Writing for life

Cover of Kung Fu Panda (Widescreen Edition)

When you’re waiting for a bus it’s almost always the case that nothing will appear for ages and then three will lurch up all at once. In the chaos of hissing air-brakes and diesel fumes you wonder why this happens. But there’s no real explanation for it… it just happens that way. It might be a bit of a cliché – but it’s also an unwritten law of human existence.

For me it’s the same thing with the cinema. I don’t go for absolutely ages, then I end up going to see three films in rapid succession. . Last week it happened again – but this time there was an unusual and quite exciting twist… this time one of the films was for grown ups!

I don’t know about you, but since the children have been old enough to go to the cinema, the only films we tend to go and see are kids films. There’s nothing wrong with that, I suppose: they’re adorable, cute and often highly entertaining. It’s just that sometimes you crave something a little bit darker, more edgy… just plain more grown up. The trio of cinematic diversions that I got to watch this time around delivered on all fronts.

First of all lets talk about the kids’ films: Kung-fu Panda and WALL-E. I loved Kung fu Panda, a tale of how the unlikely hero – a bungling, overweight panda with delusions of Kung-fu grandeur – perseveres and eventually triumphs where the most highly trained and talented Kung-fu acolytes failed.

The animation is great; the voice talents of Jack Black, Dustin Hoffman, Angelina Jolie and Lucy Liu, among others, are excellent and the action packed Kung fu fight scenes, unconstrained by the usual laws of human anatomy, physics or anything else, work particularly well.

The twins were in stitches, and even the little one, who gets bored easily, was transfixed. It’s a really well put together movie.

WALL-E was a completely different kind of film. The human race has left earth to live on giant space-going cruise liners, leaving behind vast mountains of rubbish and an army of robots to clean up the planet. WALL-E (an acronym of Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-class) , by now the only surviving clean-up bot, goes about the daily task of gathering, crushing and stacking our rubbish, picking up useful bits and pieces along the way… including a bit of personality.

Wall-E’s mundane existence is shattered by the arrival of EVE (an acronym of Extra-terrestrial Vegetation Evaluator), a probe from the flagship space-cruise-liner Axiom, whose directive is to scan earth for plant life. What follows is an trans-galactic adventure that whisks WALL-E across space and eventually brings the human race back to Earth.

Quite how Pixar have managed to make a robot “cute and cuddly” I don’t know, but they certainly have with WALL-E. The computer animation is jaw-droppingly effective, and the romance that blossoms between the lonely little clean-up droid and the sleek, sophisticated EVE is adorable. Of course, the environmental backdrop that pervades the film is particularly topical. Lets hope that delivering it in this way can help to get the message across to children and adults alike.

While both of the children’s films were excellent, for me the highlight of this cinematic extravaganza was The Dark Knight. I’m not a huge fan of the earlier bat-man films, but this one is different. The late Heath Ledger is absolutely outstanding as the maniacal Joker, and Christian Bale’s batman is suitably dark, and brooding. It’s fast paced, action packed, dark, edgy and ticks all of the grown-up boxes that the kiddies films miss: all in all it was the perfect conclusion to an excellent trio of films.

It was 4:30pm on a Friday afternoon. I was sitting in the office about to start writing this column when one of the twins burst in.

“Dad, can we take the ferrets for a walk?” she asked. I looked out of the window. For once the sun was shining. You’d be amazed at how quickly I can move when a viable opportunity to avoid work presents itself. I was out of the door in a flash, the laptop and the column forgotten.

We’ve had the ferrets for just over two years now… and they really are wonderful pets. They’re so much more fun than alternative small animal options: rabbits, guinea pigs and hamsters.

Ferrets are naturally playful, inquisitive and affectionate. They ‘re predators… and like all predators (cats, dogs, lions, etc.) they get their energy in small, high-value doses. That means that, when they’re not sleeping (and they can sleep for up to 16 out of every 24 hours… which, I must admit, makes me a bit envious), they spend most of their time playing and exploring to hone their hunting skills. Compare that to a guinea pig, for example, which needs to spend every waking hour chewing frantically just to stay alive, and you’ll start to see what I mean.

And then there’s instinctive behaviour: when a herbivore hears a sudden noise it’s primary instinct is to flee, but a carnivore’s natural instinct is to investigate a potential meal. Both are thinking of lunch… it’s just that one is looking for its lunch while the other wants to avoid becoming lunch. So, guinea pigs, rabbits, et-al spend all their time running away, while ferrets tend to run towards strange sounds and actually engage in active play. When was the last time your guinea pig played chase with a feather on a string?

