Jennie Finch on the seafront at Saltburn.
There is a lot of snobbery around education – inverted snobbery from the “University of Life” people and academic snobbery that still maintains Open is not a “real” university. I’m a proud graduate and have also taught for them and I have found a lot of useful stuff I learned has come back to help […]
https://www.jenniefinch.me.uk/things-im-glad-i-learned-from-the-open-university/
Summer has always brought “plagues” to most places and Tipperary is no different. Many of these are due to moving into a house that has always been a rental property. With the really big plague – Covid – still circulating the rental market has collapsed. This brought our house onto the market (definitely not a […]
https://www.jenniefinch.me.uk/a-summer-of-plagues-in-tipperary/
With thanks to WS Gilbert for the title In the UK everyone talks about the weather. It’s a national pastime and one we came to expect and accept. It seems it is the same in Ireland. One important difference here is you cannot go into a shop, pick up a paper, put the money down […]
https://www.jenniefinch.me.uk/yes-yes-lets-talk-about-the-weather/
We were under lock down almost as soon as we arrived and it would have been easy to feel isolated, especially so far out in the countryside. In fact the wide open spaces proved to keep us rather busy. A combination of warm weather in March and the (in)famous rain led to an explosion in […]
https://www.jenniefinch.me.uk/lock-down-life-and-unwelcome-residents/
I said a few posts ago the house seemed a long way out in the country and it is. This has some very good things. There are no noisy neighbours, for example apart from occasional tractors hurrying past and the cows in the evening. We have no problem parking as there’s a large gravel forecourt. […]
https://www.jenniefinch.me.uk/strange-infrastructure-way-out-in-the-country/
One of the most striking things about the house was the number of birds co-habiting our little acreage. We picked our way past piles of boxes to open the back door and the bird song barely hesitated. It was February but there were many birds rarely seen in England until spring or summer. In the […]
https://www.jenniefinch.me.uk/boxes-and-bewilderment/
As soon as our offer for the house was accepted time seemed to drag. Days were darker, longer and colder with the prospect of that fine house ahead of us. This was made much worse by the lockdown as there was no going anywhere. We couldn’t even go up to look at “our” house as […]
https://www.jenniefinch.me.uk/our-house-is-a-very-fine-house/
It is a given that Ireland is wetter than Britain, sitting further out in the Atlantic. It is generally quite a bit warmer however. The locals were delighted and a bit apprehensive when we woke to a light dusting of snow in the New Year. We took the dogs into the park and they trotted […]
https://www.jenniefinch.me.uk/learning-to-appreciate-what-we-have/
Now, I don’t want you thinking we were just sitting around moaning about the cold. We had intended to stop and try to recover a little after the recent insane few months but we were struggling in the cottage. It was a perfect base for a holiday but not really set up for long-term life […]
https://www.jenniefinch.me.uk/time-for-a-radical-rethink/
A lot of people have commented on these posts (thank you all!) and many have said how brave we have been. Well, we don’t feel all that brave. And we didn’t do it on our own either. Throughout this whole “adventure” there have been people by our side. Some are old friends. Some are unexpectedly […]
https://www.jenniefinch.me.uk/the-wonderful-kindness-of-strangers/
