Have a Wonderful Christmas.

Well, the shortest day of 2022 has arrived. The Winter Solstice. (Earlier Blog)

A sincere (and I mean sincere) Happy and contented Christmas to you. Here is my Christmas Blog. Lots of links to follow. All hyperlinks in this Christmas message are safe and have been tested.

Some important points this Christmas. Read carefully

I started blogging in 2013. Lots to find if you go ‘a digging’

If I’ve sent this email to your work email, please forward onto your personal email and copy me so I can delete any work emails from my system. You, of course, may reply with unsubscribe. That will be no problem and consider it done.

Finally, sometimes love is shown in mysterious ways.
Be unbelievably patient this Season of Goodwill.
The Grinch is probably struggling with loneliness.
The argumentative one is struggling with personal stuff or jaded after a long journey or year.
The ‘never enough’ one has some growing up to do. (We all did, remember)
Finally, Christmas is beautiful, magical, stressful, lonely, heartbreaking, joyous, excess, I could go on. That’s a lot of stuff to deal with. If you encounter any of the above, or you yourself are going through stuff.
Put on a coat, and take a ‘Walk’. It will work, I promise. And you are worth it, of that I am 1000% sure.

Happy Christmas my friends.

This is the best ‘Thumbnail’ that I could get to represent how best I want you all to enjoy this Christmas. Unbounded, magical, tongue out happy. I hope you do. By the way, I’m the boxer dog in this dream. 🙂

This little YouTube snippet is from a very famous Christmas little gem from a few years back. Life is precious and spellbinding but can be tough, very tough for so many, especially this past 12 months.

This two minutes of magic is just beautiful, just like the song. ‘One Day I’ll Fly away’ Randy Crawford. Not a conventional Christmas message but it’s a message of love. That is what it’s all about. Love, yourself, your life, those around you, even for the shortest Magical Time, that is Christmas. Happy Christmas to you. (p.s. Sorry about the full stop of the little snippet. Here is the full version of Randy’s beautiful song.

The rough, the smooth, the up’s, the down’s, the journey WE ARE ALL ON.

As my family travelled a pebbled road in 2022, no more than any other family, I’ve realised you are all (my sisters and brothers) impossibly beautiful human beings. What you do, the efforts you have put in this year, (and every year) I’ve seen so much support between my siblings, it has been simply incredible. It has filled my chest with a love and admiration for so many people.

This year, when a serious illness invaded and punched its way into our lives, has been enlightening. Maybe, it is that extra glass of wine that makes me that little bit sentimental or maybe I do see such impossible beautiful people every day of my life and I just don’t take the time to say exactly how I feel. Julie Feeney, is an impossibly beautiful and creative celt from the city of the tribes, Galway. Thank you for your words, voice and presence here on this sometimes trying, blue dot.

Folks, for the love of God, go Lasso the Moon.

Is my absolute favourite movie. It makes me cry so hard. I now openly admit to having achieved a PhD in crying. Read an earlier blog (I cry all the time)

Col Patterson released this beautiful piece in November 2022. Bedford Falls where George Bailey had this wonderful life. Go listen and see the YouTube Video. At 23 seconds in, Mary leans over the counter to say ‘George Bailey, I’ll love you ’till the day I die’, George unfortunately is deaf in one ear from a slapping he had gotten. Mary’s love ran very deep though. The movie is sublime.

George Bailey: What is it you want, Mary? What do you want? You want the moon? Just say the word and I’ll throw a lasso around it and pull it down.

Bedford Falls is a song about being saved by love and empathy. It takes it’s inspiration from personal experience and the movie “It’s a Wonderful Life”

Making some sense of the past two years.

Diminishing comes from the Latin word minuere — “to make small.”

I struggled to get to grips with the pandemic. I could not make sense of this two years of vulnerability, I still struggle. I could not have explained it better than Niall (Brezzie), Louise and Tony in Niall Breslin’s Podcast “Where is my Mind” the episode with psychologists Louise Carroll and Dr. Tony Bates. In The Therapy Room, they discuss, what I know to be absolutely fact, the PTSD, Anger, Resentment, Loneliness, Bewilderment, Shame, and any other word you can come up with to describe how millions of us are feeling Post-Pandemic and slap bang into a terrifying Ukraine conflict and insane, seemingly uncontrolled hyper inflation.

Please find the 50 minutes to listen to these good souls and start talking about how you are feeling. (Say’s he who finds this near impossible to find 10 minutes space in the turmoil of my ever chattering mind.) It has the grand title “

LINK: https://open.spotify.com/episode/0ubs9DKOByRti0KUI7x8Iu?si=afb14153fbf84c4c

It has been a very cold few weeks here in Ireland with a freezing temperatures for the last 10 day’s. In my evening chats with my beautiful Mam we reminisce about times past. Her memory is incredible on 6,7,8 decades ago. Mam talks of skating on the old quarry behind the Ahern and Duffy houses up the (you have it) Quarry Road.

In days past, as young teenagers, weather like this presented us with the fantastic opportunity for endless hours of entertainment icing (with copious buckets of water) and skating down hill past the back entrance to the North Star and past O’Dwyer’s Fuels and nearly in the front door of McInerney shop at the very end of the hill. There were very few cars around at this time so we probably got away with murder and were left alone by adults. Sure, weren’t we out entertaining ourselves for hours, even if it meant a few missing plastic basins. Skating down that hill sitting in your mam’s plastic basin was a hell of a lot better that doing it standing up. Black and blue arms, legs and even heads were not uncommon.

We launched ourselves of with the loud call.. “Off the Ice Maggie”

Sunday Miscellany Live at Christmas, go listen to these beautiful stories. Broadcast Sunday 18 December 2022.

It is a 35 minute Podcast, apologies for the RTE Player advertisements but Kathleen McMahon at 7 minutes 45 seconds in is just funny out. As is Paul Howard’s (aka, Ross O’Carroll Kelly) piece at 22.20

The picture below is from 1975 (thereabouts). I’m not there. I’m over in Ellen Street manning the Tots-to-Teens Christmas Collection Warehouse where toys were stored until Christmas Eve (many Mam’s and Dad’s had taken many months to pay off the cost of these special Christmas surprises, which stayed in the warehouse until fully paid). The Benson Clan, below,

Backrow. Helen (Mam), Niall, Kay (Catherine), Michael, Des, Cyril (Dad) and Helena

Front Row, Alan, Santa and Stephen. Santa looks surprisingly like the gentleman from around the corner. Those houses facing the river Shannon.