As for the supposedly vicious nature of these marvelous mustelids, I have to say it’s mostly a myth. Yes, they have the arsenal to inflict a nasty bite… but then so does your average dog, cat and even the aforementioned rabbits, guinea pigs and hamsters if mistreated. Vicious ferrets are, by and large, mistreated ferrets, and as a general rule they won’t bite unless seriously provoked.

I went out to their large hutch/enclosure to fit their leads and harnesses (matching little red and black numbers) and after a bit of squirming, wriggling (the ferrets) and cursing (me) we were ready to go. Walking with ferrets is a slow process – especially when you’re heading down a country lane. They keep diving into the hedgerow investigating smells – mice, rabbits, rats, foxes, badgers and whatever else has crossed the path the night before. Their leads get tangled in the undergrowth and progress is… well, let’s call it gradual.

At this time of year that’s ideal, because ambling slowly along a hedgerow thick with brambles gives you ample opportunity to pick out the best of the blackberries. The crop this year is, admittedly, not spectacular – spoiled by rain and lack of sunshine – but there are enough around to make picking them worthwhile as you wait for a stray ferret to emerge from a hole in a drystone wall.

That night, as the bread machine beeped to tell me the jam was ready to pour into jars, I found myself smiling involuntarily. This is what country living is all about (strange looks from local farmers while walking the ferrets notwithstanding). There are a few things I miss about living in the city – largely involving more convenient access to products and services – but by and large the country wins hands down. At this stage I wouldn’t move back to the city for diamonds….

Content originally published in the Evening Echo in May/June 2003(ish); uploaded here after reading and commenting on a post on weeds over on Peter Donegan’s horticultural blog

Weeds! At this time of year they’re everywhere, and the very mention of them can make a gardener cringe. Keeping them in check is a never ending battle, and all too often it’s one that the weeds seem to be winning!

The things that make most of us hate weeds are the very factors that make them so successful in nature. They disperse effectively, grow quickly, propagate at an alarming rate, and seem to thrive anywhere and everywhere. People go to extraordinary lengths to eradicate weeds. Fire, noxious chemicals, organic poisons, all of these are utilised by gardeners in their repeated attempt at botanical genocide. But the weeds return… they always return!

Surely there has to be a better way?

Weeds are really just plants in the wrong place at the wrong time. And if you look more closely, our common garden weeds are actually pretty amazing plants. Most are colonisers: front line troops in nature’s constant battle to reclaim waste ground and bare earth. In nature they play a vital role, preparing soil for more long-term species that will eventually take over, laying the groundwork for a healthy, sustainable ecosystem.

So why don’t we make use of these traits in the garden?

The problem is that most of us are pre-programmed to see weeds as a bad thing, and the quest to eradicate them becomes all-consuming. If we could just look beyond our initial preconceptions, and think about working with nature, we could perhaps harness some of the weeds’ successful traits and use them to benefit our gardens.

We regularly remove nutrients from the garden by weeding and harvesting. Obviously we can’t keep taking things out of the soil without putting something back in if we want our gardens to stay healthy. This is where weeds can come into their own.

Many weeds make excellent “green manure”. For example, the stinging nettle (Urtica dioica), the dandelion (Taraxacum officinale) and coltsfoot (Tussilago farfara) are deep-rooted species which are extremely effective at drawing nutrients from deep in the soil where they are unavailable to other plants.

By allowing these “weeds” to grow in certain areas of your garden, cutting them back regularly, and using their nutrient-rich leaves as compost material, organic mulch or to make liquid plant feed, you can return these valuable nutrients to the topsoil, enriching it and helping your garden plants to thrive. Comfrey (Symphytum sp.) is sometimes grown specifically for this purpose.

Other common weeds have properties that make them excellent companion plants. Weeds are usually native plants, and are particularly attractive to native pollinating insects, which benefit our garden as a whole. Some of these insects, like hoverflies, have larvae that feed voraciously on garden pests, helping to keep our garden plants pest-free too.

Some weeds, like clovers (Trifolium sp.), make superb close-growing cover-crops, a sort of living mulch that doesn’t leave any room for other weeds to grow, and clovers have the added benefit of fixing nitrogen from the air and making it available to neighbouring plants. Others, like Yarrow (Achillea millefolium), actually repel common garden insect pests, helping to keep them away from other plants in the vicinity.

And let’s not forget that a number of our weeds constitute valuable food crops in their own right, if we could only see them as such.

