The West's Awake

Spring Is in the Air

The clocks go forward, the birds begin to sing their courting songs, March has been the brightest and driest since they began keeping records. It is beautiful today and every day.

There is the old saying about March coming in like a lion and going out like a lamb.  This one was a lamb from Day One, and she has filled the fields around the cottage with lambs and foals and calves and the ragged foundations of crows' nests in the tops of all the trees. It will only be a week or so before I am informing ye again that the swallows are back!

Under this month's moon there came a touch of milky frost every night.  It was snappish and silent in the moonlight, silver on the lake, golden to the eye.

All is well - The Irish rugby team beat England

Lordy but we are an incredible and deeply damaged race.

Last Saturday morning we were all hungover after St. Patrick's Day and the Cheltenham races in England. We were aware that we were all broke, our banks were broke, we would go bust and belly-up were it not for the EU keeping a few bob in our begging bowl. We were morose.

The world was exploding with the outbreak of war in Libya, unemployment and emigration were getting worse by the hour, poor Japan was being racked by a radiation threat and the earthquake aftermath, both President Obama and the Queen of England were coming in a few weeks time and we have not enough funds in the kitty to give either of them a proper Cead Mile Failte of the necessary width and depth.

Do not make St. Patrick angry!

I want to point out strongly today that not alone should we respect and love the great St. Patrick, we should also fear him.

It is not just respectful to wear his shamrock and march in the parades during these special days in his honor. It is also bloody good sense and a shrewd spiritual investment in our future well-being and longevity.

Any glance at the good saint's life story proves this as plain as the nose on your face or the great green bunch of shamrock on your lapel. Mark my words.

Shaking off the doom and gloom - blasting into springtime with music and County Clare

Winking and shimmering in the morning sunlight, a powerful symbol of an Irish kind of spring, there is a great blob of frog spawn in the garden pond beside the bud of a lily!

To blazes (I say) with the chill of winter and the recession and all matters economic and political, and to hell with the darkish kind of stories I have been sending over to you for the last month.

No more of that. Enough of doom and gloom. Spring has sprung and so will I.

My dear old Ireland is dead - General Election changed Ireland forever

I am happy. I am sad. My Ireland died last weekend.

Things will never be the same again for my generation. A certain kind of genetic mould was broken beyond repair.

That was necessary. That is good.