In line with the theme of this year’s West Cork Creates exhibition, ‘Listen to the Land Speak’ – a tribute to the ideas and philosophy of Manchán Magan (1970 – 2025) – Owen will submit a number of pieces, including two stitched books attempting to illustrate the same ancient stories and the land that Magan wrote about.

A stitched sculpture of a tree with a standing stone atop tells the story of the coming of man and the impact on the land while a scroll stitched onto frayed denim tells the story of the interaction of the people and the land through motif and symbolism. A set of four stitched sculptures feature the elements fire, air, earth and water and his series entitled ‘Odd Balls’ embraces the inner child.

Since he was very little, Owen’s work has always told a story, much of it related to his own life. As his first wobbly stitches grew neater on the old school skirt his mother gave him to practice on, the names of close friends began appearing, sometimes also joined by small motifs they had drawn. A few years later places and events of special significance in his personal life were added – Glastonbury 1987, a trip to China with the Irish Special Olympics team, the birth of each of his children, an old 2p coin when Ireland transferred over to the Euro. When there was no room left for stitching he added a waistband, creating a finished skirt that holds over 50 years of memories. The skirt finally had its debut worn by one of Owen’s daughters at a recycled fashion show in Ballydehob.

While the many firsts – first exhibition piece, first podcast, first viral post – are all fun highlights in Owen’s embroidery journey, the pieces that he remembers with most pride are those created especially for people: a lady’s favourite hat stitched for her after she lost her hair from chemotherapy; a small red denim jacket stitched for a little girl recovering from a brain operation; a badge stitched for a mother in memory of her daughter shot by a terrorist. “Being able to comfort, to communicate, to console, and bring a little piece of joy or beauty or hope, however small, into someone’s life, is a privilege, and the messages and photos I’ve received in return are very special to me,” shares Owen.

“I should also mention Seamus O’Comanssy,” he adds smiling. Owen stitched this playful tiny globe-trotting character after realising that his own travelling days were behind him. Seamus has his own Facebook and Substack page where he shares tales about his adventures around the world. “Seamus is currently on a yacht moored off an island in the South Pacific with a couple of ‘nomads’ who are helping out at the Women’s Resource Centre in the village of Lamap,” shares Owen, who says the “wee man” has brought so many strangers together over the years.

West Cork has been home for Owen since 1987 when, after selling his business in the UK and looking to escape the constraints of Thatcherism, he decided to follow his roots back to Ireland. Considered a math prodigy as a child, his interest in art was “gently discouraged”, so his career path took a very different route towards mathematics and economics. In West Cork, he found the freedom to express his creative side.

Aside from embroidery, wildlife gardening, photography and storytelling are his passions. After completing a horticultural course at West Cork Campus in 2018, he enrolled the following year on the Art and Printing course there, which offered a very small module on embroidery. While he doesn’t feel that the course influenced his own stitching practice, he says that “being in that learning and creative environment was very motivational” subsequently prompting him to expand his approach and take his work more seriously.

Although he has over 50 years experience in embroidering, it’s really over the past five to six years that Owen’s talent has taken on a life of its own. Social media has played a big part in this, bringing his work to a wider audience and with that an ever-increasing number of orders, commissions and requests for tutorials.

Hand embroidery is an inherently slow process with each piece requiring incredible patience. “I only managed to stitch eight full denim jackets last year,” he shares.

Last year, he was invited to contribute a piece to ‘The Dream Project’, a collaborative exhibition that toured Australia, America, and Scotland. Although several galleries have approached him since about staging a solo exhibition, this has proved challenging, as the majority of his embroideries are created on commission and are now dispersed in collections around the world. As a result, he has rarely had enough work available in one place to mount a comprehensive exhibition of his own.

For the past two years he has been working on a piece that he’s dubbed his ‘Quantum Quilt’. Made up of 100 hand-stitched panels, it will measure 12ft x 4ft when finished, and hopefully be ready for exhibition next year.

Interested in history, mythology, and folklore, Owen draws particular inspiration from Ireland’s rich tradition of storytelling. These ancient stories, together with the work of the late Manchán Magan, inspired his contribution to the ‘Listen to the Land Speak’ exhibition. His visual influences span a wide artistic spectrum, from the psychedelic poster art of Rick Griffin and Mouse and Kelley, to the illustration of Albert Uderzo, the comics of Carlos Ezquerra and Robert Crumb, the fantastical worlds of Roger Dean, the Celtic imagery of Jim Fitzpatrick and George Bain, the intricate visions of Hieronymus Bosch, and the vibrant designs of Alan Aldridge. He is equally inspired by the intricate ornamentation of medieval manuscripts such as the Book of Kells, as well as the decorative philosophy of William Morris and the embroidery of his daughter, Mary Morris. Beyond Europe, his influences include Otomí, Suzani, Vyshyvanka, Tatreez, Kantha, Kuba, Shisha, Hmong, and Kashmiri embroidery.

