Don’t be fooled by the photograph: the horse and cart are rare beasts in the west of Ireland, and Galway is as full of fast-moving traffic as the rest of the country. I learned that when I was driving along the very busy main Galway to Limerick road and suddenly decided to stop my car […]
Exploiting elderly and vulnerable people with sob-stories.
We all know that the elderly and sick people can be vulnerable. Yet there are lots of manipulators out there for whom an elderly or sick person is easy money or a soft touch. Pride means many of those exploited will refuse to admit it – especially when they care about the person doing the […]
Climb inside of my skin…
It’s not often I write about such a personal part of my life the way I am about to now. As I write this, I am recovering from cancer surgery and a subsequent stomach infection. I have just endured a week, isolated in hospital where I was so ill I feared I might not be […]
Working Class Writers and Me.
My book, Piggy Monk Square, was Twitter-mentioned yesterday – in a list of ‘working-class’ writers. It wasn’t the first time I’ve found myself and my writing classified as working class. I was brought up in Toxteth, Liverpool. Our house had no hot water, shower bath or inside toilet. At that time, my father worked night shifts […]
Stop the James Bulger Film being shown campaign – artistic license?
Instead of celebrating his success as his short film Detainment is shortlisted for the Oscars writer/director, Vincent Lambe has found his film subject to a campaign to boycott it and remove it from the Oscars list. The film is about the horrific 1993 murder of two-year-old James Bulger. This case shocked the world but in […]
Gender-Neutral Change and challenge
Gender-neutral – what does it mean? If I was to judge by social media I’d think it was about a lot of jerky-kneed people worrying about toilets or getting hysterical about boys not being boys, girls not being girls and all that stuff. But, social media is not the best place to learn about anything […]
A Carys Update: July 2018 The Sponsored Walk
via A Carys Update: July 2018 The Sponsored Walk
Don’t Get With the Mob
If you saw a mob of thousands of people on the street attacking a lone woman – would you join them? What if the mob grew to millions and included some of your friends – friends who said the woman deserved what she got because it was ‘Karma’? I’m guessing your answer is probably no […]
Stinging Fly Stories Anthology – Becoming Invisble
The Stinging Fly literary magazine has brought out a short-story anthology to celebrate twenty years of publishing. One of my own stories, Becoming Invisible, was published in their 1998 issue. I am very happy to say they are including it in their anthology. It’s so hard to believe I wrote this story twenty years ago. […]
Walking The Sugarloaf
In a previous post I wrote about how down I felt to find myself wearing the dreaded ‘Beckham Boot’ yet again. I think at the time of writing I was despairing but at least I managed to end that post on a positive note – by setting goals. Well it took me longer than I […]