Finty's World

Stay Calm and Carry On...

It's been a really bad few months in terms of pain levels and so on. The miserable "summer" and the prospect of an equally squibby winter has exacerbated things. But I have at least had one positive result and I'm gonna be spending my time working on that...

The Zen of Picking Blackberries

Ok, so it's not been a great summer for blackberries. Far from it. It's been shite, truth be known. The promise of the bramble-flowered back roads last June faded fast in the September rain. But in the field beside us, the bushes did, finally, yield enough 'blackahs' not just for blackberry crumbles, but for jam as well. And while filling my bucket with juicy ripeness, I discovered the Zen of picking blackberries...

A Holiday for Mind and Body...

A holiday is a great thing. Doesn't matter where you go, just to get away is thing. Me and S considered heading off to Mauritius an' Barbados an' Malasia and all them paradise places, but after I looked at me bank balance the only place I reckoned we could head for was Sandycove, just past Kinsale. Luckily S had other plans and before I knew what was what I was off on a visit to Cardiff and Oxford...

Between a very hard rock and a very hard place...

I've not written about my spine and my constant companion for a good long while now, not really. I wrote about my 25th year of pain, wrote about the end of my relationship with St Vincent's Pain Management Program, but about what's going on now? No not really. It's like I don't want to bore anyone anymore. But I find myself caught once again between a very hard rock and a very hard place, and I need to talk it out...

"Go on dog! Go on dog!"

For the last few weeks I've alternated between recovering the use of my knees, learning Adobe Lightroom 3, hangin' out with my brother and sister-in-law home from the States, spending not enough time with the lovely S, developing a patio garden idea for and with my folks, and of course, playing ball and frisbee with the one, the only, Jessie the Wonderdog...

25 Years in context...

Today is the 4th of June and even more so than usual on this date, I am hushed and contemplative. This year is different. It's now 25 years since I was knocked down on Summer Hill. That's quite a number. Especially when you think that, in my case, it's been 25 years living with the disease of Chronic Pain...

Frenetic Birds and Weeks of Wind...

It's been a frantic time of late. Futterin' about, eating like there's no tomorrow, worrying that people might be staring at me, and all the time rushing too and from home to feed the kids. Yup, for the birds around our house it's been pure frantic right enough...

New views through my camera lens

Crutching round the garden last week I couldn't wait for the knees to heal. The light was just so, the flowers amazing. But I was on crutches, a situation hardly conducive to photo-taking. But then I hit upon a pretty fine idea. Why not take advantage of the crutches themselves?

A Tale of Two Knees...

It's been a dramatic weeks in the life of yours truly. No sooner had I come down to earth after the highs of the recent Tchaikovsky concert than I realized that [gasp!] I'd not had surgery of any kind in nearly two years. Shocked at this careless state of play, there was nothing for it then only to take myself off to St Mary's orthopedic hospital on Cork's Northside to have both my knees "scoped" in a determined effort to make up for lost time...

A special post...

Today brings a truly an auspicious event - my 100th post! In some blogs that wouldn't be much, but you know me, I can't stop talkin' and considering the average length of my contributions, that's about 150,000 words! Jaysis I'm knackered even thinking about it. So, what can I say about the last few weeks? Well, they've been dominated by two things, Tchaikovsky and Knees. I'll get to the knees some other time, but for now let's talk Tchaikovsky...