Rather than focusing on the end product, each stitch for Owen is part of a personal journey. Embroidery is a meditative process that brings great calm to the artist, who loves nothing more than getting swept up in his own work, taking the little observations from his daily life and drawing upon his memories and imagination, all in the act of creating. 

For more information on Owen and his work visit www.slavetothestitch.com.

“I was born and raised in Clonakilty. My father was from Clon and my mother from Leap so am well rooted in West Cork,” she says.. “I now live in Cork city but find the pull west very strong. If I haven’t walked Inchydoney Strand in too long I get angsty.”

Oonagh’s path to becoming a professional artist was unconventional. After a 13-year career in physiotherapy, she returned to study art, having always maintained a love of drawing and painting through evening classes and art courses.

“With the ‘cushion’ of leave of absence, I went back to art college and graduated from Crawford College of Art and Design in 2009 and have been painting since.”

Her career has since included solo and group exhibitions across Ireland. She secured a solo exhibition at Wexford Arts Centre in 2011 before beginning to exhibit with Catherine Hammond Gallery in Glengarriff in 2014, followed by a solo exhibition at Hammond Gallery in Skibbereen in 2017. She exhibits regularly with Blue House Gallery in Schull and held a solo exhibition there in 2023. She has also shown with the Lavit Gallery in Cork and has been exhibiting with West Cork Creates since 2023.

Among the highlights of her career was receiving the Percent for Art commission for Cork Opera House in 2020, where her large-scale painting remains on permanent display.

“The Percent for Art award for the Cork Opera House commission was very welcome in 2020 and my large painting can be seen for posterity,” she said.

Her ‘Women Unremembered’ portrait series was exhibited through Cork County Council’s Arts Office programme at County Hall in 2022. The exhibition explored forgotten women’s stories and generated a particularly strong public response.

“The responses of the viewing public were particularly moving, especially comments from local women’s groups like the ICA,” she says.

Her portrait of Ellen Hutchins, Ireland’s first female botanist who lived and worked in Ballylickey, led to an invitation to speak at the West Cork Literary Festival in 2023. The painting was subsequently acquired by UCC for the Ellen Hutchins Building.

Oonagh’s creative practice centres on memory and its elusive nature.

“My work is mainly figurative, investigating the processes of remembering and forgetting,” she explains. “I typically gather images that evoke the notion of memory for me. They are often of mundane, incidental moments from my personal photographs, media images, stills from my father’s old Super 8mm films.”

Her painting process reflects these themes.

“I pour layers of different colours of paint on canvases on the floor, tilting and tipping the surface, encouraging the flow of paint drips in varying directions. I also use tools to smear the paint or wipe it off, leaving variations in density and texture. Once dry I choose how my composition will sit on this underpainting and allow some areas exposed while concealing others, the whole process mirroring how memory behaves, fluid and open-ended.”

In recent years, her work has increasingly explored women’s lives and overlooked histories.

“Over time my interest in forgotten women’s stories and of the unseen and unacknowledged load of women in the domestic sphere, prompted by the 2024 referendum on woman’s place in the home, led to my solo exhibition ‘The Weight of Love’ in Signal Arts Centre, Bray.”

The exhibition, consisting of ink-on-paper works, confronted traditional expectations placed on women.

“‘The Weight of Love’, depicted with humour and despair, confronts outdated narratives of a woman’s place in the home, highlighting the absurdity of the domestic load that women bear.”

She believes her work reflects wider concerns beyond the personal.

“My work intersects with my life on many levels. Through the prism of womanhood, motherhood in such an unstable world, many of the rights women have gained are being chipped at and challenged. Our Earth faces unprecedented threat and our connectedness to the earth needs to be understood.”

Like many artists, sustaining a creative career has not been without obstacles.

“Challenges for artists are invariably financial and of course the early years of parenthood eat into time. Finding studio space has been challenging over the years.”

Alongside her exhibition with West Cork Creates, Oonagh’s work will also feature on the cover of the latest edition of Swerve magazine, the literary and arts publication produced in Skibbereen.

Early last November, a beautiful black woman named Xania Monet made world history. Sort of. Her song, ‘How Was I Supposed to Know?’ entered the US Adult R&B Airplay chart at no. 30 and also charted no. 20 on Hot R&B Songs, which ranks the 25 most popular contemporary R&B tracks. It came with relatable live action videos. Scenes of love, neglect and romantic heartbreak playing out across various generations. A drunken father. An abusive boyfriend. And a poignant lyric, written from the point of view of a daughter who is remarkably perceptive when it comes to understanding her own unresolved trauma. “Mama did her best but she can’t teach/What it feels like when a father speaks/So I took every “I love you” too deep/Even when they meant it only for a week. […] Unpacking daddy wounds from every kiss.”

