Recent radio silence…

Spent the best part of last week in the picturesque seaside town of Tenby, down in Pembrokeshire, South Wales. I was there on family business: my Nanna - who'll be 91 years old in just a few weeks - decided a few months back that she probably wasn't going to be able to cope through another winter on her own (my Grandad having passed away a couple of summers ago) so it was high time she relocated to a bungalow in Leeds.

A very good decision, if you ask me: her old house, was horribly inaccessible for someone of her advanced years (halfway up a hill, with steep steps at the front and back) and she's now much closer to most of my family and only an hour from Jo and I in Manchester. And it was a very brave decision, too: leaving the home she's lived in for the past 56 years to start a new life at 91 is just an incredible thing to do (and it was her decision, too; nobody pressured her into it) and I have nothing but admiration for her.

So, being the dutiful type and eager to assist in any way I could, I went on down to help out with the move: packing up the last few boxes, waving Mum, Dad and Nanna off on their car journey back to Leeds, then coordinating with the removal guys at the tail-end of the week, before making my own way back home by train on Friday.

The thing about Tenby: lovely place to visit, nice place to live if you fancy a bit of peace & quiet (except for the summer season, which can get a bit hairy), but not exactly what you'd call a wi-fi hot-spot. Hence my complete lack of T'Internet access all week, and the subsequent mad scramble to sort through my email backlog mountain and catch up with various work-related tasks (and resulting lack of blogging here) since I've been back at the weekend.

Of course, a week to myself with no WWW access - plus a six-hour train journey at the end of it - meant that I was able to read a whole two books (Charlie Huston's second Joe Pitt novel, No Dominion, the second of John Connolly's Charlie Parker novels, Dark Hollow) and make a good start on a third (K.J. Parker's Evil For Evil - finally!). And this, sadly, is something of a personal best since I knocked the daily commute on the head, not counting holiday reading...

And here - just in case you're contemplating a holiday, or even retiring to the coast (I know where you can buy a very nice semi - in need of redecoration, true, but in a great location) - are a few scenic shots of Tenby that I snapped off with my trusty old Fuji Finepix on the Monday evening. This was the last spell of sunshine that I was able to enjoy before the rain-clouds set in for the rest of the week.

The subject matter: St Catherine's Island (complete with largely-derelict C18th fort), the approach to Castle Hill (with a section of the old town walls), and the old lifeboat house (now replaced by a shiny, modern one, from where this last photo was taken).

Back to the regular genre-fiction-stuff next time I find a spare moment to put fingers to keyboard...

June 27, 2007 | Filed Under Books, Life, Photography | 9 Comments

Long weekend in Northern Ireland

Jo and I have spent the last three days in the always wonderful company of our very good friends Paul and Marie, as guests in their lovely home on the east coast of Northern Ireland.

The ancient province of Ulster is where you'll find of the most gloriously wild and unspoilt coastland in the UK. The more commonly tourist-trodden Giant's Causeway has been largely tamed, but is still quite literally breath-taking, particularly on a typically wind-swept spring day. Paul and Marie live a fair bit further south, where there are far fewer tourists, which means fewer cars, car-parks, visitor centres and litter-bins to mar the landscape.

They do get an awful lot of rain and wind though, and both Friday and Sunday were typical for the time of year: grey, lowering skies with squalls sweeping in from the Irish Sea and rattling the roof tiles. So we stayed in, enjoyed home-cooked chiken korma, chilli con carne and bacon & mushroom frittata, drank bottled Guinness and the Whitewater Brewery's Belfast Ale (thanks to Ed for the recommendation, Paul and I really enjoyed it), sipped snifters of Laphroig cask strength and played poker and Uno when we weren't whiling away the hours in conversation.

But on Saturday the weather lifted and the sun shone through, so we took the opportunity to go for a trek up along the coast for a couple of miles, following a short section of the Ulster Way. Here are a few snapshots I took with my old and un-fancy Fuji Finepix A203:

That water is a fair bit colder than it looks

They don't call it the Emerald Isle for nothing...

Quite lovely, no?

And of course, our destination was a fantastic country pub, where I enjoyed a remarkably fine sirloin steak (Jo had the lemon sole), washed down by a couple of delicious pints of Guinness. Have you noticed how they always taste better after a decent amount of exercise? Must be the lower guilt-content...

Ahhhh... Northern Ireland. Highly recommended.