During the summer of 1975 when I was on the road with an architect, a singer, an uileann piper and a gypsy guitarist, we diverted from lucrative street performing in Germany to visit Scandinavia. We travelled in a green VW van which had been gifted to us one . . .
She is honey coloured like Swedish architecture
My sister is honey coloured so she tones in beautifully with traditional Swedish architecture. From the old town of Gamla Stan to the hilly cobbled streets of Sodermalm, the Swedes seem to favour warm Italian tones. That's the first . . .
The Italian paintbox
When I was in Rome earlier this year as part of this Pilgrimage year, I remembered those tiny paint boxes that we used to get for Christmas when I was a kid. Each little square or tube of colour had an unfathomable name; Yellow Ochre, Warm Sienna, Burnt Umber, Terracotta, . . .
In their stillness
Every year I choose a word to guide me on my way. Last January I chose Pilgrimage and set out to undertake "a long journey especially one undertaken as a quest, or for a votive purpose, to pay homage." As an agnostic, sitting on the fence as to . . .
To hell or to Connacht ~ Pilgrimage
With the phrase "to hell or to Connacht" attributed to Cromwell ringing in their ears, the native Irish were banished to the west. Their handprints are on every stone, making tiny fields of rock and sand dividing the land between the hungry multitudes. The walls . . .
It’s called friendship
Out west the beauty of the landscape would make you weep, but it's the people and the chat that would warm your heart. It's summer in Kerry and there is no shortage of talk. From morning until night we are discussing the situation in Gaza, the decline of the Labour party and the . . .
A man who knows his flowers
When the streets of Vienna are getting too hot to bear, I duck into a side street flower shop. It's the bunches of "weeds" in the window that first catch my eye; familiar wildflowers as carrot and catmint, laurel leaves and common grasses, in bouquets and tall . . .
“Stop whining and get back to work!” ~Pilgrimage ~July
That blue grey Irish light of summer It's been raining Wildflowers after the rain really sparkle Glistening foxglove fingers He introduces himself to a field of . . .
Beginning the descent #Pilgrimage~ July
Mountains of the Mani Peninsula Beauty underfoot with every step Down to the land and sea near Pylos Beau Lotto's TED talk about perception and reality. So today I'm thinking about the fact that the only thing that is . . .
In stillness
They excel in stillness. Sitting and watching. Waiting and listening. On the corner, on a chair outside the front door, at the gate to the garden. Once I asked a Native American for a clue to the future. Am on on the right path I asked her? She was . . .
