Today would have been John F Kennedy’s 100th birthday. As a child born and brought up in Ireland, the photograph of John F Kennedy adorned our ‘parlour’ wall right next to the Sacred Heart lamp which supported a picture of the Blessed Virgin Mary. If I recall correctly, our wall decoration was no different from…
Month: May 2017
Feeling low? Some pertinent advice from 1820 and it’s all still relevant today
Photo from my London garden April 2017 Almost two hundred years ago in February 1820, the British writer Sydney Smith wrote to his friend Lady Georgiana Morpeth offering what he called ‘Advice Concerning Low Spirits’ at a time when she was deeply distressed. A great deal of the advice he offers his friend…
Gratitude – We are going to die and that makes us the lucky ones
This stark view of life and death is striking in its beauty and imagery as well poetic in language and should remind us how grateful we must be that we have existed at all. I’ve never been a fan of Richard Dawkins, an uncompromising atheist and tireless advocate of science yet he still has a…
London’s Chelsea Flower Show
The Greatest Flower Show in the World For about the last ten years I have been an annual visitor to the Chelsea Flower Show in London – this feast for the soul from which I and countless others derive the greatest joy not just from the dazzling display of perfect flowers and plants but from…
Evidence of Good Parenting:
“The child has no desire to be famous.” Alain de Botton
Korea – North vs South and why it matters to America
Between them, President Kim Jong Un, his father and grandfather have ruled North Korea with a firm grip for the last 85 years. The current President is a particular worry to his neighbours and to America not because he’s partial to vast parades, massive firework displays but principally because his nuclear power ambitions, which might…
Everyone is unfulfilled and will go to their grave unfulfilled – The saddest thing I’ve read this week
“The universal plight – pretty much – is a sad one. We will almost certainly die with much of our potential undeveloped. Much of what you could have done will remain unexplored. And you may well go to the grave with parts of yourself pleading for recognition, or carrying a sense of failure that there…
