… at last and it certainly has been a bit of a grim winter in our part of the world! At least we have had some sunshine over the last couple of days, which has started the process of getting the vegetable garden ready for this year’s planting. Time marches on to the heartbeat of Nature, as the buds appear on our fruit trees and the daffodils and crocuses burst into bloom.

COVID is still with us, although the infection figures seem to be reducing steadily. We are not affected by the lock-down, living in our own isolation way out in the countryside, but we do feel for those who are urban or city dwellers and confined to apartment blocks. What is alarming is the lawlessness witnessed on the streets of Dublin last weekend. Democracy within the law is a human right; mindless and seriously ill-informed objection leading to violence is quite another matter.

I’ve also been asked to send one of my music arrangements to a university in the US. That’s the second such institution to have used one of my arrangements in one of their concerts. And on that musical note, I’ll send you all the very best for the weeks ahead and good wishes for Spring.

Have a good St Patrick’s Day!

…what a little splash of sunshine does for the spirit – not to mention the bees and other pollinators, the vegetable beds, the wild flower meadows in our two orchards and, of course, the weeds. Still, can’t have one without the other and, if I remember correctly, weeds are only undesirable plants growing in the wrong place!

A great deal seems to have happened over the last 10 days or so. Perhaps the most important is that the back of our house now has its new hip (apex) roof installed. A great job done by craftsmen who take pride in their work. What a contrast to the cowboy job that was there before!

We also took delivery of a new lawnmower. Being Swedish, it’s a well-designed piece of kit and weighs a ton. However, it does have an easy start system, so no more semi-dislocated shoulders through pulling the starting cable half a dozen times! It also has a self-propelling feature, but I have to say that the jury is currently out on that one. Which is the greater of two efforts: pushing the thing in the conventional method or trying the restrain its forward motion using the self-propelled thingmy? Still early days, so I’m sure I’ll get the hang of the easier option in the end.

A brief fill-you-in. A local lad from Lorrha went to Australia in 1911/12. He joined the Australian Imperial Force, survived the First World War and was the only Australian of Irish descent to be awarded the Victoria Cross. The VC is on loan-display in the National Museum, Collins Barracks in Dublin and was due to visit Lorrha for one day before returning to Western Australia. That was before COVID19 struck, so the VC is still in Dublin and we now have a provisional date of ANZAC Day 2021 (25 April) for said visit. We are helping to organize the event and it’s not every day you receive a personal letter from the Australian Ambassador to Ireland, not to mention the offices of the President and the Taoiseach (PM), thanking you for your input! That’s the background. I wrote a book to commemorate Martin O’Meara VC (ONE OF OUR OWN – A Memory Reclaimed) and it has been published by Tigh Hattie Press, an Irish-owned publisher. The good news is that they also now have the publishing rights for my other books, which will be available as eBooks and print-on-demand paperbacks via Amazon, once the necessary background prep work has been completed. I’ll put more details on my website once things are ready to roll.

Retirement offers time for things that work rules out completely. We make artisan biscuits, which we donate to the village shop as a contribution to the community fund raising project. What started small has now done a Topsy and grown to the point where we have to almost ration the supply to avoid spending all day making them! We had to be inspected by the HSE (Health) first, but they gave us our registration number almost immediately and we were in business – even if it was on a donation-only basis. There are several EU rules governing the label and what has to go on it. Interesting to browse other artisan merchandise as we occasionally travel about the county (yes, we can do that despite COVID19), to note how many labels don’t comply with the regulations…

…but that’s quite enough of that! Bleak and miserable today, so we’ve had our two days of summer this week.

 

…how long it’s been since I last had the time to put finger to keyboard – and what a lot has gone on during that time! I hasten to add all very much for the better.

As I write, I’m looking out at the raindrops trickling down the French doors that lead to the back garden, which is the size of an Olympic swimming pool and a dramatic upscaling from the postage stamp which served the same purpose in our previous existence. Our new garden takes hours to water, so the rain is a welcome visitor and more than welcome to the job. Quite unconnected from this observation, I suddenly recalled the cleansing nature of water, the so-called dipole nature of the stuff – something I had learnt eons ago in an Australian primary school. I have no idea why this thought should have suddenly surfaced! Perhaps it’s because, after far too many years on the treadmill masquerading as “life”, the peace and quiet of rural living allows the brain the space to recall such things.

