hardly known in the English-speaking world. The present book seeks to fill this void. It combines an introduction to Zundel's thinking by reference to his life and person with an analysis of selected extracts from his work translated by the author into English.

Yuck! Food is from where...?

On each of the adventures, our characters get caught up in situations sometimes exciting, sometimes dangerous, and sometimes comical. Along with a host of other interesting characters attached to their adventures, these stories are written to help introduce children to a new way of looking at something that may ordinarily present a challenge. The adventures attached to discovering new tastes will have the reader and listener alike drawn into what happens next as both fun and danger await our brother and sister trio on their quest for information about how our food is grown and produced.

Yummy for My Tummy

Imagine a shop that sells the most delicious treats that one can only dream about.

A magical shop that is not easy to find and only appears in certain places around the world and only for a short amount of time.

Billy the bunny has been searching and searching for such a store.

One, he has heard, sells the most amazing carrot pie.

A pie so good that he is willing to travel for miles around so he might one day get to try it.

He finally finds what he has been looking for after many adventures. But will it live up to his expectations…?

Yvonne, Child of the Somme

Yvonne Millet was born into poverty in Paris during La Belle Époque, in the shadow of Notre-Dame cathedral. Taken to a childminder in the countryside a few days after birth, she became a ward of state at the age of three when her mother disappeared. A stable childhood in the beautiful Somme region of northern France was shattered when, aged fifteen, she was sent to work as a maid in a military town, during the First World War. Her devastating experiences would change her life and haunt her forever.

As a troubled young woman facing a precarious future, chance led Yvonne to marry a former British soldier. Hopes of fulfilment with a husband and family were marred by profound insecurities and the Second World War.

A moving, true account of one girl’s formative years in early 20th century France, Yvonne, Child of the Somme is also the story of thousands of children like her, who shared a similar fate. Most were too ashamed of their background ever to reveal their heart-rending stories. The echoes of their pain reverberated down the generations, unexplained.

‘Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.’

― Søren Kierkegaard, Danish Philosopher, 1813-55

Zak and Rory's Toughest Journey

Having left the Mediterranean Sea, Zak and Rory continue their adventures and travels towards New Zealand. Along the way they meet Zak’s family and a new friend, Rodger the Leatherback Turtle, and encounter a huge natural disaster. The duo and Rodger help a human sailing family fight a monster from the deep. They assist them in getting to safety on a nearby island. Having survived a natural disaster and fighting monsters from the deep, the duo leaves to fight for Zak’s life against the most skilful and the worst of monsters they encounter—humans. Zak is relentlessly chased by whalers who want to kill him. However, Rory saves the day so he and Zak can continue on to New Zealand.

Zanadu

What do you get when you combine a phonetically spelt outback station, a sarcastic ex-Detective with the last name Standononeleg, a tag-a-long named Duncan and a clapped out old ute?

A Queenslander’s idea of humour, a sheep or two and a kangaroo, too many cups of tea, and a murder most foul (and covered in red dust. Everything is covered in red dust there. Check your grundies).

You will need to read the rest of the story or the author will make me cark it in the next one.

Zattere Agli Incurabili

This is a new kind of poem: a cross between a haiku and a limerick. Think too hard about each one and you may wish you hadn’t. Pass merrily over them and you might have a good laugh or feel slightly sick.

Some are specific to today’s interesting times. Others delve into eternal unpleasantness. Or seek to answer the unanswerable.

Menacing, fun, obscure or chilling – read them in any order. It’s your choice.

Try your hand at writing one and you might find it difficult without a lifetime addiction to doggerel verse.

Zeeglit's Quest

Zeeglit is a young moogle. And what, you may ask, is a moogle? Well, moogles live on the three layers of the clouds. Zeeglit and his family live on the Nimbostratus, the lowest of these layers, and our story begins with a prophecy of travel and danger.

A short while later our hero sets out on a quest travelling between the cloud layers via moonbeams, ice surfing with new friends, taking a thrilling ride on the jet stream and meeting many strange and weird creatures – some friendly, some not!

However, his real troubles begin when he meets the notorious thordites who also live in the cloud lands. Zeeglit suddenly finds himself leading a daring rescue mission for moogles kidnapped by the enemy.

‘Now!’ yelled Zeeglit as the sun reached its peak and beams of light bounced off each jewelled face and reflected in the deep crystal water below. Coils of rope snaked their way from above into the cavern and as if one, the moogles below stood and advanced towards them.