Radio Eirean

I like to listen to the radio, especially on weekend mornings, when there are interviews, or one-on-one discussions with authors about their work, but I suppose my interest really rises when people speak about themselves, or when they have written about their lives. They are mostly not what the world would consider successes, but they seem always to have done fulfilling things, or can speak of that with which we can all relate.

Last weekend John Bowman interviewed the author of a recently published work, in which the gentleman spoke about cutting the turf when he was young. In the country, and even in the towns, people would have access to a defined area of bog, where they would cut their winter supply of fuel, stack it to dry, and then transport it home. He spoke of when he was young, and his memories of days spent at the bog, and then went on to talk of Bord na Mona, which mechanised the harvesting of the turf. Gone then were the days spent with his father and brothers, and the tea which his dad said never tasted as good as it did at the bog. And that last comment took me back to a bog in Kerry, and a hillside farm called the Esk. But that's for another day.