Xania’s voice sounds soulful but also…overly smooth. No wonder. Monet’s claim to fame is that she was the first AI being to enter a US radio chart. Listeners accepted her as a real person. She has a ‘creator’, the poet Telisha Jones, who writes Xania’s lyrics, generates her music, and sees her as an avatar. She got a multi-million contract but also a lot of pushback from human artists and sections of the music industry, which consider this to be an ominous milestone. 

AI has since made inroads into many genres. Up to and including the traditional Appalachian music. AI itself describes it as, “raw, historical, deeply rooted … a rich, living blend of Anglo-Celtic folk ballads, African American blues, and West African rhythms that evolved organically on front porches and in the coal camps of the American mountains”. But maybe it is simply blind to the human factor. 

The latter will be strongly represented “in the flesh” at DeBarra’s Folk Club on September 16, the first night of the Clonakilty International Guitar Festival, when the remarkable Leah Song, “Appalachian storyteller, song-catcher, and cultural bridge-builder” will take to the stage. Best known as one of the frontwomen, alongside her sister, Chloe Smith, of ‘Rising Appalachia’. Not the only ensemble from that slightly mystical region with women in the driving seat, whether as instrumentalists, or singers, or both. There were the iconic Coon Creek Girls, an all-girl bluegrass string band which was rather famous in the 1930s and 1940s and hailed from the Appalachian foothills of Eastern Kentucky. (Appalachia stretches across 13 US states and is roughly 6.3 times larger than Ireland). Contemporary women’s bands with Appalachian roots include the Grammy-nominated outfit Della Mae (formed in Boston), the sedately-dressed Sister Sadie (formed in Nashville, a non-Appalachian part of Tennessee), and the Grammy-winning Aoife O’Donovan, whose father grew up in Ardfield near Clonakilty before emigrating to Boston. Her shows in West Cork are mostly sold out. In the US, she’s part of the trio ‘I’m With Her’. It was formed at the Telluride Bluegrass Festival in Colorado in 2014 but is not on the twangy, hard-nosed, lonesome side of the bluegrass vocal landscape. Neither is Rising Appalachia. The band’s harmonies are wonderful, vulnerable, sweet, sometimes soaring to great multidimensional heights. 

Now an internationally touring folk ensemble, it started on the sisters’ back porch in Atlanta (Georgia), where they grew up. They also spent seven years in New Orleans where they deliberately moved a year after Hurricane Katrina pounced to help rebuild community. “Both are fabulous, wonderful, diverse, wild Southern cultural hubs,” explains Leah Song. They love busking on urban streets but always seem to have at least one foot in nature. As they write on their website: “In Appalachia, farmers still practice the ancestral tradition of companion planting. Corn grows tall as a trellis, beans climb the corn, and squash provides the ground cover. Rising Appalachia cultivates a similar symbiosis in their music, where Southern folk traditions, New Orleans swamp culture, and Atlanta’s street spirit strengthen each other.” 

Leah does the interview from her cabin near Asheville, North Carolina, “right behind a protected 43-acre forest. I’m only here part-time as my life is pretty global. It’s a place that is very rooted in traditional culture, music, craft, and song so I go here to refill my cup. I’m standing underneath a huge oak tree right now. Southern Appalachia is one of the most biologically diverse temperate regions on Earth. You get a whole lot of wildlife. Bears, owls, foxes. Yes, it’s under threat from the current administration; everything is. Two years ago it was devastated by Hurricane Helene, the second-deadliest US hurricane of the last 50 years. We lost about a hundred thousand trees and there were some very scary fatalities. Although there was a silver lining. It did encourage the community to get more self-reliant and interconnected. It now has very strong grassroots underground education and advocacy groups.” 

Born to a sculptor (father) and fiddler (mother), the sisters have always been fully immersed in music and other art forms. “The gospel music of our mother, the folklore of our father. All steeped in Southern Appalachian culture. However, our mother started learning the Irish fiddle when we were five years old. She brought us over to Ireland often, to study the fiddle traditions but only found out she had Irish lineage 10 years ago. As an Irish fiddler pointed out to her, there really is a close kinship; you can trace the Appalachian song lines directly to different counties and regions in the Celtic Isles. One of my first trips back to Ireland after many years was when we were still in recovery from storm Helene. I decided that I really needed to be in community with folks who have a long history of survival and of art and music being the tools of handling hardship.” 

