Wave at trains
Bunches of flowers lie against the wall on the railway bridge at Worle. Perhaps they are from family members, perhaps from passers-by, perhaps from people who were there last Friday afternoon. Half past three on a Friday afternoon brings congestion on the roads into and out of Weston Super Mare. The town has a population of approaching 80,000 people, many … [continue reading …]
How to be invisible
One Saturday evening in the early 1990s, I sat watching the BBC Northern Ireland news. There had been trouble in North Belfast, disturbances on the streets and the throwing of bricks and petrol bombs. The rioting was in daylight and the BBC news cameras, positioned behind a row of grey RUC Land Rovers, showed youths who were wearing balaclavas, or … [continue reading …]
There is no place for those who amble
I was never an “A” student. I did enough to get by. I ambled through my A levels to go to the LSE, and from there ambled onwards through theology at Trinity College, Dublin. In the 1990s, I did a degree with the Open University because it was something stimulating in otherwise humdrum parish work. A decade ago, I did … [continue reading …]
TELEGRAPHIC TRANSFER NOTICE ,
This was spammed by Google. It is very amateurish. Zenith Bank (UK) Ltd 39 Cornhill London EC3V 3ND United Kingdom tel: +44 70 8646 8527 Fax:+447043071539 Dear Esteemed Customer, TELEGRAPHIC TRANSFER NOTICE. We are hereby officially notify you concerning your fund Telegraphic Transfer through our bank, Zenith Bank (UK) Ltd United Kingdom, to your bank account, which has been officially … [continue reading …]
Libraries week is a week worth keeping
It is Libraries Week from today until Saturday. There are days and weeks and even months for numerous things now, most of them instantly forgotten. However, libraries have changed the lives of many of us, they certainly made a great difference to me. In childhood days, our library in Langport was a single room upstairs in the town hall. Working … [continue reading …]
Sunday thoughts for 21st October 2018
” . . . whoever wants to be first must be slave of all’ Mark 10:44 Most of us will probably remember things we were told time and time again when we were young; things remain in our head a long time after we heard them. One of the things I remember from my childhood here in Somerset was, “God looks … [continue reading …]
225 years ago today
On 16th October 1793, two hundred and twenty-five years ago today, Marie Antoinette, wife of Louis XVI, was beheaded by guillotine. The killing of the queen was part of the vileness of a regime that had lost any semblance of revolutionary idealism and had instead turned to terror. Edmund Burke, the Irish politician and philosopher, saw her death as the … [continue reading …]
By another name
The digital radio display showed “Big Brother and the Holding Company.” Remembering their songs from childhood years, it would have been disappointing if the voice had been other than that of Janis Joplin. Despite the band existing for decades after the death of their former lead singer, it is her singing that has become what is expected when their name … [continue reading …]
Settling the account
This story was expanded from a piece of flash fiction. It was entered for this year’s RTÉ Francis McManus Short Story Competition. The evening classes at the college gave her the opportunity. It was a computing class that had taught her to use the Internet, something of which she had been frightened. It had been the stories in the papers … [continue reading …]