Weight Loss Fast and Safe: 10 Golden Steps to weight loss that work 1. Clear...

Weight Loss Fast and Safe:  10 Golden Steps to weight loss that work 1. Clear...:   10 Golden Steps to weight loss that work  1. Clear out all junk food 2. Weigh yourself 3. Find a diet buddy 4. Sit down for meals 5. Get a...

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Locked Down Bubbling Up on the airwaves

 Today I was interviewed by Alan Corcoran of East Coast Radio in County Wexford about our new book Locked Down Bubbling Up. It contains new original short stories and poetry written during the Covid-19 pandemic and sought to capture how the virus impacted on all our lives. Its the perfect gift for family and friends as its stories are not just about Covid-19 but were written during the past year. There is plenty of comedy and lightness of touch along with moving moments that catch the reader by surprise. I read the first part of Lesley’s poem “Lockdown” and I believe it went down very well.

The book opens by setting the scene for life in Ireland in January 2020 and then follows the lives of fictional characters whose stories are written in an entertaining easy to read manner. Its an enjoyable mix of styles and content as three very different writers interpret life in Ireland in their own unique ways and the content was written as the year progressed so reflecting the publics changing attitude to life under lockdown. The book also contains carefully selected quotations that compliment and lead into the following stories and poems. With twenty-eight new pieces and c190 pages of reading you get good value for your money.

Click here to listen to the interview

To buy a hard copy from a book shop – visit The Book Centre in Wexford Town €12

To buy a hard copy and get free delivery €13 – Book Depository

To buy a soft copy Kindle / Amazon €3 – click here

So far the book has received eight five-star reviews and its only been on release since 2nd November. Click here to visit Amazon for five of them (page down Amazon page)

A bloody walk in the evening

We finished our day in isolation with a walk to the top of the road. Since the arrival of summertime, the sun was still high in the sky at 7:00 pm.

Unusually we then pushed on a further few yards. As this road is normally a busy road, being the main road into the village, I kept Buttons on his lead and we stuck close to the verge. The walk was uneventful for the first hundred yards. Then we walked past a hedge that bordered the road for some distance. Suddenly Buttons yanked the lead and leapt headfirst into a small gap in the hedge. That was all it was, a small gap just large enough to take his head. He couldn’t get further in despite his hind legs manically driving forward and raising a hail of dust and stones.

Taken completely by surprise it took me a few seconds to react. I pulled hard on the lead and dragged the struggling dog back onto the road. There was blood gushing onto the tarmac from his mouth.

“He’s got something in his mouth” exclaimed Mary and with that he dropped a hand-sized rat which lay twitching on the road.

It wasn’t obviously bleeding but it lay there shaking a leg but unable to move further. Meanwhile, Buttons, our black part Collie part-King Charles, stood jaws open and dripping blood. I thought he’d been bitten by the rat as it tried to escape him.

A trail of blood fell from his face as we turned on our heels and headed for home. Glancing back I saw the rat had ceased any movement and lay on his side, his long tail limp, his eyes staring into the distance.

We made plans as we walked and we stopped again to check Button’s mouth. He looked fine but still, blood hung from his whiskers. Our black rat killer trotted along obediently and appeared even to have forgotten the bloodletting from minutes earlier.

When home I tied him up to a table leg. We gowned up and I slipped on a pair of disposable gloves. We gave him water which he drank eagerly and then I prized open his mouth and examined it expecting to see a cut lip or an absent tooth. No, nothing. He looked fine. We gave his mouth a disinfectant rinse and sacrificed a toothbrush and some toothpaste to boot. Finally, we threw a bucket of water over his head and dried him off.

So we own, not just a soft lap-sitting dog who is good with children but an

Sifting through a forgotten past

Finally, the day came, the last day, the day that wiped the final traces of my parent’s existence off the face of the planet. The day, we, their sons had to clear the house before the sale legally completed and the new owners moved in and with builders made the house their dream home.

It had been their dream home 60 years. Mum had left her parent’s house upon marrying in 1954 and moved into this newly built bungalow. She and my father were so happy together in  “Madonna” no. 34 Merville Road that they never moved again, except to the graveyard.

So today it was a case of keep or chuck and my youngest brother had made a head start on the job.

Walking up the short driveway I saw an object that once a year had pride of place in the house and now lay cast and unloved on the wet driveway. The Christmas tree and decorations, that until that morning stood for months each year in their sitting room. I knew it straight away from it’s old fashioned wirey green branches and plastic leaves. Lying next to the dissembled tree parts were the plastic multicoloured lights and kitsch decorations, bought in the ’60s that look pretty ordinary now.