Before alighting on the guitar festival, where she will sing and play claw-hammer banjo, bodhrán, and guitar alongside fellow Rising Appalachian star David Brown, Leah Song will embark on an extraordinary 11-day journey across East Clare and West Cork, curated by Wild Routes Ireland (Tara De Róiste and Chris Gambatesa). It includes visits to Ballydehob (Kilcoe Studios, Levis Corner House), heritage foods with Max Jones (somewhere in West Cork), somatics and songs with Leah Song. Plus storytelling, coracle weaving, strawcraft and other crafts taught by different experts. It is connected to the slow music movement (see her Tedx Talk). “It is about building longer, slower relationships. Going slow and then fast again. This tour is a homecoming of sorts. A rooted experience where music is just one part of the exchanges between culture and story and place.”

www.leahsongmusic.com

www.clonguitarfest.com

Interestingly, in Spanish you can both be sad (Soy triste) and be in a state of sadness (Estoy triste). The former is something you are born with – you are a sad person; the latter is due to events outside of you like failing an exam. Two other words that only exist in Irish and which really reflect the Irish spirit are ‘craic’ (good times in good company) and ‘meitheal’ (coming together as a team to achieve a common goal). In fact, a good ‘meitheal’ is great ‘craic’! The fact that there is no way to say “Yes “or “No” in Irish is a clue into why the Irish can seem a bit cagey. You can’t definitively say that you will be going out on Friday if you have no word for yes/no. And then there is ‘an modh coinníollach’, a whole verb tense to conjugate what might, maybe happen depending on the circumstances. It is the most unspecific of verb tenses.

Many languages have words that don’t have an English translation and I love discovering them. I am lucky to speak Spanish, and French, which makes Italian easy to understand but somehow shuts out both Greek and Portuguese, two languages that totally escape me. Here are a few of my favourite untranslatable words. Each one is a little peek into that culture’s soul.

‘Sobremesa’ is a lovely word in Spanish, which conjures up all my childhood summers. It is the time after you’ve finished a meal when you stay chatting at the table. It can last from an hour to all afternoon if the meal is lunch. Another great Spanish word is ‘estenar,’ which means to wear something new for the first time. It’s showing off in the most blatant way and goes a long way to understanding a certain arrogant confidence that some might accuse my ancestors of having. I love the verb for riding a horse ‘caballgar,’ which literally translates into “to horse” from caballo (horse). Spanish is great on verbs. ‘Madrugar’ is to get up at dawn, while ‘merendar’, is to eat ‘merienda’ (afternoon tea). Another lovely verb is ‘despedirse’, which describes saying goodbye.

French has some good words as well. ‘Amuse bouche’ is something you might find on a fancy restaurant menu, but it literally means amuse mouth. It is something bite size, that is both tasty and surprising. French can be very specific like that. Take ‘defenestrer,’ which is the verb that describes throwing someone out a window.

One of my favourite French verbs is ‘flaner’, which means to stroll with no particular purpose and no particular destination. It is more fluid and aimless than the Italian ‘passeggiata’. The Spanish ‘putivuelta’ is a stroll around the town to see what’s happening and where’s the best ‘ambiente’, ambience, ‘atmosphera’. The Irish equivalent is to take a walk to see where’s the craic? If you bump into friends along the way, you have had a ‘retrouvaille’, a word which means to meet again in French and implies that both parties are pleased about it. To be ‘depayser’ translates literally as to be de-countried. Nothing is familiar. Everything is different from your country. It’s Dorothy turning to Toto and saying, “I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.” It’s not homesickness as much as an awareness of being totally not where you are used to being.

I had a look at words that only exist in English and discovered a few of my favourites. ‘Serendipity’ is a wonderful word, which means a happy accident. We should all have a bit of serendipity in our lives. Another word which I use a lot and which I did not realise was exclusive to English is ‘flabbergasted’. It means overwhelming surprise- a sort of “I didn’t see that coming” moment. Lastly is ‘bungalow’, a solid simple word that is truly suited to its meaning.

It sounds like a small shift, but it changes everything. As parents, we naturally notice behaviour first. The slammed bedroom door. The eye roll. The silence after school. The argument over homework. The refusal to come to dinner. The endless hours spent behind a bedroom door or scrolling through a phone.

Behaviour is visible. It demands our attention. And because it often disrupts family life, our instinct is usually to stop it as quickly as possible.

But what if behaviour isn’t the problem? What if behaviour is the language our teenagers use when they don’t yet have the words to explain what is happening inside them?

Teenagers rarely wake up deciding to be difficult. They don’t choose anxiety, loneliness, shame or overwhelm. Yet they often don’t have the emotional vocabulary or confidence to say, “I’m struggling,” “I’m scared,” or “I don’t feel good enough.” Instead, those feelings leak out through behaviour.

Imagine trying to read a book by opening it to the very last page. You would know how the story ends, but you would have no understanding of everything that came before it. Behaviour is often like that last page. We see the ending, but we miss the chapters that explain it.

