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Before we Begin


                  I had always hoped to have my father’s poems in one
                  place and to create a collection of memories, as he and
                  I had discussed before his passing in 1986. In 2020, I
                  began my project to collate his poems, printed here in
                  Now we are Young, Now we are Learning and Now we are
                  Older. From the birth of his first grandchild in 1979 to
                  Joe’s passing in 1986, he recorded his observations of life
                  – theirs and his own – in these verses.
                    Growing up with Grandpa takes us on a journey
                  through Joe’s grandchildren’s early years to the place
                  where he viewed his own life. His varied career spent as
                  an officer in the RAF, a secondary school English teacher
                  and a principal in further education, as well as his own
                  experience as a father and a grandfather, afforded him
                  the opportunity to observe the world around him. He
                  loved nature, music and the English language and his
                  humour and loving patience led him to notice even the
                  smallest of details. He wrote about the time Andrew had
                  mumps, Nicola fell over at school, and when Richard
                  went on holiday to Morocco. But he also wrote about
                  his own advancing life, and here we see his personal
                  experience as darkness slowly descended. He wrote
 The house in South Wales, illustrated here by J.W.W. Forsyth,  about the politics of despair and unrest of 1984, the
 is where Andrew Ross Wearmouth was born. It was a place of   importance of time, and the loss of loved ones.
 peace and tranquility.
                    In the poems printed here, Joe’s words give us an
                  insight into his life, his family and his last years.

                  Neil Forsyth, 2022







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