UNKNOWN

Rhyme and Reason is a collection of short stories, limericks and poems. Many are funny, some are tragic and some are fiction, Some comment on politics and current events, but most are snippets of lives of real people that are either amusing

or interesting.

In the tiny hamlets of Wollombi and Dooralong,

in rural New Sout Wales, where the author farmed for a time, lived old people, whose stories are from an era when story-telling was the entertainment, now almost totally replaced by commercial TV, streaming, and mega shows in huge auditoria.

These characters had the space and freedom to

be eccentric and unique, in an era that we will not see again, more's the pity. The author was privileged to be there, to listen, then later, reproduce some of their stories for posterity - an honour indeed.

Stafford Ray was born into a deeply religious, fundamental Exclusive Brethren family, where access to music and reading should have been limited to classics, hymns, the Bible and other religious texts, but his maternal grandmother, Eusebia, an Internationalist, thought otherwise. His father encouraged his interest in music. By fourteen, he was reading the Complete Works of Shakespeare and at sixteen was introduced to Charles Darwin at Parramatta High School. Darwin was smuggled in and read in secret, but so began an intense interest in science and how things really worked, along with the drive to write. Trained as a teacher, but already recognised as a musician, composer and arranger, he was in heavy demand in Sydney recording studios and on television, back when TV stations had their own orchestras. When there was time, he began writing musical plays for classroom use and is currently developing a drama-based literacy program that could revolutionise how reading is taught.His first novel Cull was conceived as a play, set in the White House, in which much the same scenario was to be planned, but his daughter, Julia, a gifted teacher, advised him to use the novel form to tell the story because, as she said: "Dad! Nobody reads plays and this story needs to be told!"