A teenager who snaps over something small may have spent the entire day feeling criticised or excluded. The teenager who refuses to go to school may not be lazy at all. They may be carrying anxiety that feels impossible to describe.The teenager who seems constantly angry may actually be frightened, disappointed or deeply hurt. And sometimes, the teenager who appears perfectly fine is the one quietly struggling the most.

This doesn’t mean that every difficult behaviour should be accepted without boundaries. Boundaries remain one of the greatest gifts we can offer our children. They provide safety, predictability and security. However, boundaries become much more effective when they are paired with curiosity.

Instead of asking, “How do I stop this?” we might ask, “What happened before this?” or “What could my teenager be finding difficult right now?” Curiosity doesn’t remove accountability. It simply helps us understand what we are responding to.

Think about how we respond to a physical symptom. If someone develops a persistent cough, we don’t simply tell them to stop coughing. We become curious. We ask what might be causing it. Behaviour deserves the same level of curiosity.

One of the biggest misconceptions about adolescence is that teenagers stop needing connection. Because they become more independent, spend more time with friends and seek greater privacy, it’s easy to assume they no longer want us involved.

The opposite is often true. Many teenagers desperately want connection. They simply don’t always know how to ask for it without risking rejection or embarrassment.

Sometimes connection looks nothing like the warm conversations parents hope for.

It might look like sitting beside you while you’re watching television. It might be asking for a lift somewhere. It might even look like an argument that started over something insignificant but was really an attempt to be noticed.

Not every behaviour carries a deep hidden meaning, of course. Teenagers are learning, testing limits and making mistakes, just as every generation before them has done.

But when difficult behaviours become repeated patterns, it’s worth wondering whether they are pointing towards an unmet emotional need.

This perspective can be surprisingly freeing for parents. Instead of feeling they have failed because their teenager is struggling, they begin to see themselves as detectives rather than judges and start collecting clues instead of building cases. They begin listening. Noticing that behind the anger there may be fear. Behind the withdrawal there may be shame. Behind the defiance there may be uncertainty. Behind the constant joking there may be sadness.

This doesn’t make parenting easier overnight. Teenagers will still test boundaries and family disagreements will still happen. But when we remember that behaviour is communication, we respond differently.

And perhaps most importantly, our teenagers begin to experience something every young person needs: the feeling of being understood before being corrected. Behaviour may be the loudest thing our teenagers show us, but it is rarely the whole story.

If we can learn to listen beyond the behaviour, we may get to understand the message and discover that what looked like defiance was really distress, what looked like laziness was exhaustion, and what looked like indifference was simply a young person who didn’t yet know how to ask for help.

Honeysuckle, with its bright flowers and sweet perfume, is a symbol of beauty and summertime. However, the wood of honeysuckle, although it begins life soft and flexible, becomes very hard as it matures, with the ability to choke off the growth of any other wood by binding it tightly in its grip. This has made it a symbol in Irish legend of strength and slow inexorable power, which led to the Irish saying that anything that was hard to break was ‘chomh righin leis an táith-fhéithleann, as tough as the honeysuckle.

In Ireland, honeysuckle was believed to have a power against evil spirits and it was used in a drink to cure the effects of the ‘evil eye’. In parts of Scotland on May Day farmers put pieces of honeysuckle and rowan over the doors of the cow houses to prevent the goodness of the milk being stolen by witchcraft. In the Hebrides, they used to make a death of ivy, honeysuckle and rowan and placed it over the lintel of the cow house and under the vessels in the dairy to safeguard the cows and their milk from evil. On the Isle of Man, honeysuckle was considered good ‘to keep milk from stinginess and butter from blackness’.

The flowers of honeysuckle are full of nectar and a favourite pastime of children was to suck them for their sweet taste and this trait gave honeysuckle its name. Honeysuckle is also known as woodbine. In Irish it has several names – ‘féithleann, táith-fhéithleann, bainne gamhna’ (calves’ milk), ‘lus na meala (the herb of honey), ‘mil ghabhair’ (goat’s honey). In the 1950s, in West Cork we called it ‘táith-fhéithleann’.

In England, honeysuckle has romantic associations. If it is brought into a house then a wedding will follow and, if its flowers are placed in a girl’s bedroom, it will bring her dreams of love. Honeysuckle is mentioned by Shakespeare in a romantic context, ‘Sleep thou and I will wind thee in my arms / so doth the woodbine – the sweet honeysuckle gently entwist’.

In Irish, the name ‘bainne gamhna’, (literally calve’s milk) refers to the idea of something sweet for sucking. The name appears in the well-known old Irish song, ‘Samhradh, samhradh, bainne na ngamhna, Thugamar féin an samhradh linn. Samhradh buí na nóiníní glégheal / Thugamar féin ansamhradh linn’. (Summer, summer, the honeysuckle / we brought the summer with us / Golden summer of bright daisies / we brought the summer with us). The song was traditionally sung at Maytime as part of the festivities, when there was singing and dancing and making garlands of flowers.

