Writing for life

The new lawn out front was looking a bit patchy, so I called in to our local co-op this afternoon to pick up some grass seed. They put the seed into a potato bag (see photo below).

Front of the Potato Bag

Nothing strange there, you might think… until you turn the bag around and read what’s on the back.

That Irish culinary classic, Smoked Reindeer Stew

Yes, you read that right smoked reindeer stew! That’s just the sort of thing you might want to make with your bag if Irish spuds! Oh, hold on, I seem to be out of smoked reindeer again… I’ll just pop down to the local Dunnes Stores and pick up a pack!

What’s unbelievable is that somebody somewhere in Irish Potato Marketing actually chose to put that particular recipe on the back of the bag. Priceless!

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Published in the WOW! supplement of the Evening Echo (image by

Toni Maticevski)

“No Dad, that doesn’t match,” the little one said as I picked out another cardigan to go with her summer dress. A soon to be five-year-old was letting me know that, when it comes to picking out girls’ clothes I didn’t have a clue.

“She’s right Dad, it doesn’t,” confirmed one of the twins. Two against one: I looked to the other twin for support; she shook her head ruefully: a unanimous condemnation.

Fashion has never been my strong suit. I take a purely utilitarian approach to my wardrobe. If it’s comfortable, functional and practical I’ll pretty much wear anything. My wife, thankfully, has a much more discerning eye, and makes sure that the comfortable, functional and practical clothes I wear are more-or-less acceptable to wear in public.

Women’s wardrobes – even little women’s wardrobes – are a complete mystery to me. A wardrobe, as far as I’m concerned, is a convenient place to hang your clothes. But to a woman a wardrobe is so much more than a collection of garments. It’s an extension of her being, a mirror of her personality, a window into her soul. It’s a symbiotic synergy that I don’t pretend to understand, and really don’t want to. But I have three daughters, so inevitably I get caught up in the occasional clothes-related issue.

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Published in the WOW! supplement of the Evening Echo

For the umpteenth time this trip I found myself wishing I’d bought a GPS navigation system before leaving Cork. No more wrong turns, no more uncertainty, no more doubt, no more trying to decipher ineligible foreign road-signs through rainy windscreens. As it was we’d taken the wrong turn onto the motorway from Tours and were heading for Paris instead of Le Mans.

This wouldn’t have been quite so bad if we’d realised our mistake straight away. But Murphy’s Law works just as well in France, so we naturally realised our error just after passing the last convenient exit to reach the right road. Forty minutes later another exit hove into view. We were miles out, but, loath to retrace our steps on the motorway we set off cross-country.

Here a GPS would have come in really handy, rapidly calculating a new route to get us to our destination as quickly as possible. But of course, if we’d had a GPS we never would have gone wrong in the first place. Seven hours later an exhausted Jones party rolled into Cherbourg.

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Published in the WOW! supplement of the Evening Echo

Do you ever curse the day the internet was invented?

The other day I found myself doing just that: damning the US paranoia of Soviet supremacy that led to the birth of DARPA… which spawned ARPANet, which in turn led to a global computer network that evolved into the internet we know and love (mostly) today.

The reason for my discontent? I was standing in a queue outside Futuroscope, waiting patiently to pay for the privilege of experiencing my idea of hell on earth. Why? Because the children had seen the website before we left home and thought it looked “cool”. When, by sheer coincidence, we ended up staying in accommodation nearby, that was it, my fate was sealed.

For those of you unfamiliar with Futuroscope, it is a theme park in central France, not far from Poitier, which boasts myriad attractions based largely around 3D immersive cinematography. That is to say that, unlike most other theme parks I’ve been to, most of the rides here are not actually rides at all. It tends to go something like this. you sit down in a seat and watch a film playing on a very big screen. Sometimes the seats throw you around in time with the on-screen action, sometimes you have to wear silly goggles, but basically it’s cinema… and generally bad cinema at that.

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When staying at the Glengarriff Lodge in April, these bizarre looking creatures were all over the place. Didn’t have a clue what they were until further investigation revealed that they were violet oil beetles (Meloe violaceus).

