A Poem for St Valentine’s Day
Let me not to the marriage of true minds.....
Read MoreBlog
Thoughts on a rainy day
I spent most of my working life, and the first twenty years of my marriage, in England.
A poem for the New Year
By Alfred Lord Tennyson
Read MoreHoping for Peace
It has been a sad and bad year for much of the world, especially the Middle East. "By whom and when the All-Earth-gladdening Law Of Peace, brought in by that Man Crucified, Was ruled to be inept, and set aside?" - lines from a poem by Thomas Hardy, come to mind.
Read MoreOn Reading
I can’t remember when exactly I learned to read.
Becoming a playwright…..
I have always wanted to write a play for the stage.
The end of summer
Here in Belfast, it's been warmer and sunnier in early September than it has been in the so-called Summer months, but Autumn is signalled by shorter days, falling leaves, beech nuts underfoot, blackberries in the hedges and ripe apples in the garden.
Summer Memories
In the summer of 1966, I travelled from Belfast to Greece with three student friends. The four of us went by train and boat, and split into pairs to hitch-hike back from Athens. I was away for about six weeks in all. Apart from a couple of postcards, my parents did not hear from me until I ran out of money on the way back and telephoned from Amsterdam, reversing the charge. In those analogue days, making a telephone call to a different country meant going to a post office and being connected by a telephone operator. My father went to our local bank to arrange a money transfer to me. "I might as well have been asking to send money to the moon," he told me when I finally got home safely. The money transfer from his bank to a bank in Amsterdam took two days. Neither I, nor my friend, Flora, had any money for a hostel. A kindly bank official took us to his home. He and his daughter put us up and fed us until the money arrived. I remembered this particular adventure when friends shared WhatsApp photos and videos from their student sons and daughters who were travelling in various parts of the world. They were in constant contact. When I remarked how different that was from my student-travel experiences (Greece was not my only hitch-hiking holiday) they began to share their own adventures abroad, sans regular contact with parents. Travellers cheques and cash concealed in money belts. A camera in the rucksack for photographs to be developed on return. Postcards which sometimes arrived home later than the sender. Simpler times. Were they safer times? I don't know. But I'm grateful to have met only generosity and kindness from the people I met on the road. And I recall one particular hitch-hiking stop at a lorry park somewhere in Spain. I saw the lorry driver, with whom a friend and I were travelling, in a group of drivers passing around photographs with murmurs of approval, whistles of appreciation. I moved closer to catch a glimpse of the images being shared. They were all photos of lorries.
For the Spring Equinox
A Light Exists in Spring by Emily Dickinson
Winter into Spring
Winter can be grey and wet, as well as cold in Belfast.
A poem for winter
The Dipper, by Kathleen Jamie
Poem for a New Year
"Ring out, wild bells, to the the wild sky,
