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Pem Gerner

a truly renaissance man

  • Scholar and Educator
    • Post Architectural Qualifications
    • History of my university teaching
    • OAM for service to architectural education
  • Architecture/Design
    • Medium Scale Projects
      • Chittleborough’s Holiday House
      • DIRC
      • The King’s School Pavilion
      • CPS Tenancy
      • Salisbury Rail Bus Interchange
      • Adelaide Steamship
      • Barmera Homes
    • Very Large Projects
      • Australia Post Redfern
      • Grenfell Centre
      • Sun Alliance
      • Telecom Adelaide
    • Planning
      • Bandar Amanjaya
      • Marina Tanjung Tokong – Penang
      • Sydney Airport Rail Link
      • Liverpool Integrated City Development
    • Urban Design
      • Royal Hospital For Women
      • Liverpool Gateway
      • Redevelopment of Circular Quay
      • Acton Cottages Precinct ANU
  • Music
    • Early music career
    • Performance experience
      • Solo Piano
      • Duos – OPUS2
      • Trios
        • RPM
        • TRILOGY
        • TOFFS
        • GAIA – Le BAND
        • OLIMS
      • Quartets & Quintets
        • QUATTRO
        • JAM
        • The Blue Aces
      • Larger music groups
        • Adelaide Symphonic Wind Ensemble
        • The St Peters Concert Band
        • Max Ellis Double Clarinet Quintet
        • Eurobodalla Jazz Club (EJC and ELM)
    • Jazz history broadcasting
    • Music CV
    • Music Recordings
    • Music Publicity
  • Writing and Illustrating
    • Books and Illustrated Books
      • Architecture by Team (DEM)
      • Selection from ’80 Drawings’
      • Selection from ’90 Drawings’
    • Articles in Cityscape
      • Water Proofing Adelaide
      • Place and the Planning Regime
      • National Portrait Gallery – Canberra – A Critique
      • Instrument Makers Clusters
    • Poetry
      • Summer Evenings
      • Our Reality
      • Ideologies
      • This Land
    • Illustrations for other authors
      • Anne’s Holiday
      • Forked Lightening
      • Short Circuit
      • Amoora Trilogy
      • Liberating Limericks
  • Related Intersections
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Selection from ‘Liberating Limericks’

Although originally trained as a teacher Stafford enjoyed recognition as a musician, composer and arranger and was in demand in the Sydney recording and television studios in the days when TV stations had their own orchestras. During this time Stafford was bass player with the renowned Daly Wilson Big band but also intersected with other luminaries of this period such as Ricky May, Tommy Tycho and Eric Jupp and others.

When not involved in writing novels, plays, poems and limericks and with matters educational, Stafford remains deeply immersed in many aspects of creative musicianship and performance.

Stafford is also a fine novelist with two excellent published books Cull  (2014) and Australian Gulag – A Love Story (2016) to his credit.

He and Pem have teamed up musically and now in Liberating Limericks with Stafford’s saucy limericks and Pem’s whimsical drawings.

HER ROYAL ENFIELD

To take her pet dog for a spin,

She chose the five hundred twin.

It wasn’t the ‘Royal’

To which she was loyal

But rather, the gen’rous trade-in.

HANGING IN

I promised to be your sweetheart,

Through thick and thin, I’d play my part.

When going gets tough

Take the smooth with rough,

But I will let go if you fart!

RATS!

For eons and eons we’ve bin,

The source of disease within

All kinds of ships

But this is the pits –

We can’t even find our way in!

INNOVATION HAS ITS DOWNSIDE

If you must be a copycat, Pat,

Note that the last one went Splat!

So, go be a clown

But on the way down,

You’ll have to flap harder than that!

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