Milking time

Martin's spoon traced the figures of ancient Chinese peasants etched in the landscape of the blue willowed breakfast plate.   A thought scurried across his mind.  

‘One day I will go there’.
 

He paused for a moment, to catch the morning sunlight filtering through the laced curtain and turned to his aunt standing by the stove.

'Auntie, please, please may I leave the table?' 

An approving wink set him free.    ‘Aye, go on son’

He darted across the chequered red and black tiled floor, stuffed his feet into plimsolls, rattled the grated door mat on the front step and spilled into the farmyard.

The sharp bite of the Derry air, fresh from the Rock Heads that dipped in the North Atlantic blew away the last cobweb of sleep.

Christmas on the other side of the world

There is no Christmas this year Bobby.”   

Vicky, his elder sister laments. She explains that she had over-heard Lucy`s mother telling auntie Chipo that she had over-heard her husband talking to Ziyepi the kraal head that the bread delivery  van was stuck in the mud across Nyamachesi River.

Even if they pulled it out, the river is in flood.   It is Christmas Eve. 

I never liked Leonard Cohen back in the 70s......

guess you mellow with age......

RIP Marianne Ihlen

Post Olympics foto

Not sure if anyone can identify this picture?

Year, place, anyone in the team?

(I'm front row, 2nd from the Right)

Answers on a post card.

And We Were Kings

Each Autumn, the local farmers would look for ‘potato gatherers’ to gather the ‘praties’ as we called them. Imagine a cold Autumn dawn, the sharp frost broken by the early sun and the tractor as it ‘ raped ’ the field.

The most empowering sensation, was not the toil and the tedium of back-breaking work,  but the clutch of the 10s 0d shilling note you were paid as you raced home with the ‘Queens’ ten-shillings.

We ate that day with grubby hands

Silken- floured farls straight from the griddle

The earth our table, the sky our roof

The farmer’s wife rough-red and rude

Photo history of O derry boy