In my post about the late Seamus Heaney, I alluded to some difficulties that I had experienced as a student, arising from a piece which I had written on the quality of local government in Derry during the sixties. Among other things , I was critical
Read more →The plain, white boards stood against the wall of the library. Mr Shawa, school technician, examined each one, cleaned and carefully sanded it before finally cutting them all into six feet lengths. We watched while he patiently and with dignity constructed a coffin which would be
Read more →Four months ago, I welcomed our third grandchild, Lilly Ann, into our world and paid tribute to mothers everywhere. http://phototilly.scot/lily-ann-babies-2/ Yesterday saw the welcome arrival of Senan James, Jen and Neill’s second child, a wee brother for the always delightful, Leo. What I said then, I revisit on this
Read more →Today is International Credit Union Day, celebrated by millions of members in over a hundred countries across the Globe. Three years ago, Derry Credit Union invited me to contribute a piece about the Sixties for their 50th Anniversary commemorative brochure . It was never published
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I have lived in Scotland since 1971 when I married a Scot and set up home in Edinburgh. Our three children were educated in Scotland and continue to live here now with their own families. For three decades, I taught in Scottish schools, was elected President
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Seamus Heaney was three years older than me and a senior boarder when I was a dayboy at St Columb’s College in the 1950s. There was a well established precept that you ignored all those in the years below, even siblings, if at all possible. The
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I first met John in 1972 in Bert Mullen’s Drumchapel home where I was sharing my experience as a director of Derry Credit Union during the sixties. He was one of a group of enthusiastic credit union pioneers, led by Bert, Bill Murphy and the
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Explaining in Glasgow University , why he thought that credit union growth in Britain had been much weaker than that of Ireland, Nobel Laureate, John Hume, said he felt that its leaders had “an unhealthy proximity to the whims of Government”. Intervention, announced today
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This long spell of fine weather has provided a cast iron excuse for lazing around and reading. It has always been the real purpose of holidays for me. In days of yore, when as a family we set off annually for a rural gîte, I
Read more →Liz and I took advantage of the fine weather with a short break at St. Fillans on the eastern shore of Loch Earn this week. One afternoon, we sat by the Loch , enthralled as a pair of osprey dived and fished in great swoops for over
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