This week we lost an unlikely couple in John le Carre and Barbara Windsor. 2020 has already grimly reaped: Terry Jones, Ennio Morricone, Seamus Mallon, John Hume, Dave Prowse, Larry Gogan, Vera Lynn, Little Richard, Bill Withers, Eddie Van Halen, Sean Connery, Honour Blackman, Kirk Douglas, Alan Parker, Michel Roux Snr, Marian Finnucane, Nicolas Parsons, …
Visit a zoo anywhere in the world, and chances are you’ll see an elephant. Similarly, most museums will have Bronze Age spearheads. Galleries, however, are far more unique in their collections. You will only find: Vermeer’s Woman Writing a Letter, with her Maid, Degas’ Two Ballet Dancers in a Dressing Room, or Picasso’s Still Life …
I only ever fell out really badly with my Dad once. I came home from school declaring my love for Patrick Kavanagh. Mum, a lover of poetry, pulled out books with more of his work, delighted that I had found my way to Kavanagh. Dad got fed up listening to all this nonsense. ‘That fella!’ …
Last year I took a notion one day and joined Paul O’Halloran on his Foxrock Beckett Walking Tour, organised by Dun Laoighre Rathdown’s summer of heritage series. I had never read any of Samuel Beckett’s work, nor seen his plays, but I do have one link to him, we share a birthday. Though he was …
Today, we’re going on a nature walk with my good pal Judy. Many years ago, Judy ran a playschool but she has never been able, or some would say willing, to shake off that disposition. Ballawley Park in Dundrum was our destination, I brought the picnic, Judy brought the childlike wonder. Let me get a …
I met Lindara, I thought for the 1st time, when I arrived on her door over 10 years ago to join a creative writing group. She looked me up and down and said ‘I know you! You were one of my youth club leaders’. I’ll be honest I didn’t recognise her straight away, it had …
Sandymount Strand. Chances are each of us conjures up a different mental picture when we hear those words. That’s because she has more faces than a Rubik’s Cube, you just never know how you’re going to find her. On bright days you’ll see sun glinting off the water, or at low tide, you’ll witness a …
Perhaps I’ve given regular readers of this blog the false impression that I’m an avid cyclist. My bike has featured in several articles, so much so you could have drawn fanciful notions about my cycling abilities. It’s time to set the record straight. While I love my bike and the freedom it gives me, I …
Maybe you already know The Metals walk in Dun Laoighre, in case you don’t, here’s a little of its backstory. It was a pathway that linked the quarry in Dalkey to the harbour in Dun Laoghaire. Large slabs of granite from the quarry were pulled by horses down this truck railroad for the construction of …
By all accounts I was a very chatty child, too chatty going by the many sayings my father used to get me to pipe down. ‘A quarter of the talk Margaret’, was his mantra of choice, followed by ‘If there were prizes going for talking Margaret, you’d win them hands down’. But the one that …
Ordinary Plenty 