Broadsides – A collection of bits and pieces
"Unprovided with original learning, uninformed in the habits of thinking, unskilled in the arts of composition, I resolved to write a blog”
I lived up Sneinton way. The Union office was up in Sherwood Rise . Driving to work took me across the St. Anns estate and up Curzon Street, near the Victoria Shopping Centre,. Curzon Street, at that time was just an open space of derelict buildings, the last remains of the St. Anns slum clearance... Continue Reading →
Used my bus pass for the first time today. Caught the No: 13 from outside of the Guinness brewery at St. James’s Gate; top deck front seat, out of the liberties through scruffy scruffy, down at heel Thomas Street, out onto the glories of Christchurch and then down the gentle slope of Dame Street in... Continue Reading →
I am not working this year. Not that I have retired, the official reason is that I have taken “leave of absence” from the law and in theory will return to the law at the end of the year. Whether I will or not remains an open question, for I am very tired now. I... Continue Reading →
Dear Feedback, What the fuck is going on. For fucks sake. The Bee Bee fucking Cee, using the fucking F word in the fucking title of a fucking programme! What the fuck happened to fucking standards? The fucking BBC, for fucks sake! They used to set the fucking standards for the fucking use of the... Continue Reading →
When we choose our members of parliament we have a number of expectations of them which must be fairly common to all MP’s of all parties. They include that they are fairly robust characters who can handle themselves in most social situations; that they have some experience of life and all that life... Continue Reading →
Viersen. It must have been a small agricultural village at one time. Set in vast acres of open fields of sugar beet and potatoes which ran all the way to the Dutch border. It became a satellite village, or a town, to Monchen Gladbach but I suspect it retained its primary agricultural nature until the... Continue Reading →
I was a skinny kid. You wouldn’t believe it if you saw me today. But I was really skinny, a proper seven-stone weakling. I was forever getting sand kicked in my face. Even in kindergarten, in the sand pit, the other... Continue Reading →
I belong to this group on Facebook, Gibraltar Old photos 2 it’s called. It a nostalgia group whose members, mostly from Gibraltar, post old photographs of life on and around and about the Rock. I lived there once and have many happy and treasured memories upon which I once contributed a piece to the site,... Continue Reading →
PINTEREST COULD BE FOR YOU… It’s about images. But it’s much more than just images. For example, if you “pin” and image to the site it is displayed on a sort of board with several option buttons. Like this:. X You have probably “saved” the image to the board from some website or other you... Continue Reading →
This is Stephen Gerard Scullion. He is a friend of mine. A Facebook friend. I have never met him, never had a coffee with him, never spoken to him. All I know of him has been gathered from the posts he makes on his timeline. He posted this image, only a few days ago, on... Continue Reading →
This article was originally published in the Bar Review, April 2016 Apart from the great magazine in Phoenix Park, most of the buildings seized by the rebel forces during Easter week 1916 were not defended buildings, in the sense that Dublin or Ireland was under threat or that its public buildings required that they... Continue Reading →
This piece was originally published in "An Cosantoir" (The Defender), edited by Wayne Fitzgerald and appeared in the 1916 -2016 Commemoration issue of March 2016 Who were they and where did they come from, those stern English soldiers, marching now towards the city, marching from Kingstown, marching through the spring Dublin sunshine, into the second... Continue Reading →
My eyesight hasn’t been so good, for quite a while now. Never used to be the case. As a young man I enjoyed exceptional vision and eyesight. I was a crack shot in the Army, could make a head shot at 600 yards. That’s worthy of a sniper, although I never went into that trade,... Continue Reading →
I am rather partial to a good tin. I collect the things, hoard them, they are all over the house. Tins full of sixpenny pieces, tins of threepenny bits, half-crowns, buttons, old stamps, Large tins full of old photographs and letters, Big tins with small tins inside them. Tins of snuff, tins of tablets I’m... Continue Reading →
In 1911, Arthur Hamilton Norway, a senior British career civil servant, and father of Nevil Shute, was appointed General Secretary of the Irish Postal Service and was sent to Dublin where his principal office was located in the stone built General Post Office on Sackville Street. He was not overly happy with his new appointment.... Continue Reading →
Before setting out to comply with the request of the editors to send them an article on the rebellion in Ireland it is essential to say a few introductory words. Such an article is in the circumstances bound to be based largely on personal experiences and it is an extraordinarily difficult and endless task to... Continue Reading →
It was a complete accident. I was reversing in the yard and felt the soft bump and crunch. I got out and there was the cat, in its last thows of being crushed to death. I was horrified and quickly and discreetly disposed of the body before my son Gavan discovered the great tragedy. I... Continue Reading →
There are trials in the Four Courts that attract so many members of the legal profession that more often than not, there is little or no room forthe general public. This is particularly true of libel trials. It was always thus. Wilde’s libel action against the Marquess of Queensbury attracted the profession in such great... Continue Reading →
He would run. Every Sunday morning. He would run. In the Wicklow hills. He ran in the frosty mornings of the winter and the warmth of the summer dawns, he ran. With his friends Somers and occasionally with O'Brien, he ran. Into his 50’s and into his 60’s he ran, and because it was Gerry... Continue Reading →
A young officer. Just 19 years of age. Photographed at Sandhurst. in April 1915, on the occasion of receiving his commission. He was commissioned into the 2nd Battalion of the Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry. He wears his 1914 pattern officer’s tunic with its distinctive hip pockets, and appropriately, as he had just completed the... Continue Reading →
Broadsides - A collection of bits and pieces 