This is my Hadji Bey, this is the Bey I will remember the day I’m dying……   Hadji Bey is a sweet memory for Corkonians. Hadji Bey was a Christian Armenian named Harutun Batmazian who arrived in Cork from … Continue reading →

It was twenty years ago today…….. and my nephew Thomas’ First Communion day.  It was also the day that Ireland hosted the Eurovision Song Contest in what one English journalist described as “a cowshed.”* It was actually the Green Glens … Continue reading →

  A while ago someone asked “If you were to live in a book, what would it be?” I immediately thought of the book in which I would most NOT want to live:  “Room.”   Emma Donoghue’s novel “Room” is … Continue reading →

                                  Back in Ireland this week looking for an interim property towards a home in which we might gracefully decline (when we get older … Continue reading →

    Recently I have been interested in the Swiss artist Ferdinand Hodler and as so often happens – it’s called ‘happenstance’ – yesterday at a Marché aux Puces I happened upon a print of his “Genfersee von Chexbres” (Lake … Continue reading →

                                    “Upscaling” is the next step up from recycling.  It means taking something old or broken or molecularly challenged or unfashionable and re-inventing … Continue reading →

    Kevin Pearce is an internationally famous snowboarder who was critically injured when he struck his head above the eyes on the edge of the pipe during a halfpipe training run on New Year’s Eve 2009 in Park City, … Continue reading →

          Like an over-confident teenager, I thought I knew it all. Teenagers know everything about life, I thought I knew everything about the Irish property market. Actually, I hadn’t a ballsey notion. I’ve just come back … Continue reading →

      In 1999 Himself was working in Dublin and only came home to Cork at weekends and desolé being apart, we decided to buy a house in Dublin. I began a search, which, back then, was not online … Continue reading →

                          On November 1st 1986, Himself and myself fell in love, in a helicopter out over the County Cork coast.   He was the hands-on producer of a … Continue reading →