Category: Non-Fiction Short Stories

Printing.

Written in Crescent Beach Hotel June 2013

In any worldview, printing has to be second only to the creation of writing in the top ten of humanities pivotal cultural milestones.

Can we possibly imagine a world without printing? Even in this day of instant media, e books, i pads and smart phones, could our culture have developed to the point where these innovations would have been possible without books? I doubt it; certainly our World would be a very different place without the printed word.

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Diving (sports)

Some fifty five years ago, I was seven, and while on a family holiday in Killala Co Mayo, my parents bought me, after much whining on my part, a full diving kit consisting of snorkel, mask and fins.

The memory of my first diving equipment is clear. Blue rubbery type plastic, but not modern pliable rubbery plastic, the old stuff, that was almost as unflinchingly non-malleable as the material used in the making of buckets.

However they became my key to the undersea world of Jim Nelson.

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My early motoring life.

A Short Story by:

Jim Nelson.

In 1976 I was 19 and working as a customs clearance clerk for a shipping company in the port.

Mostly my job was writing customs entries in the office, bringing them to the various landing stations around the docks, and picking up clearance slips.

For the first eight months working there I had had a company supplied Honda 50 which was fantastic (once I learnt how to change gear) because my girlfriend lived in Churchtown which was a two hour walk (once I learned that there was another shorter way than the bus route) from where I lived.

Having transport in those days was important because buses were notoriously unreliable, and taxis out of the question.

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My First Football Boots:

A Short story by: Jim Nelson

From the age of five until I realized that I was never going to be a professional player (Around the age of 40), I was obsessed with football, and when that realization dawned upon me, I became an enthusiastic participant until I was too old to play anymore. Now I am just a huge fan!

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Running Dublin’s Docks.

The closer we get to a no-deal Brexit, with its implicit threat of a border, either hard, around the six counties of Northern Ireland, or wet down the Irish Sea, the more my dock running PTSD affects me.

Hard or wet, the imposition of a border between Ireland and Britain, means the re-imposition of customs formalities, hence my Post Traumatic Stress Disorderdness.. 

The Bullfight.

Sunday 7^th November 1999.

I’m Irish, so never having had a bullfighting tradition; I shared with most of my countrymen, ambivalence towards the sport.

I’ve never seen one so I’m torn between Hemingway’s tacit support and my old opposition to any sport or activity that renders pain onto an animal.

An Surprise Trip to Paris in 1979.

It was in October 1979, that over a foggy winter weekend I drove my bosses, 80% seatless  Peugeot 604, crammed to the roof with dress  jewellery, from A  Ltd., the consignor, to A  SARL , the consignee, in Rantigny, France about 60 km north of Paris.

I was the manager of the Ro-Ro and Deep Sea Export Department in R  Ltd., based in South West Dublin.

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Theory of Everything

12^th 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.

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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.

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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.”