In the great Irish tale, ‘Táin Bó Cuailgne’ (The Cattle Raid of Cooley), Cuchulainn is goaded into fighting the great friend of his youth, Ferdia. Ferdia had left Ulster and fought with the Connaght men and Queen Maeve against Ulster, whose greatest warrior was Cuchulainn. None of the Connacht champions could beat Cuchulainn. Maeve’s last chance was to force Ferdia to fight his friend. Cuchulainn was goaded by the words that Ferdia “has bested you as a woodbine binds trees”. Later, when Cuchulainn finally turned the table on Ferdia, he himself uses the same image. He tells Ferdia to stand aside or ‘I will entwine you as a woodbine binds trees’. It is not the gentle embrace of love that is meant here, but the crushing of an enemy in an iron grip.

Honeysuckle’s themes of love and strength come together in the Irish tale of the love between the youth ‘Baile Mac Buain’ and the princess ‘Aillin’. Their love is ill-fated and they both die of broken hearts and are buried separately. A yew tree grows from Baile’s grave and an apple tree from Aillin’s and, after seven years, poets made writing tablets out of each of them. It so happens that the two poets later attend a feast at Tara at the same time, and the high king, Cormac Mac Airt, is impressed by both poems. He asks to see the two tablets and, as soon as he takes them into his hands, they spring together and become entwined like honeysuckle around a branch. So tightly are they intertwined that no-one could part them.

In traditional herbal medicine the flowers of honeysuckle have been used to make a syrup to cure diseases of the respiratory organs and asthma, and a decoction of the leaves has been used for diseases of the liver and spleen. The most common cure was to use the leaves and flowers for gargles and lotions for inflammations of the mouth, especially thrush. The bark of honeysuckle was used in counties Leitrim and Cavan as a cure for jaundice and in Cork and Wicklow as a cure for whooping cough. In other parts of Ireland, people used to chew it as a cure for toothache. Beekeepers used to smear their hives with honeysuckle flowers so that the bees would regard them as their homes and return to them. The leaves were a favourite food of goats, hence the Latin name for the honeysuckle family comes from ‘capri folium’ (goat’s leaf).

By Dylan O’Connell

If Irish football is one large pyramid, very few have a view of it like Bandon native Richie Holland. The Galway United coach has seen and done it all, from working at local level to standing on the line in the League of Ireland while overseeing the development of a number of underage internationals. Holland’s pathway to the top of the domestic game has taken a lot of turns, and he tells Dylan O’Connell all about his road to the top.

“I took over an under 18 team in Bandon – I was only a couple of months over age actually,” says Holland, looking back.

“It was my mates and stuff. They had no coach. So I could do it and all that kind of stuff. It kind of kicked off from there.”

That was the start of a career that would take Holland from the Cork Youth Leagues to the League of Ireland Premier Division, to his current home at Galway United where he works under Enniskeane native John Caulfield.

What took things to the next level was a FÁS coaching course run by Cork City legends Mick Conroy and Paul Bannon.

“I really got into it properly when I was in the FAS course with Mick Conroy and Paul Bannon,” he explained.

“I was at Cork City at the time as a player as well. I got an injury on the course, on the FÁS course.

“I broke my foot. Mick got me to take charge the team for a couple of games because he saw the kind of leadership qualities in me. That was my first kind of taste of doing tactical stuff and being involved with players while doing team meetings and stuff.

“That was the first kind of exposure to it. So I went on and did my introductory badges while I was injured. I just continued it from there.

“Then I started taking teams when I could in the evenings. I started getting my hours in, in terms of coaching sessions around West Cork. I was doing different teams and all the rest of it.

“I went into the West Cork League and I did two Kennedy Cups with them, the West Cork League. I continued with Bandon and I coached some underage teams at Ballinhassig. Eventually then went on and did my B licence.”

Holland had serious momentum at that point in his career and he used it to gain more coaching roles around Cork.

“I was working for the Cork ETB as a sports tutor in Cork city,” he added.

“I was going around to youth centres and doing football programmes and stuff while I was still playing as well.

“Eventually did my A licence. I was Kennedy Cup manager for Cork as well in 2017. I got the Noel O’Reilly Coach of the Year Award from the FAI that year as Grassroots Coach of the Year.”

“I got the call from John Caulfield in the middle of 2017 to say I would come into Cork City and work in the academy. I was in the academy and Colin Healy got involved  after. We were on the same team then, their Under-19s. I worked with the academy and kept up my education. Eventually Colin progressed to academy manager and first team manager. I went in with him then.”

