Your ambition to what?  To be at the top?  To have an impressive answer to the question, ‘what do you do?’.  The end of the original sentence was a surprise to me, but also a relief.  ‘Make it your ambition’, Paul tells me, ‘to lead a quiet life.’ (1st Thessalonians).   Not a lazy life,…

If I wasn’t so tired, I would piece all these bits of writing together, and make a novel. If I wasn’t so tired, I would dig over the garden, and plant interesting things. If I wasn’t so tired, I would offer my help to struggling people – make dinners, look after children, visit the house-bound.…

Winter is baring its teeth now.  I’m sitting in front of my small turf fire, watching the flames in their feeble fight against a furious wind pushing down the chimney, screaming through the thatch, squeezing under the door.  Storms in this part of Ireland are not to be trifled with.  It is always a surprise…

It wasn’t just the different language, or the different accent in the different language.  Or even the different colour of skin.  I still don’t know what started first: my uneasiness, or the way they approached me.  They must have seen I was different too – a look of uncertainty, loneliness maybe.  It happened a lot…

You can hear her before you see her, which is funny because she’s so deaf now she can barely hear a thing.  Work-men come, knock on her door, think she’s out, and leave again.  Sometimes a helpful neighbour tells them to knock louder, and then, slowly, the door opens, and a little face peers out. …

They say, if you name your fear, you can defeat it.  Not sure it’s that easy, and I do wish I was in the “they” all-knowing group, but at this point, I’ll try anything. My monster used to be invisible, dormant, easy to ignore.  First, it was because I didn’t know it even existed.  I…

I saw it from a distance, but it didn’t seem that big.  As I walked closer, it grew and grew, and then disappeared.   All I knew was that there was a tall tree behind me, but all I could see was part of its trunk; its damp, rough bark, making curvy paths up and down. …

Years ago, it was a love-hate thing.  There were moments when I felt I had mastered it, but many more when it beat me.  I chose it to be different, and to escape comparison.  The teachers were the same, to begin with – all keeping me playing in the same clef as I would have…

I don’t know what got into me.  I was getting tired of ticking over day in, day out.  Fancied a change.  So I aimed high, jumped in fact.  Far above my comfort zone, far beyond the things I’m used to.  It was an adventure, the first leap.  Nobody came with me, they were all either…