Being a dedicated educator, despite the farce that has been allowed to develop in the UK education system, I had decided to work on beyond the official retirement age, before retirement and moving permanently to southern Ireland. Despite this, the day of my official retirement earlier this year was a welcome huge milestone in a life already marked by significant markers along the way. Those of you in a similar position will know how it feels to finally be rid of the micro-management, pointless policies, backstabbing and general incompetence which all too often is part of a hierarchical structure. This has all been replaced with the serenity of very pure, unpolluted air, bird calls and a silence that you can hear in the Irish countryside.

Moving out of the city has given us the opportunity to become far more ecologically aware than before. We aim to become self-sufficient with vegetables and fruit and are also seriously thinking about beehives in our two orchards. A daunting target for a pair of rank amateurs, but so far we have been successful with our plantings in raised beds – lucky really, as we have never tried to grow vegetables before. Home grown really does taste very different from something that has been driven halfway across Europe to be delivered “fresh” to your supermarket! Mind you, we were incredibly inspired by an RTÉ TV1 programme called “Grow, Cook, Eat”, whose mantra is along the lines that anyone can grow anything with a little effort! We have the room – once we’d managed to clear the forest of brambles (the house and ground had been neglected for years) – and just got on with it. Meanwhile, almost 100 square miles of Mediterranean Spain is a gigantic hothouse of plastic sheeting churning out “cheap” vegetables for the European market produced largely with cheap migrant labour. The problem is that 100 square miles of plastic sheeting is going to be renewed and the old plastic abandoned to the waters of the Med. Will the European Parliament do anything to prevent this pollution? On the evidence of what has happened over past years, probably not. We now avoid as much plastic packaging as possible and think “too little, too late?” Probably, but we must all do something before we do ourselves out of our own planet.

I am finding out more and more about Irish history, which is very convoluted and almost exclusively violent, to put it mildly. Much of it, I have to say, makes me quite ashamed to be English! Hey-ho. We live a couple of kilometres from the historic monastic village of Lorrha (1500 years of documented history!), we have a mass grave from the Great Famine over the hill behind us (we are near the highest point in north County Tipperary) and the foundation ruins of the habitations of those who suffered at the time. We belong to the local historic society and plan an expedition to investigate. All very sobering, but also interesting. Our nearby town of Portumna has the local workhouse from the time of the Great Famine, now preserved as a museum. One of the early callers for political reform in the Kingdom of Ireland was Henry Grattan (1746-1820). I had an uncle called Grattan, who was Canadian and often said he thought he was related. Possible, I suppose, as thousands emigrated to Canada during and after the Great Famine of 1846-54. Now there’s a nice winter project on one of those ancestry sites!

That’s all for now…

 

…down 42nd Street up in London’s West End. Fantastic show and well worth the effort of going up to town to see it. In fact, by the end of the overture and opening number, I was feeling quite exhausted just watching all the tap dancing. Great stuff!!

The singing and dancing doesn’t stop there – well possibly just a tiny bit less energetic on the tap side, but the excitement was just the same. I received my pre-launch copy of FAMILY CONCERNS and the Book Guild have done a great job with the production side of things. Copies should be on the bookshelves or in the ether on April 28th.

It’s been a week for new releases. Many moons ago, when I had given up secondary school teaching to write, I switched to supply teaching at primary level. During one of my daily placements I met a fellow teacher, who also harboured an ambition to write. We got chatting in the staff room – as you do – and I left him my contact details. I was thrilled to receive an email from him telling me that he has finished his first book – great to be remembered and even greater to be sent a signed copy, which I thoroughly enjoyed reading! I’ve always admired the likes of Amy Johnson, but finding out a lot more about Amy the woman has extended this admiration considerably: a driven feminine go-getter in a man’s world.

Being Book Guild published authors is also a pleasant coincidence. Speaking of which, I have now been given an author profile on the Book Guild web site: https://www.bookguild.co.uk/stuart-fifield/

Just to emphasize the idea of our ever-shrinking world, I’ve also been contactd by a book readers’ group from sunny, down-south-Australia. They have been reading the Rupert Winfield series and – from reports – have thoroughly enjoyed them. Number 3 – THE CLOTH OF DESTINY – is already finished and should be out around this time next year.

In the meantime, you might be interested to have a look at a “meet the author” video we’ve posted on YouTube:

 

Other good news this week is that my cousin in South Africa has just re-married, after a long spell of widowhood. She looks very happy, so we wish her all the happiness possible.

