Reg grew up in East Africa, coming to the UK to train for the Merchant Navy.  He is a Master Mariner and after sailing on cargo ships and tankers came ashore as a pilot, working in oil terminals.  He is a retired marine consultant and has lived in Ross-shire since 1998. Reg was a founding member of Ross-shire Writers, setting up the group with others, after taking a WEA Creative Writing Course led by local author Cynthia Rogerson.

(Reg's story continued by Louise ...) In 2022 Reg suffered a stroke but with his customary determination  has never given up and worked tirelessly on his recovery. He has continued to attend Ross-shire Writers regularly, often bringing pieces from his extensive archive of prose and poetry. Although he struggles to express himself at times, he is not deterred and amazes us with his optimism.

The following piece was written by Reg recently, recounting his lfe-changing experience of having a stroke. 

What Seems to be the End is Really a New Beginning

This marks the end of a time in my life that I will never see again, and I will now begin a new chapter in my life I couldn’t write or talk to begin with, but I’m so lucky that I can read. People have many different types of strokes and some find it very difficult to recover and cannot work.

That’s now over three years and nine months since I had my stroke but now I’m slowly getting better. Unfortunately I have ‘Aphasia*’ which means I find it very difficult to talk and write. But again, the brain has wonder and helps form new paths, and I see the recovery is coming.

* Aphasia (also called dysphasia) is a condition that makes it difficult to communicate. It can make it hard to speak, read, write and understand others. 

Here's a piece written by Reg a few years ago about one of his favourite landscapes. 

The Sound of Silence

 How does one define silence? I suppose someone who is profoundly deaf would know, but surely he or she must experience some noise, if only inside the head. We can perhaps find it up in the mountains far away from any one, or again in the silence of a church, that indefinable essence when you first enter looking through the gloom to the altar, light streaming through the stained glass windows. The only sound then from your footsteps carefully put down when moving to peer at the memorial inscriptions. 

 For me though, it’s the desert. Deep in the sands and crags of the jebels with mile upon mile of sheer emptiness that stretches from horizon to horizon, shimmering in sunlight from a cobalt blue sky, and not a whisper of sound. There a silence exists that is so profound that it deafens one, gazing in wonder, apparently the only living thing and an intrusion in itself. 

The desert is not only made of sand, there are wind blown  dunes – sandseas, large tracts of sparse sandy ground covered with bushes, long stretches of salt flats known as sebca  and wind carved jebels guarding depressions.

Life is there though, perhaps in the distance a gazelle might be spotted or spiny lizards. Suddenly out of the utter desolation appears a butterfly, flying in lazy loops, until settling on scrub bush. How in God’s name can that be? 

One stands in awe, a tiny speck in God’s creation – an insignificant being, filled with the sound of nothingness.