Biography & Memoir on Tall And True

When you deal with nonfiction you deal with human characters. ~ Marya Hornbacher

Tall And True showcases the nonfiction and other writings of writer and podcaster Robert Fairhead. Guest Writers are also invited to share and showcase their writing on the website.

My Comic Book Job by Poloniousmonk - Comic Con

My Comic Book Job by Poloniousmonk

Dear World, I got my first "real" job when I was fifteen. My mother was a high school guidance counselor and one of the English teacher's husband half-owned a comic book store and needed help. She asked my mother to hang a sign in the guidance office and moms grabbed it for me. It's always who, not what you know.

I Used to be an Animal Lover by D.A. Cairns

I Used to be an Animal Lover by D.A. Cairns

It was basically me and Mum and then a couple of years later my sister joined us. Dad was around, but not much. I could say because of his infrequent appearances at home except to eat and sleep that I don’t remember anything about him, but I could say the same about Mum and she was with me twenty-four seven.

5 Year Old Self

Memories and Imagination

The writer John Banville observed, "Memory is imagination, and imagination is memory. I don't think we remember the past, we imagine it." I have vivid memories of my early childhood (I believe they're memories, not imagination), which is why the #5YearOldSelfie challenge on social media caught my eye.

New Year's Fireworks 2019

New Year Memories

I've kept daily diaries and travel journals since my backpacking mid-twenties. When the smoke from the New Year fireworks cleared on the TV this year, I put away my 2018 diary and opened a new one for 2019, my 33rd year of diaries. It got me wondering where and how I'd spent the New Year since 1987.

Xmas Day 1976

Sixteen Xmas Memories

Unlike my son, born in the era of digital cameras and phones, there are few photos of me from my childhood years and fewer of me as a teenager. I have one with my mother and two brothers, taken on Xmas Day 1978 when I was a surly long-haired sixteen-year-old. *Gulp*, my son is sixteen this Xmas!

The Changing of the Guard - Two World Wars

Memories of my Pop

When I was five-years-old, my parents separated, and my little brother and I went to live with our grandparents. While our Nan embraced her two young grandsons with warm grandmotherly arms, our Pop could be standoffish and a little scary, especially when he was angry with a couple of "naughty boys".

Vietnam War Books Collection

A Perth Boy's Perspective on the Vietnam War

As a kid growing up in Perth, Western Australia, in the 1960s and 1970s, I didn’t learn about the Vietnam War from classroom history lessons. Vietnam and the broader Indochina conflict was on our radio and TV news every morning and evening. And it was front-page headlines in our daily newspapers.

Bench for Queens Park Dog Walkers

Queens Park Dog Walkers

One morning in 2001, I saw Amy, the yellow lab in Queens Park with her owner, “The bloke with a beard”. He told me that ‘John had died’ and ‘Amy was missing him’. It took a few moments before I realised he was talking about a fellow dog walker, “The old bloke who walked Amy the lab for his neighbour”.

Diaries 1987-2018

32 Years of Diaries

My travel journals are typically student exercise books, with each day's sights and highlights recorded over two or more pages. Daily diaries of work and everyday life are less exciting. And it took me many years to settle on a format to jot down the day's events without feeling like it was a chore.

IKEA Store

The Road To Hell Was Built With An Allen Wrench

In December of 2012, I told a friend I actually enjoyed a bottle of Barefoot Sparkling Wine, but the guy turned out to be an informant for the League of Very Relevant Wine Bloggers, who subsequently banned me from writing about wine for 40 months.

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