Take the humble dandelion, for example. Every part of the plant is edible. Young leaves make an excellent salad green, or they can be boiled and eaten like spinach, flowers can be battered and fried, made into jam or used in wine, and the roots, when roasted, dried and ground, make a great coffee-flavoured, healthy coffee substitute.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture dandelions are more nutritious than broccoli or spinach, contain more cancer-fighting beta-carotene than carrots, and provide a rich source of calcium, iron, magnesium, potassium, thiamine, riboflavin, lecithin, and dietary fibre. Not, then, a plant that should be dismissed as a useless pest!

Finally, let’s not forget the importance of weeds as a refuge for wildlife. Weeds play host to myriad insects, which in turn provide food for other invertebrates, birds and mammals. Some are essential food plants for many of our more familiar butterfly and moth species, including the red admiral, peacock and small tortoiseshell butterfly’s, which lay their eggs exclusively on the stinging nettle.

Weeds have much more to offer in the garden than you might imagine… something it may be worth considering before you reach for the weedkiller!

Published in the WOW! supplement of the Evening Echo…

I’ve been working from home for seven years now. Let me say that again… because it’s hard for me to believe it’s been that long: I’ve been working at home for seven years now!

Wow! (no pun intended)

There are countless benefits to working from home, but also significant challenges. On balance though, from a parent’s perspective I’d have to say I heartily recommend it! Here are just a few of the pros and cons I’ve encountered over the last seven years.

The Good

• The 20 second commute: this has to be the number one thing about working from home. Listening to the morning traffic report while sipping coffee and contemplating the short stroll across the garden to my home office is one of the highlights of my working day.

• Suit… what’s a suit?: when you work from home the only dress code is the one you choose for yourself.

• Time out: one of the best things about working from home, particularly when you have a young family, is the ability to arrange your work to suit you. Want a couple of hours off in the afternoon to take the kids to the beach, no problem! My work is fluid, it flows seamlessly around the more important aspects of my life… that flexibility is priceless.

• Making a meal of it: the dining table is the hub of family life… and working from home means I never miss a meal with the family. I think that’s priceless!

The Bad

• Exponential Distraction: if you think distractions at the office are bad, you should try working at home. Children running into the office, impromptu visitors, emptying the dishwasher, weeding the vegetable patch… even mowing the lawn. I kid you not, when you’re working on something you don’t really enjoy even gardening has its appeal.

• Discipline and deadlines: I’m a terrible procrastinator. It’s just the way I’m built. I need a pressure to kick start my brain into motion; that can be a good thing, but it also means I let work build up to a critical mass before attacking it. That tends to put me (and hence the rest of the family) under unnecessary pressure. You have to be disciplined – and that’s one of my biggest challenges.

• Isolation: working from home means you spend long periods working alone. Yes I’m in contact with lots of people via e-mail, the telephone and online every day… but it’s not the same as meeting face-to-face. That’s the main reason I’m involved with a local small office/home office networking group SOHO Solo (www.sohosoloireland.com and www.sohosolowestcork.com). Meeting other home-based workers regularly helps to keep me sane….

• Always on call: one of the biggest pluses of working from home is the fact that you’re always around your family… but it’s also one of the biggest challenges. It’s only natural to prioritise family over work – but when you work at home sometimes you can be too available.

The Ugly

• Doing the jobs you hate: when you’re working for yourself you have to look after everything – including the jobs you don’t like. Jobs like sorting out the accounts, filing and business administration stuff. Yuck!

• Biting off more than you can chew: sometimes it’s easy to forget you’re just one person, and you take on more work than you can handle. I’m getting better at managing my workload now… saying no to things. Still, at home unexpected things always crop up to throw your schedule out of kilter. You have to give yourself enough of a buffer to be accommodate that.

But the best thing about working from home has to be that I get to spend so much time with my children. Sometimes that can seem more of a curse than a blessing… but on balance there are more ups than downs, and as the girls grow up I know the time I’m investing now will pay real dividends.

I’m working with CorkBIC at the moment to help revitalise the West Cork chapter of the small business networking group SOHO Solo.

Networking is a vital part of running any small business, and over the years I’ve found belonging to SOHO Solo invaluable in all sorts of ways. Yes, I’ve gained business directly from other members, and referrals, but for me the true value of the network goes far beyond attracting new business.

