"Unprovided with original learning, uninformed in the habits of thinking, unskilled in the arts of composition, I resolved to write a blog”
Pentonville gallows. Many a villain had dropped to their death from its strong oak beam, honed and fashioned by the prison carpenters, sturdy to take the weight, to absorb the drop. The gallows came to Pentonville, second-hand, from Newgate prison, when that prison’s time came to its end. A view of the Execution shed as... 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 →
Traffic wardens can be rather grumpy sods. It’s a job that attracts the grumpy. In the early days, and it probably still is the case, they were employed by Police Authorities. Which is almost certainly why they adopted the blue military style uniform. Being grumpy sods they often had more grievances than the norm. And... Continue Reading →
It must have been the summer of 1961. Certainly before the Beatles. The music that year was all Dean Martin and the Drifters, or itsy bitsy teeny weeny yellow polka dot bikini. https://youtu.be/ICkWjdQuK7Q And I recall being in love with a girl in the 4th form at Queens’s school in Rheindalen, Carol, and constantly singing a... 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 →
We have visitors at our George Square Edinburgh Festival house, amongst them my dear friend Rob Hain, an artist from the Scottish boarder s who created this wonderful canvas of Edinburgh’s Usher Hall from where all her scholars take their graduation honours and where all the great orchestras of the world come to play. ... Continue Reading →
We have visitors at our George Square Edinburgh Festival house, amongst them my dear friend Rob Hain, an artist from the Scottish boarder s who created this wonderful canvas of Edinburgh’s Usher Hall from where all her scholars take their graduation honours and where all the great orchestras of the world come to play. ... Continue Reading →
The Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin, holds a series of coffee morning talks on the paintings on exhibition in the gallery. Such talks are for about 40 minutes, followed by questions and then to coffee for a continuing discussion. This was my talk, on the 22nd June 2016, given before the great canvas (10' x... 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 →
You get a bit nervous when there are only a dozen or so people queuing for your chosen show. Great flows of festival folk are streaming past to go to something much more popular at a much bigger venue just round the corner, and you wonder, have I made a mistake here? But what happened... Continue Reading →
Titus and Andronicus by an all-female cast looked intriguing. All that assassination, murder, ravishing of virgins, maternal betrayal, slicing off of hands and the tearing out of tongues, feasting a father on the flesh of his children, lots of revenge and corruption – all performed by a female cast. Could be fun. But this was... 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 →
The Road to the Rising was an RTE History Festival held on O'Connell Street in Dublin on Easter Monday the 6th April. Over 50,000 people attended, dipping into and out of exhibits, street theatre, lectures, music, re-enactments and the screening of historical films. The Big Personalities series of lectures were limited to 20 minutes for each... Continue Reading →
Broadsides - A collection of bits and pieces 