All posts in category A big Adventure

Forty Years on and a glance back in time

Forgive me if this episode is a bit late and a bit shorter than usual but we were up late and carousing on Saturday night. Sunday was our anniversary, forty years on from when Jacqui and I moved in together. It was not possible to have a formal ceremony then but we have always marked […]

Marching towards winter with some help from our friends

Met Eireann, the Irish weather centre, is warning of “an arctic front” in the next few days. This will be centred on the north and west but may move south too. Now, we are somewhat ambiguous here as we are in the midlands, more south than north and both west and east by different reckoning. […]

Sometimes things just seem to get harder

Sometimes things – all sorts of things – just seem to get harder as time goes by. I’m no spring chicken anymore so I expect some things to get more difficult. I’ve not really recovered from the falls last year – the concussion is fading at last but I have painful shoulders and spine still […]

Stormy days and unwanted visitors

It’s a dark and stormy day in Ireland, though not as bad as it seems to be in the UK. There have been a few brighter days recently however and we were able to get the mower out last weekend. The orchard was in real need of a trim as the weeds had one last […]

It’s that time of year again

I said last year that autumn comes early to Ireland and hey – it’s that time of year again. Actually it seems as if spring has just slipped past summer with barely a glance. It has been the coldest and wettest summer for nine years and we are already getting ready for winter. Still, there […]

Happiness is a working mower and baby swifts

After a rather fraught few weeks it is nice to have some better news to share with you. Our big problem recently is the breakdown of the ride-on mower. This may seem like an indulgence but with the area we have it makes keeping it in order just about possible. My shoulders are not yet […]

August is the cruelest month – in Tipperary

TS Eliot declared April was the cruelest month but I would say this is not the case in Tipperary. Here I think it is August instead. August has the false promise if Eliot’s April – decent weather at last, a time to rest and relax, a break from the harder months – but, alas, fails […]

A few weeks of preparation and planning

After the last few settled days we have found ourselves in the midst of a whirlwind of preparation and planning. As is often the case, we have been expecting some of it but some is new and rather unwelcome. There was some nice weather to begin with so we got out the mower and spent […]

Wildlife rescue, new friends and a different way of life

Last time I wrote about Pip and Squeak, the two tiny bats we found in our bathroom. Well, despite our best efforts we found another a few days later. We called him Wilfred. (I suspect you need to be British and over 60 to understand this by the way). Well, Wilfred was also rescued, placed […]

An EPIC Adventure part 2 – and a batty return

I broke off the last episode part way through my trip to Dublin. Compared to our quiet life here in Tipperary it seemed a very eventful couple of days, too much for the one blog. So, picking up from the second morning, I was stiff and sore from my route marching the day before but […]