I picked up the small plastic reindeer with the Disney “Bambi” appearance, her short pert tail covered in gold sparkle.

How many happy years had she hung in that front room, surrounded by sparkling lights, presents at her feet and the warmth from the real coal fire that burned furiously in the open fireplace opposite?

How many Christmas’s had she watched over as we opened our presents, watching as we grew from tiny kids to huge adults?

When we reappeared along with our children?

How did she feel the first Christmas he wasn’t there, 2004?

When she died in 2012 the tree remained packed in its box unopened. A year when Christmas bypassed the house left unoccupied and up for sale. How did it feel to be unwanted after 60 years of bringing joy and happiness?

As I crouched over the tree and Christmas past I saw the wood from the shelving and cabinet unit he lovingly built for her. When in situ it ran the length of the wall, a good 20 feet and 15 feet tall, with a dark brown mahogany finish, gold handles and glass. He was so good with his hands. As a child he used to get a copy of “Hobbies Weekly” in the 1940s, a practical journal on how to make model planes, boats and even a radio, using the basic materials available in those post-war years. He was great with the fretsaw and many were the black and white photograph that appeared in newspapers of the day of a young unnamed lad proudly holding a large model plane he’d just completed. The pictures would appear in newspapers because his dad was a professional photographer and on slow news days he filed them to fill the space.

Further along, the driveway lay bags and bags of old letters and bills but one bag contained a box of colour slides. It set me on a hunt for the rest of the slides and before long I had gathered several boxes of family pictures taken by Dad through the 1960s and 1970s and saved as slides. I found the slide projector too. I loaded all into the back of my car. Colour slides projected onto plain walls bring people in them alive so much more than photographs ever can. Don’t you agree?

Walking around the emptied house and garden for the last time ever is an unforgettable experience. By the time they died we were all over 40 and had our own partners and homes. Where could we put my parent’s furniture?

It wasn’t easy to make space for an eight-seat dining room table & chairs, a leather couch set of 3 and a sideboard but I have a loving wife who had adopted my parents as her own and so readily accommodated me.

Seven years on I still have a room of memories in my house that has yet to be emptied.

The day will come.

A Children's story for five year olds

Is that a Yeti Dad? is a new short story published just in time for Christmas 2019.

A tale of winter confusion when Grandad is mistaken for a yeti and adults are slow to react.

It's just the perfect read for the five-year-old who has an unlimited interest in all things pooh related and because it sounds rude he uses the word all the time. 

This story is humorous but also carries a few good health tips. 

For 99p this little rude book hits the spot.https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B082GK6JHF

A day at sea

Today was another sunny, cloudy, sunny day on the windy decks of our ship. 

Sitting on the sun lounger I listen to the waves breaking across the ship’s bow and felt the steady reassuring hum of the ships five engines that vibrate the metal of the promenade deck itself. In the distance the sun shimmers on the rippling deep blue waves until it slips temporarily behind a cloud. Moments later it reappears, as strong and bright as before. Cruising along at 20 knots, the raging wind rocks the blue towels back and forth on the empty loungers threatening to sweep them clean over the rails and far out to sea.

To my right sit row upon row of pale white-skinned fellow passengers, eyes hidden behind dark sunglasses that look unseeingly into the middle distance. White thin wires run to their ears from the phones lying on their laps, relaying presumably music or audiobooks or both. Heads are generally protected by tipped caps.

Snatches of conversation drift my way on the breeze.

“Thou better put thine lotion on Harold” spoke one caring Northern lass “less ye be a beetroot by teatime.”

Listening to the conversations of others is something I shamelessly do and on this cruise, the accents are predominantly from the North of England, Liverpool, Manchester, Crewe and Hull. I just love the range of accents and colloquialisms. “All right me chuck?”, “Can I help you mi-duck”, “You aren’t half daft” to quote just a few.  

I feel the heat on my naked bare arms and legs so I whip out the sun lotion factor 50 and generously spread it on my limbs. The lotion glistens on my skin before sinking into the freckled cells. The wind catches the upper left corner of this page flapping it back and forth as I write.

New crime fiction for the bookworm you know will devour them

I dropped into one of my favourite book shops in Wexford Town and signed some copies of my two crime novels. So if anyone wants an entertaining page-turning read then you need look no further. The Book Centre is just doors away from Boots and Pennys/ Primark.

If you want a Kindle copy of either book click o the links below and if you live further afield then click on the links below for a paperback copy.


Click here for the US Kindle version

Click here for the UK Kindle version

Click here for the US Paperback version

Click here for the UK Paperback version