Bitumen & Pitch
Bitumen & Pitch is a poetry collection and memoir of a woman relearning who she is. Three weeks before her mother’s death with dementia, Eithne de Lacy, then forty-three years of age, [...]
No Admittance Except on Business
In No Admittance Except on Business, Christine O’Flynn takes us to County Cork, to her beloved Monard Mills, home to her family for many generations. The Mills and their surroundings are both the [...]
The pillowcase on the doorknob
The pillowcase hangs on the doorknob. They are due in from work and each of them will put their clothes in the pillowcase, have a shower and put their clothes on a hot wash carefully touching [...]
Here were are as in olden days, happy golden days of yore
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 [...]
In the lane, snow is glistening, A beautiful sight,
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 [...]
Strike the harp and join the chorus
Deck the Floors Even now I love a DIY project. A large part of my retirement has been taken up with projects of various sorts. I get into a zone when I engage in a plumbing, electrical, [...]
Bring us some figgy pudding
“It’s the Little Things That Knock Us Sideways” So there I was, rummaging “The Drawer that Stores Everything”; you know the one, bet you’ve got one too; when a folded single page of a [...]
A star, a star, dancing in the night
The Church was a mile away from us on a dark country road. I remember going to Midnight Mass with Daddy, Mammy and the rest of the family. We had torches. The Church had no heating and was very [...]