A Bouquet of Oak Leaves – Autumnal walks

    It was very quiet on the road, barely a car passed. The sun shimmered through the trees and cows sunned themselves in the pasture, barely acknowledging my passage, their tails lazily flicking flies. The perfect autumn day, the perfect Sunday morning. Again, I took advantage of the slumbering teenagers and left in blissful …

Gratitude – Keeping it real

  Every night I go to bed, I have this little routine. It's not an annoying routine, like the OCD type ritual of checking under the bed for monsters (used to do this, but it's pointless - they're all in my head 😉 ) or re-locking the front door a million times. I slip between …

Where’s Me Jumper? – The true Irish Summer returns

  I hate to say it but I believe the true Irish Summer has arrived - flashback to open fires in July and the continual wearing of the favourite fleece, or Aran jumper on holidays. Don't get me wrong - I'm not a huge fan of the heat wave, well, it's not that I don't …

Summer Scribbles

Yes, I know, long time no see. It's the summer. What can I say? Things are a little different in the summer. Especially when we seem to have mistakenly been given the forecast for the Mediterranean for the last two months. As an Irish citizen this is a big deal, massive even. We get to …

Last Spanish Days and Moonlight Moments

  It's our last day at Sonora Beach. It's been a surprisingly lovely epoch in our summer. I guess I didn't know what to expect, here I was, heading off into the sun. Beaches and beer, cheap wine and beautiful views - this was a given. This I knew. What I hadn't factored was travelling …

A Small Slice of Holiday Heaven

Overhead is a striated mess of white clouds and blue, blue sky. An unexpected breeze plays havoc with the sand  - a large pink and white spotted umbrella races across the beach with unadulterated joy and not a thought for the bikini-clad woman who races in its' wake. The music that carries from the chiringuito …

Thoughts of My Father – for the day that’s in it

My Dad loves the sun, he basks in the heat like a great cat and we laugh when we see how 'heavy with brown' as he likes to say, he has become. Which is why it comes as no surprise that he now spends six months in the south of Spain each year. He travels …

WordPress Wrangling – it’s good to be home

God, I'm shattered. I've just spent the best part of a day and a half figuring out a new website, also WordPress, for a new organisation I am proud to be a member of - The Independent Authors' Collective - but more of that in a later post. I couldn't sleep last night because I …