A MAN who has written dozens of books in various styles – including back-to-front and completely in rhyme – has started a daily rhyming news blog.

Bernard Crewdson, from Maunby, near Thirsk in North Yorkshire, has long written verse and prose and published them since 1999, but since his recent retirement he wanted to do something different.

Mr Crewdson, who writes under the name Ebenezer Bean, has written a series of books in a system called zigzag speed reading, where he writes the lines forwards and backwards alternately, in order to allow to reading to skim pages.

He has also re-written a tongue-in-cheek version Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice as Rhyme and Prejudice, with the entire novel written in rhyming verse.

He said: “I wanted to continue writing but didn’t want the undertaking of a new book.

“So I decided to take one news article each day and re-write it in rhyme. It is a way of satirising events and injecting a bit of humour – I have covered a range of subjects from Brexit and Donald Trump to more trivial stories I pick up from local news.”

Mr Crewdson started Bean's Blogs in August and currently gets around 30 to 40 visits a day.

He said: “I haven’t written anything else since I finished Rhyme and Prejudice a couple of years ago, until August last year when I started to think about source material.

“Re-writing news stories seemed a good way of keeping up with the writing but without the commitment of writing a book.

“It is good fun too – sometimes it takes me several hours but sometimes I can write it fairly quickly. I don’t enjoy puzzles or crosswords, so this is just a good way of keeping my mind active.”

Mr Crewdson describes his poems as being like a daily cartoon published in many newspapers, as it is a humorous approach to one of the stories of the day.

He said: “There are things I wouldn’t write about, such as terrorism or the events in Syria, as I don’t think some things should be trivialised. But in general it is just a funny take on the day’s events, and often politicians lend themselves to being satirised.”

One of Mr Crewdson’s most recent poems is about a passenger in an airport lounge at Heathrow, who was reportedly told off for taking two tea bags instead of one.

“Excuse me, Sir, did you just take,

A teabag for your tea to make?

I saw you pick another up,

And also drop it in the cup.

We have a rule I am afraid,

Which sets out how tea should be made,

And as I’m telling you in rhyme,

It’s only one bag at a time.

The problem is twixt you and me,

We can’t supply tea duty-free,

We really would like to do that,

But someone has to pay the VAT.

We’ll count this time as a mistake,

So carry on your tea to make,

Then when it’s gone you can up stumps,

But don’t dare take two sugar lumps!”

Visit: https://ebenezerbean.wordpress.com/