Layla Dru, how do you do?

It was 19.20 when I first saw you

You can’t be sad at Christmas

Because that’s not what I want for you

You can’t change your life without taking action

And action is why I had to leave you

But you know that I’m coming back again

So no need for you to feel blue

I wrote this poem on a bar stool

Felix wrote a poem on a hill

You can’t escape the present moment

Because that’s the only thing that’s real

We’ll keep matching forward like the Romans

Because the Romans never knew when they were through

When you told me you were never giving up

I knew I wouldn’t too.

For Layla, London, 24th December 2021

Layla, my daughter, was scared of putting her head under the water when she was a toddler, however one day she told me that even though she was scared, she wasn’t giving up and just did it anyway while I was holding her in the swimming pool! I’m still inspired by that, all these years later and thats how I roll now!

I wrote this at Christmas when I had left Cape Town to move back to England to study nursing. It was a tough time. I was separated from my children, my business had been destroyed by the lockdown and I had no money. I didn’t even have my beloved dogs, because they were stuck in kennels somewhere! It was a period of rebuiding and it was just the beginning of a long road, but, just like my daughter, I didn’t give up!