Fiacre Banks

@xFiacre (14096)

Ireland

Joined myLot 10 years ago

An Irishman who has called many places home, enjoys whiskey in moderation and reads Dostoyevsky frequently.

Discussions (72)

Fiacre Banks's Discussions

Forks.

Fiacre Banks @xFiacre (14096) • Ireland 14 Dec

I ate well tonight in my favourite place in Chorlton, a Turkish place where the staff are better than excellent as is the food. A truly memorable evening. The only thing that introduced a less than savoury note was the thought...

6 responses •

7 people

Sausages come from pigs.

Fiacre Banks @xFiacre (14096) • Ireland 13 Dec

I was scandalised today in Wythenshawe Park. There was a place where we could look at cows and pigs - lovely, apart from the smell. And beside it was a stall that sold sausages that the cows and pigs were turned into. All in very...

7 responses •

8 people

Wythenshawe Christmas.

Fiacre Banks @xFiacre (14096) • Ireland 13 Dec

We took our granddaughter to Wythenshawe Hall today for a Victorian Christmassy thing - I hated it but everyone else enjoyed it so I just shut up and smiled. I just want to strangle people who dress up as elves and assume everyone...

5 responses •

8 people

Kalista the Greek.

Fiacre Banks @xFiacre (14096) • Ireland 10 Dec

Kalista was Greek and wrote poems about freedom, or that's what she said they were about: I couldn't read Greek back then in 1974 and I'm not much better now having peaked somewhere around 1993 and travelled only downhill since...

5 responses •

5 people

Wind is breaking over Ireland.

Fiacre Banks @xFiacre (14096) • Ireland 9 Dec

It’s windy today, very windy, so windy that ferries and planes are cancelled, parks shut and people’s gardens have been rearranged and not in a good way. On the up side, no heavy lorries can trundle through town to and from the...

5 responses •

8 people

Weight a while.

Fiacre Banks @xFiacre (14096) • Ireland 5 Dec

I don’t often weigh my body - it’s a man thing, and anyway seeing numbers on a scale doesn’t really tell me anything I don’t already know. But over the past few months I’ve been a lot more particular about my intake - amount and...

5 responses •

8 people

Just another lemon tree.

Fiacre Banks @xFiacre (14096) • Ireland 28 Nov

Gentlemen who reach retirement need to find new interests, as do ladies. It’s perhaps more noticeable in gentlemen because ladies, to my observation, are more sociable and continue with the friendships and activities already...

8 responses •

9 people

Sick in Athens.

Fiacre Banks @xFiacre (14096) • Ireland 11 Nov

A spring evening in Athens comes to mind as I further reflect on @looeyville 's query about being sick and far from home. I was sick back then, in Athens, sick with fever, sweats and shivers. The rain falling in Nikis street just...

6 responses •

8 people

Sick in Algiers

Fiacre Banks @xFiacre (14096) • Ireland 11 Nov

Birds have taken charge of Evensong outside my bedroom window tonight. It’s still not dark, but I’ve been lying here a while to rest my aching back, and as soon as dusk began to gather so did the birds. It takes me back to being...

6 responses •

7 people

Autumn walk near Ballylesson.

Fiacre Banks @xFiacre (14096) • Ireland 7 Nov

Light, bright sunshine on a Friday morning in November matches my mood - no work to see to, just rest and the time to savour light, bright autumnal sunshine. There’s little in the air by way of warmth, but climbing up through the...

5 responses •

6 people

Wet knicker restaurant.

Fiacre Banks @xFiacre (14096) • Ireland 21 Mar 24

Somehow we have come away on holiday with a very limited supply of underwear for our daughter: we think it’s sitting in a bag at our from door at home. She is quite annoyed at us, and even more so now because of my attempt to...

8 responses •

6 people

As I roved out.

Fiacre Banks @xFiacre (14096) • Ireland 31 Jul 23

What greater joy awaits a person than to venture forth into the world armed only with a slender cane and an inquisitive mind and then to walk. Kierkegaard was of that mind and habit, a practitioner and proponent of walking, and...

3 responses •

3 people

Summer of swallows.

Fiacre Banks @xFiacre (14096) • Ireland 6 Jul 23

The sunny skies over Belfast turned overcast this late forenoon. The temperature also dropped to 16 degrees, a welcome dissipation of unnecessary heat and uncomfortable clamminess. So I put on my walking boots, grabbed my walking...

3 responses •

6 people

As I stepped out in the early morn’ …

Fiacre Banks @xFiacre (14096) • Ireland 27 Jun 23

Feeling light and fluffy today, but solid as a slab of granite lying on the shore with young people sitting on me with a picnic and jumping into the sea to cool off from time to time then hauling themselves up on me to sit on me...

3 responses •

3 people

The bliss of solitude.

Fiacre Banks @xFiacre (14096) • Ireland 27 Jun 23

Love and death, thinking, gall stones, painting the bathroom, squeezing tomato juice, passing exams, passing urine, passing the buck - I love this life but it does get very busy and the duties are many and complex. There’s never...

8 responses •

10 people

Weird little boy perhaps, but that’s ok.

Fiacre Banks @xFiacre (14096) • Ireland 24 Jun 23

I’ve been conscious since childhood of a striving within me after God, but so much gets in the way, notably myself. There was the time that I was so deeply moved when I was about seven years old. I was standing beside the piano...

15 responses •

19 people

Tears and smiles in the graveyard.

Fiacre Banks @xFiacre (14096) • Ireland 22 Jun 23

It’s too hot, to which statement the school boy retort must surely be “stick it in a bucket of ice”. But seriously, my friends, the air temperature in Ireland really is far too high as I wait here under the shade of a spreading...

3 responses •

5 people

What just happened?

Fiacre Banks @xFiacre (14096) • Ireland 20 Jun 23

This evening I address everyone from the safely of the pages of a tender tale told by a conflicted man. I am not that man, but his tale of garbage and flowers allows me to breathe and live, to weep and smile, to build up and tear...

1 response •

4 people

Diving headlong into it.

Fiacre Banks @xFiacre (14096) • Ireland 19 Jun 23

Thirty-seven years ago today I moved from Paris to Belfast, a sad day indeed. Our baby son was six weeks old and we drove to the coast to get a boat to England then drove up to Wales to get a boat to Ireland. With that nostalgic...

2 responses •

3 people

Shake off dull sloth.

Fiacre Banks @xFiacre (14096) • Ireland 16 Jun 23

Ireland is wearing another of her masks this morning. It’s 5 o’clock and the sun is burning off a light mist that’s rising from the river. The air flowing through my bedroom window has washed away most traces of sleep from my body...

5 responses •

5 people