Rob Mc Farlane first saw the light of day in Wales, the product of a Scottish and Irish union. Raised in Scotland in the east end of Glasgow, he excelled in sciences at school and earned a place at university.

Move the clock forward 30 years and work circumstances took Rob to the village of St Boswells in the Scottish Borders. There he was told the local legend of Thomas the Rhymer who was abducted by the faery queen and given the gift of verse. One evening quite by chance Rob came upon the Rhymer’s Stone and touched it for good luck.

He began to write small verses to accompany gifts, however, a gift of herbs to a colleague, accompanied by a narrative poem on herb usage, started the ball rolling. The colleague’s wife, a renowned journalist with a Scottish Sunday paper, wrote back encouraging him to keep writing and dubbed him “Rob the Rhymer”. A pseudonym that has stuck ever since.

Rob works as a Quality Manager for Network Rail and writes quirky comic verse in a style he calls “Shaggy Doggerel”.