What follows happened. In real life. There are stories here that feature love, death, the Irish language, work and much much more.
Being Questioned About the Death of My Child
It was a case of good cop/good cop. I was living in Sydney, Australia the day that my daughter died of a combination of pneumonia, a badly administered anaesthetic following dentistry work and her cerebral palsy. She died in the bedroom next to mine. I discovered her in the morning. She died in July 2005.
In the Morgue with My Daughter
“Say it out loud”. I spent quite a while, swimming in drink, tied to the house like a wheel on which I was slowly being broken. Writing fiction means drawing on your life from time to time. I’d been writing a short story about a mortician. I took a break and I was back at
A Crumb Goes To Work
My empty soul, my hypercritical mind assure me everything will go wrong. I’ll go wrong. My inner voice seemed to be that of a whiney teenager. I’m 60+ years old. Until a few weeks ago I was a KP (Kitchen Porter) and ‘potwash’ – the lowest form of life in the professional kitchen. It was
Insomnia & Madness
Occasionally, a young, green, wet-behind-the-axons, an eager junior nerve ending is thrown into the fight, only to be made cynical and bitter the veteran funiculi in its weary fascicle. Real insomnia is a relationship wrecker, it’s a straight road to madness, it’s a hallucinogen, it’s a soul sapper. So, where’s the fun side? I sleep
Learning Irish – An Introduction
Before I begin, there’s one thing that I have learnt about myself from this whole thing – and it also explained something to my wife about me. I tell long, tortuous stories where the story itself is less important than the ending. I always have, tá brón orm faoi sin (I’m sorry about this). Apparently
Learning Irish – Part 1 – Duolingo sucks
In which DuoLingo gets short shrift. Let me begin like a churl. The Irish language (Gaeilge) is far from the beautiful, lyrical, poetic encoding of deep emotions and profound contemplation that some non-Irish speakers might like to believe. It’s a right bastard of a tongue to get your mind around if, like me, you’re a
Why The Hell Learn Irish?
A continuing series about how I’m learning to speak and read Irish (Gaeilge). Brexit changed everything. It charged me up enough to get Irish citizenship and then contend with the language. Laughs and tears galore. More stories: McDonald-Sayer Turns Away From His Dream Learning Irish – Part 3 – Fear & Bean Factual Work
Learning Irish – Part 2 – Why bother?
“Don’t worry about this when you get started. Most Irish speakers won’t snap your head off for stumbling over a few intricacies as a learner”. “No one speaks Irish anyway, what’s the point in learning it”. I also look at my encounters gender and I encounter the seemingly terrifying síneadh fada. Many of the reactions
Learning Irish – Part 3 – Fear & Bean
I’ve been to Irish weddings before in Dublin, Borris and Athlone. Back then I had no Irish to speak of, let alone to speak with. Here’s a fun fact. In Irish the word ‘Fear’ means ‘Men’. ‘Bean’ means ‘Woman’. Now there’s a valuable lesson in not falling for false cognates. These are words in different
Hire Me
A Childless Father’s Day
I realise that you can’t stop being a father once you’ve been one. Well, I can’t stop being a father.
Darwin and the Aborigines
What you have to understand is that Darwin, unlike the majority of Australia, has a very visible Indigenous Australian population. I once had a conversation in a pub in Darwin, in the Northern Territory of Australia, during which I was threatened with a beating and told that the indigenous people were happier and better off