I keep meaning to upgrade from my aged Nikon Coolpix 5700 – but this dated 5 megapixel camera still manages to surprise and delight me with the quality of image it’s capable of producing.

I’ve been toying with getting a DSLR for ages now, but while the kids are young I’m loath to swap what is a very capable and compact package for the bulkier SLR and associated paraphernalia.

Naturally there are times when I miss the speed and responsiveness of an SLR… but much less often than you might think.

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Published in the WOW! supplement of the Evening Echo

Camping is one of those things that seems a lot more fun when you’re planning it than when you’re actually doing it. We were heading to France for my sister-in-law’s wedding, and as we’d be away anyway, we decided to turn it into a family holiday. A few days at a high-spec French camp site (NB. High spec campsite – not a high-spec website) seemed like an ideal way to start the trip.

And so it proved: the days were great… plenty to see and do, and loads of things to keep the kids occupied. It was the nights that were the problem. We have one of those big family dome-tent contraptions – one bedroom for the kids, one for Mum and Dad and a central “living” space. Again, great on paper, but more challenging in practice.

Trying to get the three children into their sleeping bags, settled and off to sleep on the first night was little short of torture. The initial excited chatter soon descended into heated debate about territory, and things went steadily downhill from there. You must have been able to hear them on the other side of the camp site… a fact made worse by the fact we were surrounded by older couples in camper vans who were keen to get an early night. It was gone midnight when, at our wits end, we finally got them settled.

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Published in the Wow! supplement of The Evening Echo

Technology does a lot of things to make our lives easier. Every day we use our mobile phones, our computers, ATMs, credit card machines, POS systems (or computerised “tills” to you and me) digital television systems that automatically record the programmes we like… without tapes. The list goes on and on and on, and everything is talking to everything else over myriad global communications networks.

(image by Homer Township Public Library)

If you think about it for too long your brain starts to sizzle gently in your cranium… but that’s okay, because you tend not to. Most of us aren’t that interested in how it all works… we’re just happy that it does, because all of this digital wizardry makes our our lives just a little bit easier, allowing us to squeeze more into our busy lives. There are times though, when technology makes life harder, and that can be especially true for parents.

Why? Because technology is everywhere and our children are often better at using it, and embrace it more readily than we do. Mobile phones and the internet are obvious examples… while many parents struggle to understand them, to the children of today they’ve become practically second nature. That’s worrying on lots of levels – but mostly because it means we’re incapable of keeping up with them… let alone keeping track of them.

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Written for the Evening Echo Career Moves section

There are all sorts of reasons why people don’t go to college straight from school. There are also plenty of reasons why, after a while, those same people feel they’d like to broaden their educational horizons and explore the opportunities a third level qualification can offer.

But making that transition back into education can be daunting. Where do you start? Do you have the right qualifications to meet the often stringent entry criteria? Isn’t there a complex application process to endure? Too many questions, when what you need are answers.

One of those answers could be a joint initiative run by Business Information Systems at UCC, CIT and Cork City Partnership. The Diploma in Applied Business Computing has been specifically designed to offer people a path back to third level education, ultimately leading to employment in the vibrant arena where business and technology overlap.

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“Dad!” shouts the little one.

“Yes,” I say, taking a sip of coffee without looking up. She grabs my arm, commanding my full attention.

“Y’know this baby,” she waves a small plastic doll in my face. I wonder what’s coming next. “Y’know what her name is?” she continues. I admit that I don’t. “Well, her name is Melina…” she pauses for dramatic effect, “… but for short you can call her Jasmine.” Pleased, she beams at me.

My brain wrestles with the concept for a moment, and then gives up… something it does with remarkable regularity when confronted with the bizarre logic of a four-year-old. The four-year-old mind is a law unto itself… or at least our four-year-old’s mind is.

There’s also a short circuit somewhere in her nervous system that links her brain directly to her vocal chords, bypassing the usual filters and balances. She never shuts up, and says whatever pops into her head as soon as it occurs to her. One minute she’ll come out with something incredibly perceptive and insightful that has you reeling; the next she’ll utter a stream of incomprehensible gibberish… but with all the conviction and authority of a seasoned expert. It’s entertaining and exhausting at the same time; sometimes you just wish she had an off-switch.

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