Holland and Healy went into a City team that desperately wanted to feel good about itself after experiencing relegation in 2020 from the Premier Division, just three years after claiming a league and cup double. The coaches led the club to promotion in 2022, at the expense of Galway United and Waterford, an emotional achievement that was celebrated across Cork.

That was made even better by the emergence of David Harrington, a goalkeeper that is now declared for Wales at international level. Mark O’Mahony and Franco Umeh broke in, and now ply their trades with Brighton and Hove Albion and Portsmouth in addition to the Republic of Ireland Under-21s.

At Cork City, Healy departed a year later and Holland was put into the hotseat during a campaign that ended with relegation through the play-offs.

Holland later joined Cobh Ramblers, to work under former Iran and Qatar coach Mick McDermott. They proved to be a winning combination as the club won the Munster Senior Cup and pushed for the First Division title, only to fall short in the final few weeks of the season.

Holland is now at Galway United, and he is back coaching in the Premier Division with an FAI Cup tie to come in July.

“It’s a different part of the country and there’s great people up here,” Holland talked about life at Eamonn Deacy Park.

“Galway is pretty similar to Cork in terms of they’ve got their own club in the city. The games at Eamonn Deacy Park have great atmosphere.

“The Premier Division is going from strength to strength every year with the quality of the players and stuff like that. We’re taking it game by game but there are no illusions where we are compared to other teams in the division, budget wise and resource wise.

“We’re competitive in every game and hopefully we’ll push for the second half of the season.”

Galway United were in midtable at the midseason break, but a strong finish could propel the club up the table and into the European spaces. The club have also been drawn against amateur side Crumlin United, a winnable tie on paper that could set up a trip to the Aviva Stadium in the winter.

The sky is the limit for Galway United and the club, just three years on from winning promotion to the Premier Division. Holland is a large part of the club’s revival and current position in the Irish football pyramid.

His work now serves Galway United, and as an inspiration for any coach starting out in West Cork and Cork city.

The weather has been so beautiful  it is hard to believe we have passed the summer solstice and St John’s Day (June 23-24 ). This time of year marks fullness in every sense of the word. The crops are growing and gardeners are fighting a losing battle with weeds, as well as nurturing fruit and vegetables to maturity. We seem to have forgotten that traditional Irish and European midsummer traditions offer genuine health benefits – supporting physical wellbeing, mental balance, community connection, and seasonal adaptation.

In Ireland, St John’s Eve is celebrated as Bonfire Night, when communities gather at sunset to light bonfires on hilltops and crossroads. The fire creates a public space for singing, dancing, storytelling, and shared meals. This is not merely folklore; it is a form of social medicine and I am sorry to say I did not see any in my area this year, which is also understandable with the rush to get grass cut and saved for the year. It may also be the case that the community bonfire has moved to its modern iteration of the BBQ.

But why are community bonfires beneficial for health?  Firstly, regular social connection reduces stress, lowers risks of depression and anxiety, and strengthens immune function. The bonfire night brings together children, elders, couples, and neighbours, creating a sense of belonging that buffers against isolation.

 The traditional community bonfire involved the youth jumping through flames to show their prowess but this probably best not done  today. However, the tradition of carrying some of the embers home to light the fire in one’s own home illustrates the how each household depends on community to survive 

Pilgrimage is also associated with St john’s Day. There are many holy wells called after St John and it is customary to visit them at this time. The one at Mushera near Millstreet is famous for healing warts and the one near Carrigaline for headaches and eye ailments. Midsummer also sees guided walking pilgrim journeys along Ireland’s passported pilgrim paths, including routes to Mount Brandon and Glendalough, as well as Gougane Barra.

Going on a pilgrimage has the advantage of combining  gentle physical exercise, rhythmic movement, and purposeful intention. Walking improves our  cardiovascular health, as well as strengthening muscles, and supporting joint mobility. We can also see the ‘deiseal’ (sunwise) rounds around wells as adding a gentle rotational movement that engages balance and coordination, as well as reminding us of the natural movement of the sun on its daily round.

A pilgrimage also fosters attention, as it has a purpose. It is not mindless but is undertaken with a purpose. Walking, thoughtfully, is a form of meditation and the reflective attitude that lowers cortisol, improves mood, and reduces excess worry.

Midsummer is the peak flowering time for many aromatic herbs:  vervain, yarrow, mugwort, chamomile, elderflower, lavender, rosemary, thyme, sage, and marjoram. Traditional belief holds that herbs gathered on St John’s Eve carry special potency. Modern phytochemistry supports this timing: many plants are richest in volatile oils, flavonoids, and antioxidants when in full bloom. This is the best time of year to pick lemon balm, its lemony flavour making a lovely refreshing tea

The benefits of these different herbs are varied:  Vervain and chamomile are calming, reducing tension and supporting sleep. Yarrow and mugwort have anti-inflammatory and antimicrobial properties. Elderflower and lavender soothe skin and reduce stress. Rosemary, thyme, sage, and marjoram are rich in antioxidants and support digestion and cognitive function.