The true value of small business networking

When you’re working from home you’re often working alone. As I writer I spend much of my working week sitting in my office tapping away at my keyboard, as I’m doing right now. While I’m in constant contact with lots of people through online social media, e-mail and even the telephone (hey… call me old fashioned!), sometimes it’s important to get some “face time” with other people.

Meeting other people in person helps to keep you sane, and to realise that actually, there are other people out there facing similar challenges to you. Perhaps more importantly, you also find that there are people who’ve already overcome those challenges successfully, and are more than willing to share their experiences.

Attending a meeting is a break from the routine of the home-office, and is as much about human social interaction as it is about business, for me at least.

I find that SOHO Solo is a gateway to new connections, interesting perspectives and a vein of untapped expertise and potential. An exercise we conducted a couple of years ago unearthed a staggering wealth of experience in the SOHO Solos in west Cork.

We unearthed a former shipping executive running a wedding card business, a Swiss banker running an organic wine importation business, a marine biologist/Mexican taco vendor/IT Project Manager now running a freelance writing consultancy and wedding invitation business (that would be me ) and a whole host of other histories spanning an eclectic mix of industries and disciplines. The point is, SOHO Solo’s – or independent entrepreneurs as I like to call them – weren’t always “solo”, and bring a whole host of skills and expertise to networking events that aren’t necessarily related to what they’re doing now.

And the great  thing is that they’re only too willing to offer their help advice and support. They say a problem shared is a problem halved… but more often than not, with SOHO Solo I find that a problem shared is a problem solved.

Come and join the party

On Wednesday 17th September in the Celtic Ross Hotel, Rosscarbery I’ll be facilitating an open discussion on how SOHO enterprises can harness the power of social media to help their business. From market research to networking with peers to gauging opinion, online PR and consumer engagement, social media offers a suite of tools and opportunities for smaller businesses. Let’s explore some of them together….

Tomorrow is our 11th wedding anniversary and a card arrived from my parents with these stickers in:

Thanks Mam and Dad!

The worst thing about it is the fact that it’s absolutely true. God I hate conforming to a stereotype.

The girls of course think it’s a great skit – and are going to make us wear the stickers all day tomorrow. Can’t wait!

Published on in the WOW! supplement of the Evening Echo on 03 September 2008

Yipee! School starts on Monday, and for the first time ever all three of the girls are going! The little one is five… and it will be her first day of “big school”. She’s all excited about it… but, truth be told, not half as excited as her Mum and Dad!

There was a time not so long ago when we were sure sending our “baby” off to school would be a heart-wrenching experience; if ever there was a time for a tear in the eye and a lump in the throat this would be it. But a long, dreary summer with three kids on top of each other in the house, constant bickering and all out sibling warfare, to be brutally honest we’ll be glad to see the school term start.

Once upon a time the first day of school used to evoke something akin to dread in the hearts of children and parents alike… but not any more. If they’re anything like ours, five year olds all over the country are positively rejoicing at the thought of their first day at “big school”. I was reading this week that the National Parents Council used to run courses for parents whose children were going to school for the first time, but they stopped them because children and schools are so much better prepared these days. There simply wasn’t the demand.

There are open days, when children and parents get to meet teachers, see classrooms and familiarise themselves with school before term starts, and improved communication between teachers, parents and children means it’s all become less of an ordeal and more of an adventure for the children.

But what about parents? If anything, the first day at school is more traumatic for them than for children today. Sending your youngest off into the big wide world without you for the first time – even if it is only the local national school – is sure to tug at the heart strings. But trust me, the prospect of a few hours of genuine peace and quiet every day is a real mitigating factor.

The twins can’t decide whether they’re looking forward to the return to school or not… but they’re more than ready for it. They’ve been wired for the last couple of weeks, which is pretty normal for the end of the holidays. Except that this year it’s been much worse… largely, I suspect, because we haven’t really had a summer. School will at least keep them occupied, and re-establish a bit of routine and order.

We’ve been talking to the little one about her transition to full time education all summer; doing our best the lay the groundwork for the coming weeks. She thinks it’s a great idea, but I’m not convinced she realises school is an all day, five days a week, week in, week out thing. Yes it will be difficult, yes there will be tears, and no doubt there will be three tired, cranky girls to contend with on their return.

But there’ll also be a mum and dad who’ve had a few child-free hours: brief respite from the constant questions, incessant demands and the childish exuberance and boundless energy that, while delightful, can also prove oh so exhausting. We’ll be able to focus on work uninterrupted, go for walks together when we feel like it… even, perhaps, go out for lunch every now and again.

When you think about it, school really is a wonderful thing!