Steve McRobb's Home Page

pensive Steve

Music

The output of an obscure singer/songwriter, in home demos and professional recordings. New material added as it becomes available.

Writing Photography and travel Wendy's life My politics blog (seemed like a good idea at the time...) My climate change blog Contact

Who am I?

Me flat on the snow

Amateur musician: bass player; guitarist; singer; songwriter.

Photographer. Poet. Traveller. Hiker. Rubbish skier. Unsuccessful glider pilot. Bird watcher. Reader. Theatre and cinema goer.

Great-grandfather (and grandfather, and so on). Husband (for the second time). Widower.

Retired lecturer in Information Systems. Used to be a Local Government officer, National Park administrator, gardener, labourer, lab technician...

Instinctive social democrat. Lifelong Labour supporter. Remain voter

Labour member of Rutland County Council. (While RCC still exists...)

Concerned about: social inequality, damage to the environment, threats of climate change.

Creative writing

Mostly poetry, some prose, much of the later stuff about losing Wendy and how life can move on after a bereavement.
It's collected over here, but here's a couple of samples:-

Somebody's Gone

{This one is really best read aloud}

Somebody's gone in the night
And she will not come again
Her necklaces hang from the mirror still:
Amber beads and abalone shell
This cowry on its silver chain
That lay at her breast for years
—So we make beauty from what once was alive

Somebody's gone in the night
And she will not come again
Her photo smiles from the old pine chest
She found discarded in the coal-house
Stripped away the yellowing paint, replaced
Cracked plastic handles with new brass
Waxed and buffed the wood to an antique shine
—So she made beauty from what once was unloved

Somebody's gone in the night
And she will not come again
All future time spreads endless beneath the sky
And she is not in it
Yet the world is touched in every detail
By her hand, by her thought
I measure my worth most in her love for me
And measure hers in the ways she taught me to see
—So she made beauty from what once was unknown

Somebody's gone in the night
And she will not come again
—Only her beauty, the beauty she lived, remains
Kathmandu stupa

Loss

White bracts of bougainvillea drop
Gently to the lawn after the rain, and sadness
Fills me, unexpectedly. By now my love's three

Thousand miles away, she gazes rapt at the
Harsh sunlit deserts of the Silk Road
While I sit surrounded by ripening pomegranates

And prayer flags. But this pain springs from another
Separation, one not healed by such trivial arrangements
As a long-haul flight and the anticipated happy reunion.

Academic publications

I used to write for work - a bestselling textbook on object-oriented systems analysis and design (currently in its 4th edition) and a series of academic journal and conference papers. I don't do that academic journal and conference stuff any more, but here's my latest list of publications (downloads as a pdf).

Photography

Most of my more recent photographs are here. Includes virtually every photo I ever took of Wendy, and holidays, trips and hikes since about 2007; birds and animals from several continents; friends and family.

A few older photos (35mm scans) of trips to interesting parts of the world are here.

Music

I play bass and guitar and sing, and write some of my own material. Some of my home demos are here (mostly my songs, plus a couple of favourite covers). Two versions of my elegy for Wendy (Miss You) are here: an early GarageBand solo version, and the full Jewellers Eye studio version featuring Wendy's voice.

Jeweller's Eye are now pretty much retired, but you can still buy tracks off three of our CDs here on Bandcamp.

I currently play bass with LTD, an offshoot of the Rutland U3A acoustic group. I also perform solo as a singer and songwriter, and I'm currently recording some of my own material with a group of friends at Adam Ellis's (a href="https://www.deadlinestudios.co.uk/">Deadline Studio in Leicester. Watch this space for results when they get to final mix stage. We're not a gigging band, or not yet, at any rate. But who knows what's still to come?

Wendy's life

In October 2007, my lovely wife Wendy died of secondary melanoma. She was just 62, and had only recently retired. I began writing this blog as a way of sharing memories with family and friends. Over the years it has evolved into more than just a record of her life and my grief at losing her.

Contact

Email the owner (be nice!)