Mind Matters One of our son’s passions in life is climbing and, so, I found myself accompanying him recently to a big competition in Leeds. It pitted the best climbers from various regions of the UK and Ireland over two days, and the standards were high. It’s not an easy thing as a parent to […]

Ordinary People The Irish singer-songwriter, Christy Moore, wrote a beautiful song in 1985 called ‘Ordinary Man.’ It’s set against the backdrop of economic struggle and high unemployment, which was the reality for so many in Ireland in the early 1980’s. It spoke of being let go from a factory after many years of faithful service, […]

The Importance of Remembering As we get a bit older we tend to look back on certain periods of our lives for different reasons. I look back on my twenties as a decade of travel and with great fondness. I lived abroad for a couple of years and that allowed me to travel to neighbouring […]

Learning to Go Slow I recently had some days of leave over half term and, as we drifted around not doing very much, I caught a wonderful series of documentaries I had recorded over the summer. It was called ‘Europe by Train’ and it was made by a journalist and environmentalist called Manchan Magan. I […]