Author Archives: tyldesleyboy

John 15:26 – 16:4   The world is not easily won to God We are stubborn in our sins Each last one Expel you from the synagogue Put some of you to death The warning comes before his own last breath   So laissez faire and easy does it Will not do at all ButContinue reading “Serious Ground”

I wrote a letter to my father In therapy one time It brought anger to the surface I did not know was mine And then it brought me tears of love Tears of understanding And put me right with my father Once again   A letter never sent you understand My father dead four yearsContinue reading “Advocate”

What did he achieve by dying? What do I achieve now in living? What is there to achieve?   So much when you are young And when you’re well Yes I agree But if you’re old And not so well What then?   Another day of breathing Better that than leaving Just to be aliveContinue reading “The Achieve Of”

You only have to hit someone To know you should not do it A teacher slapped me as a child My mother made her rue it Do not do to others What you would not have done to you A basic simple teaching You can see that it is true   For you and IContinue reading “The Slap”

  I go to Mass online these days Today in Donegal People kneeling in their pews The priest prays for us all The sanctuary a holy place Quiet dignity The gift the Lord has left to us His presence in a sign   In this place the Lord now speaks We listen to his wordContinue reading “Morning Mass”

From cobbled streets and pavements From coal dust in the air From the sound of looms in the local mill From schoolyard noises there From trolley buses rattling From floods down Shakerley Road From a game of bowls at Paddy’s Hump From sink slutch by the load From black faced miners coming home From pigeonsContinue reading “Best of Both Worlds”

At 45 my father’s health broke down. A miner, a soldier, and a miner again, and a smoker, his lungs began to weaken. He spent three months in the Miners’ Home in Blackpool, recovering, never to work in the pit again.   As a result, my mother had to go out to work. Mother ofContinue reading “All Change”

Sixty years ago this May Nanna Carey died My mother’s mother Matriarch I remember her with pride White marble slab Black lettering Records her life gone by Never to be forgotten A Dhia Dean Trocaire   A life lived out in Erris By Doolough’s western strand Glencullen all her married life A family to commandContinue reading “Bridget Carey(Died 12 May 1962)”

I was never down a coalmine but I can name a few. I grew up in the Lancashire coalfield of Atherton, Hindsford and Tyldesley, and I saw black-faced miners coming home from work every day. My own father never had a black face that I saw, because they had pithead baths installed in Astley Green,Continue reading “Black As Coal”

It is a long, low white cottage that sits beside an inlet of the sea. Originally a small Irish cottage, it is now doubled in length. It sits in its own small garden and a low, stone wall protects it from a road and then another stone wall and then the sea. The tide comesContinue reading “Home To Mayo”

At 75 years of age I have the leisure time to sit and think about my life and about the world in general. It is very important to me to keep my mind occupied in good activity. I am not a gardener who can go outside and tend to my surroundings. I am a thinker,Continue reading “Understanding”

Uncle Hugh was a powerful figure in my life and in my imagination. He was the figure I saw standing on the street in Bangor when, as a child, I came on holiday from England. He stood there like Clint Eastwood, with his hat on the side of his head and welcomed us all homeContinue reading “An Answer”

  A new road is being built between Castlebar and Westport. The N5 is being upgraded to a dual carriageway between the two towns. It is a big project and not before time. Tourism has brought much traffic to the West and the old road was all twists and turns and up and down andContinue reading “Way To Go”

An old man in Belmullet, a native of the Inishkea islands, was asked if he ever went back to the island. ‘I do,’ he said. ‘Mostly every year: I like to go back and walk around the old place.’ The islands, low lying land off the Mullet peninsula, had been evacuated in the 1930s, aContinue reading “The Old Place”

He’s from Kilkeel you know The Church of the Narrow Place The southernmost town in the North of Ireland He’s almost in the other place   And now he is sitting in the road Holding up the traffic The wind has changed direction But he is out to wreck it   I can’t say IContinue reading “Protocol”