Down side of the week (the yin and yang of the pendulum) is that we had to say good bye Boris, our blue Burmese. Still, you can’t win them all – onward and upward.

 

 

 

 

…and so does the indomitable Contessa and her often less-than-happy band of singers in the Chamber Opera Group of Lucca. “Family Concerns” will hit the bookshelves in the next couple of weeks…

This year’s London Book Fair seemed to be even more busy that in previous years, with strong representations for the far east and central Europe. Thanks to Hannah V. for her support and for holding the first copy of the new novel!

We have taken up Tai Chi and attend a class once a week. It has certainly helped with posture and balance and it also has an almost soporific effect in that it seems to slow things down to a more comfortable pace of existence. How many times do we hear people complaining that the modern rat-race of our society is far too frenetic and just plain wearying? Although conceived as a martial art, Tai Chi is a series of gentle body movements that has developed the defensive aspect of the art into an almost balletic series of movements. One of the flautists in our East Grinstead Concert Band spent some time on the Far East and recalled going to his office every morning past parks filled with people doing their Tai Chi “form”. I am inclined very strongly to agree that there is definitely something in it, otherwise the parks wouldn’t be full of people doing it!

We recently attended a performance of “AMADEUS” from the National Theatre in London, but via the streamed link to our local theatre in Tunbridge Wells. Well, despite misgivings about seeing it “second-hand”, the whole experience was terrific. Excellent performances all round, including an orchestra on the stage (who played from memory and kept popping up as and when required) and closeups of the cast that would have been impossible “live” in the auditorium. We’ll definitely do that again next time there is something on that appeals. Anything to save the over-priced and overcrowded schlep up to London!!

As I write I am listening to J.S. Bach.s “Christmas Oratorio” – yes, I know it’s long-past Christmas, but Johann Sebastian is “any time and always” music, which brings me to my final question for this post: what is it that makes someone a genius, the lack of which makes someone else simply mediocre? J.S. takes off with such energy and enthusiasm right from the first beat, whereas poor old Salieri (Mozart’s nemesis in Amadeus) – despite being the court composer to Joseph II or Austria – never actually gets going in my opinion. Both were talented, well-trained and musical and yet J.S. has that mysterious something that makes you want to listed again and again. I once had a CD of Saleri’s music and never really got past track 3! Poor chap….

…and so does the indomitable Contessa and her often less-than-happy band of singers in the Chamber Opera Group of Lucca. “Family Concerns” will hit the bookshelves in the next couple of weeks…

This year’s London Book Fair seemed to be even more busy that in previous years, with strong representations for the far east and central Europe. Thanks to Hannah V. for her support and for holding the first copy of the new novel!

We have taken up Tai Chi and attend a class once a week. It has certainly helped with posture and balance and it also has an almost soporific effect in that it seems to slow things down to a more comfortable pace of existence. How many times do we hear people complaining that the modern rat-race of our society is far too frenetic and just plain wearying? Although conceived as a martial art, Tai Chi is a series of gentle body movements that has developed the defensive aspect of the art into an almost balletic series of movements. One of the flautists in our East Grinstead Concert Band spent some time on the Far East and recalled going to his office every morning past parks filled with people doing their Tai Chi “form”. I am inclined very strongly to agree that there is definitely something in it, otherwise the parks wouldn’t be full of people doing it!

We recently attended a performance of “AMADEUS” from the National Theatre in London, but via the streamed link to our local theatre in Tunbridge Wells. Well, despite misgivings about seeing it “second-hand”, the whole experience was terrific. Excellent performances all round, including an orchestra on the stage (who played from memory and kept popping up as and when required) and closeups of the cast that would have been impossible “live” in the auditorium. We’ll definitely do that again next time there is something on that appeals. Anything to save the over-priced and overcrowded schlep up to London!!

As I write I am listening to J.S. Bach.s “Christmas Oratorio” – yes, I know it’s long-past Christmas, but Johann Sebastian is “any time and always” music, which brings me to my final question for this post: what is it that makes someone a genius, the lack of which makes someone else simply mediocre? J.S. takes off with such energy and enthusiasm right from the first beat, whereas poor old Salieri (Mozart’s nemesis in Amadeus) – despite being the court composer to Joseph II or Austria – never actually gets going in my opinion. Both were talented, well-trained and musical and yet J.S. has that mysterious something that makes you want to listed again and again. I once had a CD of Saleri’s music and never really got past track 3! Poor chap….