New year was always a time for ghost stories. M.R.James’s ghostly tales on the BBC were a staple of viewing with my dad when I was younger. This is my take on the ghost story for Nether Oak Close and the Ghost of 12a
Author: admin
Umpherday (aka the 27th December)
The Christmas Eve Landing at Nether Oak Close
A Christmas story from Nether Oak Close and typical for the adventures the people that live there have.
No Room (Christmas story)
A family friend said something to me that resonated Inderjit is a Reverend.. he sent me a whatsapp that read …
“I am struck by the detail that the new born Jesus was laid in a manger for “there was no room in the inn”. A little more room had to be made for Jesus to be born. This for me is the challenge of the Christmas story for the world. Make a little more room for those desperate for shelter and sanctuary, especially those who are displaced because their homes have been destroyed by war and violence.”
and it sparked my creative juices .. and this came out .. not quite Dickens but I am getting there .. Click the button to read
The Teddy bear that was Useful one last time
A series of events bind the owner of number 2 Nether Oak Close to a stone age woman that needs his help in the present.
Click the Read More to find out how
Winter Solstice Thoughts
The woman in the mirror
Kate McHugh learns a valuable lesson from a woman that lives in her mirror
Get the story by clicking on the button below
Aideen’s fire
An irish phoenix needs the help of Wiliam and Maggie from Number 9 Nether Oak Close
Find out more clicking the button below
In Praise of Kitchens
Oisin and the curse of the chipped mug
Grief does not pass; it changes shape. At first it arrives like a tsunami of tears, and later as something quieter—an ache that dulls, a tear that comes less often, but never quite leaves the edge of memory.
This came home to me at a concert Val and I attended. One of the support acts played a song called “Crow” to a crowd of over ten thousand people. Written for the singer’s father figure, the crow becomes a stand-in for memory itself—persistent, sometimes haunting, a mixture of love, loss, and the difficulty of moving on.
Around the same time, I listened to an Irish actor reading “The Dead” by James Joyce. What struck me was not the story itself, but the ending: the quiet realization that the dead continue to live within us, and that one day we too will survive only as memory. In Joyce’s hands, this is not despair, but a profound affirmation of life.
So this story is “after” James Joyce and Andrew Davie and probably not as good as either and dedicated to all those that grieve