Author Harry McAvinchey

“Will the birds eat these?” asked the good wife…..”Will they what ? “,says I ,in response. Ten minutes later the bun -worry to end all bun worries was in progress across the garden ,as first the starlings tore into the bag of seeded rolls that the wife thought might be out of date by an […]

Why are religious people and believers in God always so angry and argumentative about life? Apparently David Ford has come a cropper within his church for speaking out of turn about gay marriage.I sometimes wonder why anyone would bother joining a club if they didn’t want to abide by the rules.How simple can it be? […]

Way back in the mists of time…somewhere in the 1950’s of my childhood, there was a large walnut -coloured radio with a glowing dial , sitting high up on a plain wooden shelf above my head in our old family living-room. That and a vacuum cleaner might have been the only electrical gadget in the […]

Terrible ….terrible.. This bloody man- flu has been swimming through me and around me like some poisonous miasma for nearly two weeks now and it’s beginning to get just a little bit boring .I partly blame myself, in any case .Two and a half weeks ago I said to the good wife ..”You know , […]

“The cuckoo is a pretty bird….She wobbles as she flies…. She never hollers coo coo…. until the fourth day of July”….Clarence Ashley ,the Harry Smith Smithsonian Collection of American Folk Music. Like most people, I have my own heroes in the endeavours of literature ,art and music.They are many and varied, because my tastes are […]

  The £1-7 million Social Investment Fund(SIF) Dear sweet suffering sassafras!(Again!!!!) The world really is in anything but a state of grace . Are we all now prepared to accept any corruption or villainy? Has even taste died a death? Currently American politics are no more than a burlesque . Almost half the voting population […]

What do you think about soldiers being exempt from the rule of law during conflict? Currently there is a proposal espousing something not unlike that notion.Under proposals being pondered , British soldiers would be protected from legal action brought using European Court of Human Rights legislation.It is reckoned it is too easy to prosecute troops […]

Ahhhhhhh! Politicians!!!!!! I see that two members of UKIP have had a little “altercation ” of sorts which has left one of them , Steven Woolfe ,recovering in hospital. This all happened, naturally enough,as you might imagine with a party such as UKIP, in Strasbourg, so , as they say over here in Norneverland , […]

I was only ruminating in jest recently that the border between Norneverland and the rest of the Irish island was really only a state of mind. At best it is an imaginary construct anyway . Northern nationalists never really bought into it ,no matter the political machinations in the UK, the current shape of the […]

Looking out at the soft caressing mizzle, coddling and be-dewing everything in the garden this glum Saturday, it’s difficult to believe that on this same day a week ago it was so bright and clement that I was sweating profusely inside my bee-suit as I re-organised my honeybees and my beehives for the coming cooler […]