10 x 12 in, 260 x 300 mm, 34 pp monotype cast in Perpetua and handset in Broadway and various woodtype faces on Canaletto (210 gsm) paper, case-bound
in an edition of 100.

Based on the transcript taken from a tape recording of Fred Tohill reciting his poems and singing his songs. The book exhibits his eclectic range of mentors and influences from the works of Shelley and Robert Service, from Peggy Lee and Ella Fitzgerald to Frank Sinatra and Perry Como.

‘The poems and songs you are about to encounter have a long history. they have been heard many times but no one, not even their author, has ever read them before. Because until this book they have never been written down. They reposed complete in their construction, in the head of Fred Tohill, a latter day bard – sometime working man and seasoned drinker. Sired in bars and bleak bedsit rooms they tell of bawdiness and pleasure, of tenderness and pain, of love as it flourishes or fails to flourish. Like favourite volumes they are pulled out, dusted down, and handed around when the drink and the company are merry – or down and nearly out.’

Paul Bell, October 1993

In seeds of doubt is disquiet sown
in lack of thought benign
Is gossip grown.
Suspicion is the tutor of calumny
And want of charity the suitor of cant.
Malign and then malinger
When the finger inept
Points to talk
Where intelligence slept
Not to thinking
Where intellect’s kept.

Flings down the night
A velvet mantle
Spread with stars and shadows
Low and overhead.

Breaks now a voice that’s bittersweet
A voice that’s silent when we meet
Could not the Gods of fable
In their might
Have threaded sack to sable
Made it right.
Is there a winter tale to tell?
I counted stars till countless shadows fell.

Because I love you so it’s raining
Because I love you so
It keeps on raining.

I don’t know how to tell the time of day
Falling leaves and Autumn thieves my summertime
away
Because I love you so it’s raining.