Influences

Jamming with Croz' “Guinnevere had green eyes, like mine" ...Dreamspacing

The words of David Crosby move me in ways I find almost impossible to explain.

There are times when I listen to his music and marvel at a man who possessed such an extraordinary gift for turning thoughts, emotions and the complexities of being human into words.

I smile, I listen, and occasionally I despair at my own inability to reach anything approaching the heights of the wordsmith he was.

But perhaps that is the very essence of admiration. To recognise something so extraordinary that, despite knowing you may never equal it, you remain determined to try.

Peter Jones inspired me to become a writer. David Crosby reminds me of the writer I would dearly love to be.

One taught me to tell the story. The other taught me to feel it.

And somewhere between those two remarkable men, I continue searching for my own words."

Bridget Hammond

Peter Jones, the great Welsh sports commentator, was far more than a voice on the radio to me. He was my single guiding light towards becoming a sports journalist. I failed! ...... Badly !

I listened to him not simply for the results or the commentary, but for the way he could make you see the game through words alone.

There was intelligence in his observations, excitement without exaggeration, and above all a wonderful command of language.

He made sport feel important because he understood the people, the occasion and the story behind it.

As a young man with ambitions of becoming a sports journalist, I didn't merely admire Peter Jones I wanted, in some small measure, to emulate him.

I wanted to find words that could make somebody else see what I had seen and feel something of what I had felt.

I could never become another Peter Jones ....... !

There was only one.

But he set the standard I wanted to chase.

And perhaps that is the greatest influence one person can have upon another: he made me want to pick up a pen and discover whether I could tell the story too.

"And the sun shines now ! ".........

Eric J Cooper

Son of The Black Country

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