Over seven decades of trying to understand life – a never ending quest

So you stumbled onto my humble abode – welcome, tá fáilte romhat, tar isteach!!

While I always had a penchant for writing, the christian brothers fairly well beat it out of me. But now in my dotage, I am doing what I always loved doing – spinning a yarn. Not, I should hastily add, a yarn of wool, but that timeless pursuit of lying to one and all and calling it fiction writing. You have to admit, it does sound more appealing than lying.

Youghal, or Eochaill as it is termed in Irish, is where I now live and I can be found wandering its highways and byways almost daily. It is a historic town, dating back to pre Norman times. Very hilly, as anyone who has the dubious pleasure of carrying shopping from the local Tesco to a ‘house on the hill’ can attest. I live in a Semi-D, close enough to the top and it was, I am sure a wild place in 1232/1233. Was there a bothán where I live now? If there was I would have had a lovely view down onto the fortress town where, I am told, local peasants often breached the old town walls to sneak cattle in for market. Although around the time that my stories reflect, the Normans had reinforced the wall and spoiled all that fun.

There is many a time that I have walked the streets thinking what life must have been like back in Norman times, walking down Meat Shambles Lane – I can almost visualise the hubbub that must have existed back then, or dropping in to the tiny Priory Coffee shop thinking how it must have been back in 1233 when it was an infirmary run my the Dominican order.

That’s the problem with dropping by … I tend to bend the ear with tales of young and old, strong and weak from days gone by. I’ll leave you be now, have a wander around and let some of my characters tell their own stories – much better than I possibly could.

Slán Tamaill