News and Stories

  We were delighted last week to read a full page in The Herald about our Silver Thread writer Gretta Gray, whose stories feature in Stories from Ordinary Lives. She is also featured in our [...]

Christmas in Jerusalem   I was the only Roman Catholic amongst our overlapping circles of friends, so I was always expected to host the Christmas day festivities. Christians are a small [...]

The smell of Christmas… the smell of the cake… I always associate the smell of spices with Christmas. The Christmas cake and the pudding came in November. Everyone had to have a stir [...]

The expense of Christmas   We’d have a piggy box.  And diddly clubs. You paid so much a week, you’d have 10 people for example – a diddly – and they’d all decide to put in a certain amount, [...]

 The Doll with the Purple Hair   It’s 1964.  Christmas Day, and the three if us are queueing outside the front room. Am sick with the excitement and Daddy is teasing us with the big [...]

Santa and his sleigh When I was a little girl, the weeks leading up to Christmas were magical. The FDH Stores, the biggest shop in our one-street town always had a wonderful display of toys in [...]

  Mam’s Christmas Cake   My Mam trained as a Domestic Science Teacher, but shelved her teaching career when she married my Dad, a farmer.  However, she didn’t hang up her apron on [...]

The doll’s house   I am five—Santa has been. I am so excited. I didn’t ask for this, I didn’t know I wanted it. Now I want It. It’s a beautiful big doll’s house. It has an [...]

Christmas morning 1965, my father put his head around my bedroom door at 6.15 and said “John, we need to get ready for Mass.” I jumped out of bed, washed my face and hands, got dressed, putting [...]