There’s this photo.
I’m sitting in a huge wooden chair under a tree, surrounded by children, writing on a bookmark. It's just a moment — a quiet one — but what it doesn’t show is the 40-year journey behind it.
Because this isn't just any school.
It’s my primary school. Joanna Thornhill, in Wye.
The place where I first began — before I had any language for who I was.
I wasn't one of those kids with clear dreams or loud confidence. I was curious, yes. Always watching. But also quiet, unsure, a little lost. I didn’t know how to read the compass I carried inside. And like many of us, I spent years hiding in plain sight.
It’s taken decades — full of wandering, breaking, rebuilding — to understand that the compass was always there. I just didn’t know what it was pointing to.
But now? I think it was pointing home.
That chair under the tree was more than just a seat.
It was a threshold.
It marked the return.
Not just physically — but emotionally, poetically, spiritually.
Coming back to the place where it all started, this time as the #hobopoet.
As an author.
As someone about to finish a PhD — something I never thought possible when I was that small, unsure boy, who called himself Mot, sitting cross-legged in assembly.
Earlier this week, I was on a call with Michael, my business mentor — someone who’s not just helping me structure and grow what I do, but who’s quickly becoming a trusted friend and mirror. A light in the way I perceive and build myself as the #hobopoet as a social enterprise..
We didn’t talk spreadsheets or marketing funnels.
We talked about the wandering lamb,
about the butterfly farmer,
about emergence — and about love.
The kind of love that happens when you’re truly seen,
when you come back to where you started
and realise you never really left —
you were just becoming.
Michael reminded me of that old Nat King Cole song:
There was a boy, a very strange, enchanted boy...
The greatest thing you'll ever learn / is just to love and be loved in return.
That hit hard.
Because that’s what this has all been about.
So I wrote a little poem.
A gift to the school.
To the volunteers and the quiet hearts who show up year after year
to make the fairs what they are.
They reminded me of something simple but profound:
We don’t have to shine — we just have to share the light.
The Volunteer Heart
by the hobopoet
At the edge of a bunting-laced green, we appear—
not for praise, not for pay,
but for the pulse of it:
the pop of popcorn,
the glitter of face paint,
the thrum of laughter in a tombola breeze.
We bring what we can—
a tray of cakes, a fold-out table,
time carved from a busy life
with no expectation
but joy.
Here, the heart learns a different beat:
not profit, not pride,
but presence—
a hand held out to hang a sign,
a smile shared with a stranger
who somehow feels like kin.
This is the magic:
a field becomes a fair,
a day becomes a memory,
a school becomes a village
where kindness wears no badge,
only sticky fingers
and sun-warmed faces.
We come not to shine
but to share the light.
This was a homecoming.
The kind that doesn’t need fanfare.
Just presence.
Just love.
And as for the #PhDofWhat — well, it’s still nearly done.
But whatever it becomes, I’ll carry this moment with me:
A wooden chair.
A group of kids.
A poem.
And the boy I used to be, finally resting in the man I’ve become.
The #hobopoet