John Barnard

I rolled over in bed. It was a Sunday in April. Rays of early morning sunlight came falling in through the window blinds and splashed her bare back and the sheets with a deep, early dawn gold. I sat there in silence and listened to her breathing softly.. in and out and in again. I was ready for a pot or fresh coffee and the dog was stretching in the corner. I looked around the room, taking it all in and I felt momentarily at peace. I love mornings. That time when the world is slowly waking up and you still…

“It was good while is lasted”

“Last night I didn’t sleep at all

found another empty wall

I couldn’t get past it

  And for a minute in the afternoon

  I almost didn’t think of you

  It was good while it lasted”

        Jason Isbell

A soft Autumn rain came down on the farm this morning. As a thick layer of Nimbostratus came rolling in from the South  the nearly forty year old Massey Ferguson rumbled and rattled, puffing thick black diesel smoke as it laboured under the weight of the last heavy hay bales we were…

Night is falling over the city and I’m staring out my apartment window at the Persian Gulf, turning a deep purple as the last light of day surrenders to the curve of the earth  and spills over the surface of the water like a thousand diamonds strewn across a blue blanket. My coffee table lay covered in pieces of coffee-stained scraps of paper and writing journals all holding snippets of potential lyrics and song ideas I’ve collected over the last few very eventful months in the desert. On my television I’ve…

“I've seen fire and I've seen rain
 I've seen sunny days that I thought would never end
I've seen lonely times when I could not  find a friend
But I always thought that I'd see you, one more time again. “

      - Fire and Rain - James Taylor

On the last day of 2024 I woke up groggy from poor, interrupted sleep. Having been part of some sort of shift work for the better part of thirty years it was a familiar feeling and I knew I’d be okay by mid-morning provided that I got a NATO round of coffee in me as soon as…

The fully loaded Boeing  787 Dreamliner banked low over the Persian Gulf and the lights of Doha rolled into view. The city lay stretched out like a stroke of golden paint smeared across the early morning desert. The silver moonlight was dancing off the soft ripples on the water and I felt the same nervous apprehension I have felt many times before approaching a strange city in a foreign country. The anticipation of new experiences, running arrival  logistics through my mind and anxiously fumbling around for…

We would wake up real early on cattle round up days. This particular day it was probably 3:30 am. I was sixteen, in the middle of final exams for the year and I was supposed to be studying but we had cattle to process and brand as well as calves to sort. We had to have an early start because the herd was about sixteen kilometres away on another section of leased land and they had to be pushed back to the main handling facility at Tygerfontein where all the necessary infrastructure and handling tools were…

The Final Attraction

Sundays on the farm are strange days. Especially for a family making its living off milking dairy cows and raising calves. Up at 3:30 am, we would round up the cows in the dark and bring them to the holding pen while my father and grandpa would start up the vacuum pump and run a quick cleaning cycle through the system before we attached the milking machines to the first team of eight cows, arranged in a herringbone formation for easy access. At Tygerfontein, dairy farming was part of my…

Have Love, Will Travel - Tom Petty

“You never had a chance, did you baby So good-looking, so insecure
And now you say you can't remember
When the lines you drew began to blur”

It was a crisp April evening and my friends and I were exchanging jokes and well natured profanities as we were unloading our sound equipment and guitars at the Kontrei Kombuis in Krakeelrivier. Situated in the magnificent Langkloof valley, Krakeel is a tiny settlement mainly consisting of farmers, teachers, shop owners and hardworking…

I bought a coffee to go at a tiny ice cream shop off the boardwalk close to the old Doha port. It was still sweltering hot but cooler, by comparison, than several days earlier when the thermometer topped out at a whopping fifty three degrees Celsius. The sun during those days looked like a flat white disc that threatened to incinerate anything it touched and everywhere people were hurrying to get out of the heat and humidity and into their cars and buildings. I found a deserted bench and stared out across…