All posts in category A big Adventure

All part of the Adventure

Well, what a few weeks we have had here in Tipperary. We take time on Saturday evening to reflect on the past days over a special meal and this week realised every week has been busy, ever since we arrived. It is a year round now since we first began the move into our house […]

And a Happy New Year to you all

Hello, welcome back and a Happy New Year to you all. This is the first of the fortnightly blogs, hopefully alternating with the podcasts of previous episodes on Southside Broadcasting. I will post a link to the podcasts for anyone interested in listening as we record them. The New Year certainly brought some surprises for […]

A week of surprises, mainly happy ones

Life has a way of surprising us all and this week did not turn out as expected. Our grand hopes for the final stages of the building work came to nothing. Absolutely nothing as our joiner was pinged as a close contact for Covid and had to isolate. No floor then, and no presses either. […]

This week, a very rubbish post

I think it is obvious that life here in Ireland is very different from life in the UK. Whilst some things stay the same – lots of (almost) familiar forms, daylight saving time, TV licences – the basic structure is very different. For the first time we are personally responsible for most of our services. […]

Living in “The Wind in the Willows”

“The Wind in the Willows” was one of my favourite childhood books and now we seem to be living in it. This week has seen radical changes in the land around the house. Fergus the tree surgeon arrived on Wednesday with some frightening machinery and along with Tom and Robbie set to, making the road […]

This weekend we got hopelessly lost

First an explanation into why I am a day late with this week’s blog. We went to get another vital part of the grooming room and got hopelessly lost. We headed into County Cork using the main roads but around one town there were diversions and road works. Anxious to avoid a trip into Cork […]

What a difference a day makes – and two lovely men.

We are slowly chipping away at all the stuff that needs doing and are surprised at the end of each week at how much we have managed to do. This week we had some help, in the form of Will and Anthony, two of Derek Madden’s “Merry Men”. They were the crew who helped us […]

Travelling hopefully through the house dominoes

We have made some progress here this week. Several people have contacted us about the many jobs we need doing and our floor and joinery man came to measure up. We are hoping to have a floor down in the grooming room soon and then can tackle the dominoes. Floor down means the freezer, washing […]

It’s been one of those weeks this week.

It’s been one of those weeks this week.  You know the sort.  Stupid little things don’t work.  Bigger things start to really bug you.  It’s cloudy and showery outside and grey all around.  The sort of week where you want to revert to childhood, swing on a chair and kick the table until your mother […]

The long, slow road back to “Normal”

After the past overly stressful (and very unwelcome) excitement of the last month we are on the road back to “normal”.  Whatever that might be in these strange times.  We are both still very tired as recent events have taken most of our energy but life does not stand still.  In fact here in Ireland […]