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. .”The Rose Window in Notre Dame Cathedral.
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.”Five years in the reserve Armed Forces FCA
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”A Very Dangerous Incident.
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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 moCrossing the Hard Border into Northern Ireland.
The 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.”Jim’s Bio
Jim Nelson is a sixty-six year old, wheelchair bound, incomplete tetraplegic, following a DIY accident in April 2016.
Prior to that, he had a forty-five year career in the world of underwater, happiness, awe exploration, science, engineering and the oil and gas industry. During his tenure in the latter, he played a small part in the destruction of this beautiful planet, and he is feeling horribly guilty about that.
Contradictorily, he has always been a noisy advocate on behalf of all of nature, especially those creatures who inhabit the oceans, where he routinely witnessed the wonder of them, as a perk of his job.
He has a keen interest in psychology, psychiatry, anthropology and psychological
anthropology.
He has a higher diploma in human psychology and a diploma in drug and substance abuse counselling.
Throughout his life he has written, and kept diaries which are full of stories from the far-flung places that he has worked.
His short stories are written from experience, and he likes to think that the sense of humour in his cartoons, come from there also.
In 1977 he qualified as a finished artist and a copywriter for the advertising industry, in
which he never worked. However that love of art and words stayed with him throughout his life, and now that he has nothing but time on his hands, and one reasonably good hand, the left one, which he has forced to behave somewhat like his right used to. He indulges himself drawing and writing.
A short story of his, has been printed in a regional newspaper, the Tipperary Star, and it is due for publication in the annual edition of a weekly, national magazine, Ireland’s Own on 10 September https://www.irelandsown.ie/
Ireland’s own have also undertaken to publish another short story in their weekly magazine; however a date has not been set as yet.
Three of his original cartoons were published in the September October edition of the online literary review Spadina http://spadinaliteraryreview.com/ in Toronto Canada and they have undertaken to publish a short story and three more original cartoons in their next edition, February / March
He is married with three children and lives in Dublin Ireland with his family and their two dogs, bearded lizard, snake, tail- less whip scorpion (at least) three cats, a tortoise and many hundreds (perhaps thousands) of ants.