Tuesday 19 August 2008

ENTRIES FOR THE MOVILLE TIDY TOWNS GARDENING COMPETITION

Taoibh na Cille


Moville town




Hillary Donnelly




Sue Farren



Michael Davern






Francis Harkin

Mary Groaty

Michael Davern


Brian Gormley


Cathleen Doherty



Sarah Anne McLaughlin



Ard Foyle estate
Keith Craig
Brian Gormley


FOR TEXT GO TO GARDENING MATTERS

5 MINUTES WITH - PATRICK KEARNEY


Patrick Kearney is a published writer. His late father was from Urris, Clonmany, his mother, from Belfast, where Patrick was born and reared. He now lives in Donegal with his wife, Justine. He has been writing creatively for 25 years and runs creative writing workshops for emerging and advanced writers, and provides an additional range of support services to writers including new opportunities for publication with The Stoners’ Press. Patrick holds a Master of Arts (MA) in the Written & Verbal Arts. For more information about the writer and his work, visit: http://www.patrickkearneywriting.com/

What music do you like?
Traditional, Soul, and Blues. Particularly music and lyrics by Luke Kelly,Van Morrison, and more recently, Declan O'Rourke, who I think is the best male vocalist and singer-songwriter in Ireland today.

What would you never throw away?
Old black and white photographs of my late parents and grandparents. Black and white photos capture a mood and presence that colour ones never will, no matter how hi-tech they are produced.

What book are you reading?
One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, by Ken Kesey. I watched the film the other night, almost thirty years after first seeing it, and it reinforced my thinking that the lunatics are still running the asylum.

What was your favourite childhood game?
'Knock the door', repeatedly, with a long piece of string!

Have you been to the cinema recently, what did you see and was it any good?
Yes, and I'm not ashamed to say, Mama Mia. Apart from the feelgood music and songs, the vibrant colours of the Greek islands were a very pleasant and much-needed contrast to a very wet Donegal ... and it's still raining!

What section of the newspaper do you turn to first?
I don't read newspapers anymore. It's always the same grey, miserable heads that you see in them, spinning the same old bullshit! When I used to read the papers, it was usually the Death Notices I read first, to find out what wakes were on, where you were always guaranteed a good laugh. But all the old characters I knew are now dead. There's no one of interest out there anymore.

What is your idea of a good night out?
A good meal and a bottle of wine shared with my beautiful wife, Justine.

A real fun moment in your life?
My trousers falling down around my ankles on a street corner in Belfast when being roughly searched by a British soldier and accidently farting in his face when bending over to pull them up!

Have you a favourite TV programme?
Fawlty Towers.

How do you relax?
Reading a good book.

What job did you want to do when you were a child?
To be a farmer like my granddad.

Where would you like to go for your holidays?
Cuba again ... but downtown Havana next time.

Your idea of heaven?
Sitting around a good turf fire with my parents and grandparents telling stories, singing songs, drinking tea and toasting 'Shop' bread on a long handled fork. (It would be important though, that's there would be no down draft in the chimney).

Your idea of hell?
Seeing George Bush standing inside the Pearly Gates.

What famous person would you invite around for dinner and why?
Van Morrison to sing Cyprus Avenue, Hymns To The Silence, and Country Fair in that order.

Favourite animal?
Chocolate Labrador. That's why we have six of them and at least another four to come.

What couldn't you live without?
Chilled water ... and air!

Biggest fear?

I've looked death in the face more than once. So I don't have any.

Biggest thrill?

Sex.

The world's most irritating invention?
Plastic.

What is your idea of a good night in?
An early night.

Do you have a hobby?
Weight training and punching a heavy punch bag very hard.

Biggest disappointment?
The signing of the Treaty by Michael Collins. To agree to the partition of any country and it's people is a recipe for perpetual conflict and suffering until such time that the wrong can be righted, and this seldom happens.

Which period in history would you most like to have lived through?
I'm happy to live in the times I do, though I wish that the Ireland of yesteryear would soon come back, when people had less but were more happy. The pursuit of all things material will be the end to what was once good about life in Ireland, and its people.

World's most useful invention?
Word in print.

What do you have for breakfast?
Porridge, but without the salt, and a pint of chilled water.

What is the best piece of advice you have been given?
Whatever you say, say nothing.

A philosophy that holds merit for you?
Don't accept your dog's admiration as conclusive evidence that you are wonderful.

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