Our Irish Venture

We are back in circulation on the internet now that we've started on the next part of our lives.
We now live in the Kingdom of Kerry in Ireland - yes we've moved lock, stock, and barrel!

This all started back in May when I was contacted to do some consultancy work in the ferry port of Rosslare - a big ferry had clattered into the linkspan and they needed expert advise etc. Tina came with me and we spent a few days there in County Wicklow. Tina has always loved Ireland so she just had to come over with me. This experience awoke old memories and thoughts of living in Ireland [we lived here many years ago]...... Cutting a long story short we talked and examined this from all angles and here we are way in the West of Ireland.

Make no mistake Ireland has changed radically - it was once one of poorest nations of Europe - now it's called the Celtic Tiger and it's one of the most affluent countries in the western world.
Affluence brings many good things but it also brings many of the same problems found in Bristol, Ottawa, Sydney, or Detroit - just the accents are different.

However Ireland is there to be found, the beauty of the mountains and lakes, the seascapes, and if you look a little harder it is still the land of saints and scholars, and the land of tales and laughter.

We now live in a very much larger house [ to welcome family and friends] in Listowel, just north of Tralee and within spitting distance of Killarney. We are 15 minutes from Ballybunion where Tiger plays golf and the Atlantic Ocean stretches across to Newfoundland.


I would be happy anywhere as long as I have Tina by my side. This is our Irish venture - we are living our lives as we have always done so ........ watch this space.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

AN ISLAND NATION

Image
AN ISLAND NATION Island Nation or EU satellite state? Last night Jeremy Paxman, on the 19th May 2016, presented an objective view of the European Union. It is clear that the EU intends becoming a federal state and that the United Kingdom would become subsumed into that bureaucratic nightmare. I give you an alternative - the open sea  and the Commonwealth. We are an island nation off Europe but not part of Europe.The Commonwealth needs us and we most certainly need them - they are the World. It is not a pipe dream, the building blocks are still there - just - and it is predicated on the following :- “The Charter brings together the values and aspirations which unite the Commonwealth - democracy, human rights and the rule of law - in a single, accessible document. The Charter expresses the commitment of member states to the development of free and democratic societies and the promotion of peace and prosperity to improve the lives of all peoples of the Commonwealth. The Cha
Read more

Where You Stand and Prejudice (2016)

Where you stand and prejudice. I  have written before on the Newfoundland aphorism of “where you stand depends where you sit.” With that saying in mind here are some of my thoughts on that most contentious of subjects - prejudice, -  racial or ethnic, take your choice.  I look to where I came from, my origins, and then look at what affects my life today.  I come to the inevitable conclusions that prejudice is illogical , not Christian, and most certainly not productive.   My Grandfather, William Hogan, and Grandmother, Mary Ellen, were part of the Irish diaspora that took place in the latter part of the 19th Century. William Hogan was born in 1857 in Cappoquin and Mary Ellen in 1860 in Cork. The Great Irish Famine took place over the years 1845 - 1852 when approximately one million died; the Irish population fell by 25% due to death and emigration. Ireland’s rural population had rapidly grown in the Nineteenth Century. This was because a large family was an insurance of continued
Read more

I was called a Flat Earther

Image
Gordon Brown called me a "Flat Earther" FPI trawler in ice. In December 2009 the Prime Minister, Mr.Gordon Brown, called me a "Flat Earther". His remarks were pointedly directed at anyone who harboured any scepticism of Climate Change and that included me. Now I am a retired Master Mariner so that epithet seemed somewhat silly as I have spent a life time sailing over the horizon and not falling over the edge of the world. Anyway I have decided to briefly write about my experieces at sea and let you judge me and tell me if I deserve the sobriquet "Flat Earther". In 1954 my Father indentured me to Sir William Readon Smith & Sons of Cardiff, tramp ship owners, as an Apprentice Deck Officer. I was just sixteen years of age. My life long affair with weather and climate started at the same time as my voyage to command and management in shipping. I was eight years with tramp ships, man and boy, and sailed away for anything up to a year circling th
Read more