Swipe up to view content
Theory of Everything
12th March 2003 Rocky 1 North Sea.
Jims Theory on the Evolution and Development of Homo Sapiens
I will write this as if I am speaking directly to you. Of course, this gives me the writer, the advantage over you, the reader (listener) because I can just keep talking without interruption on contentious points, of which there will be a few (many) I can only leave you the option to stop reading or listening.
Continue reading “A Theory of us.”Sandymount Strand
Sandymount in Dublin Ireland is where I grew up and lived for the first 30 years of my life.
It is a seaside district on the south side of Dublin Bay, with the greatest expanse of open sand imaginable at low tide.
It’s been a while but I thought that I’d go down recently to visit my childhood.
Continue reading “Sandymount Strand.”Dublin’s Quays
Introduction
Ever since the early Viking settlers built wooden quays at the dark pool on the river Liffey, Dublin’s future as an important trading city, of the Norse empire, the native Irish and then the Norman and British empires, and now for the Irish again, seemed assured.
The river was straight and navigable for several miles inland, making it an ideal artery, first for carrying raiding parties and then for trade.
After the expulsion of the Norse men in the eleventh century, Dublin while not yet the capital, was the east coasts most important trading hub.
Continue reading “A history of my families on Dublin’s Quays.”The other day, I heard the song ‘Only a Rose’, sung by the Swedish tenor Jussi Bjorling and while I listened, I was transported backwards in time to the early 1970’s, when my mother and I would listen to ‘Your Choice and Mine’, a weekly half hour Opera show on RTE radio, presented by the incomparable Tommy O’Brien.
Continue reading “Tommy O’Brien Opera for the masses. .”It was like a kick in the stomach when I received a BBC alert on my phone last year in April, telling of the fire at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris.
The Great Rose
I felt physically sick watching the news reports as the spire collapsed and the fire consumed those ancient timbers and who knows how much irreplaceable artwork. The drone shot of the entire cathedral roofless and blazing from end to end filled me with despair. I thought it was a total loss.
Continue reading “The Rose Window in Notre Dame Cathedral.”When I joined the FCA (An Fórsa Cosanta Áitiúil) Local Defence Force in 1970, I was just fourteen. The rules in those days were somewhat flexible. I should have been seventeen, so the officer with whom I filled out my application forms in Griffith barracks on the S. Circular Rd, told me to put 1953 down as my year of birth.
Did I look seventeen when I was actually fourteen? Did I hell !
Continue reading “Five years in the reserve Armed Forces FCA”.
On Friday 25th of May 2018, the day of the referendum to do with repealing the eighth amendment to the Irish constitution.
I am a disabled man, tetraplegic but with some use of my arms and hands following an accident in April 2016, I get around in an electric wheelchair. I was 62 at that time.
My friend drove me to the polling station, it was a beautiful day in late May and everything was in full bloom. I remember hearing the garden blackbirds singing for all they were worth as we left the house.
Read moThe Hard Border1986.
The last town in the Republic of Ireland that we passed through on the way to Derry, in the British administered North was Emmyvale in Co Monaghan. After that there were signs for places in Northern Ireland, places sounding sort of Irish but not really, Magharerafelt and Aughnacloy; there was something wrong with the sounds, there was a guttural quality to them. Many times I had heard those place names pronounced on the daily news reports of shootings and bombings during the troubles. So when I saw the signs, I was very sure that they were in Northern Ireland.
Continue reading “Crossing the Hard Border into Northern Ireland.”