Making teas, syrups, infusions, or drying bundles at midsummer provides a seasonal ‘materia medica’ that carries through the year. Eating midsummer foods – bread, milk dishes, berries, salads, and herbs –adds vitamins, minerals, and phytochemicals that support immunity and cellular health.

Gathering herbs outdoors is also beneficial, as it engages the senses. Aromatic plants release volatile compounds that can calm the nervous system, improve mood, and support respiratory function. The act of identifying, touching, and smelling plants also promotes embodied learning and mindfulness, which reduce stress and improve attention.

Midsummer sits opposite midwinter in the annual cycle. It follows the spring surge of Bealtaine and anticipates the harvest emphasis of Lughnasa. It represents fullness, flowering, blessing, and the beginning of the turn to shorter and darker days. Being aware of this annual cycle helps one to adapt to seasonal changes. Noticing when light peaks, when plants flower, and when the year begins to lean back toward darkness creates a sense of continuity and meaning. This can reduce the disorientation that can come from modern life’s constant, artificial schedules. Being aware of the seasons flows naturally into awareness of the circadian rhythm and helps regulate it. 

Midsummer teaches us to appreciate fullness and gratitude for the earth’s bounty. It also reminds us, like the Yin Yang symbol that, in the fullness of light, there is the seed of darkness and that the wheel will turn. 

My mother comes to visit me every year in Clonakilty for a gorgeous week in O’Donovan’s Hotel. The trad session in the bar is one of the highlights for my mam, both for the music and the chats with locals and visitors. It was one of these random encounters, which inspired our recent trip to France. We met a couple from Wexford, celebrating their 60th wedding anniversary, and learned that the husband regularly took off on the boat from Rosslare, to France and back, just for the spin. Tim and I had also met a group of sea- and bird-life watchers on the ferry from Bilbao, who were on an overnight trip, bringing little else but a camera  binoculars, and a toothbrush. 

My mam, Dee, doesn’t fly, has always had a fear of it,  but loves to travel by boat. My family have taken the Brittany Ferries Cork-Roscoff ferry many times, but always en route to the rest of France. It occurred to me that we could make it a trip in itself, and the mammy was game ball.

Roscoff is a small town on the north-west coast of France. It’s very pretty, right on the sea, with ancient granite buildings housing creperies,  bakeries, cafés, shops and small hotels. Everything seemed to be owner-run – it reminded us of Clonakilty, just in French. 

We didn’t take the car, as we were just staying one night in Roscoff, which is a five-minute taxi ride from the ferry port. There was plenty of help available, which you can request when booking, for Dee getting on and off the boat,  as the pedestrian ramp is fairly long and steep. The staff at the Brittany Ferries terminal are well geared up for helping those with mobility challenges, having wheelchairs with designated staff to push them,  elevators and a car to take you on and off in Roscoff,  where the terminal building is a bit further from the boat. 

I had chosen our hotel based on a few criteria: it had to be in the centre of town, easily walkable to everything, a sea view was a must, and we needed a lift. I also wanted a small hotel with a bit of character. The Mercure Hotel fit the bill perfectly, and the friendly, warm staff were the extra the bits you can’t see on the website.

Our trip started on a Wednesday afternoon, with a four o’clock departure from the ferry port in Cork.  Help arrived to wheel Dee on board, with plenty of good-humoured banter. Safely delivered to the door of our cabin, all we had to do was drop our bags and head to the bar for our first taste of France – you’re in Brittany once you board the ferry. This is one of my favourite things about travelling by boat, the holiday starts right away. Sitting in the gorgeous bar on the boat, sea views all around, having a cold glass of Muscadet, I always feel a calmness washing over me. It’s a very different experience from the stress of air travel – longer, more expensive, yes, but definitely calmer.

There is great food on board, the Pont Aven having a particularly beautiful dining room. The food in the more casual setting on the Armorique was varied and tasty, and I went straight in with the cheeseboard and a nice bottle of red. 

There’s entertainment in the bar if you fancy that, with live music and a pub quiz, and activities for the smallies. There’s a cinema and a pool,  playroom and games room, but nothing was taking me away from my cheese. 

We arrived early on Thursday morning, and the hotel had arranged a taxi, so we were having breakfast in Roscoff overlooking the sea, by 9am.

Our hotel was in the middle of town, so, although we couldn’t check in till later, we left our bags and headed out to explore. It’s a beautiful town to wander around, just enough to spend a couple of days in, with a good variety of shops for my retail-loving mammy. 

Checking out the Breton food was a joy: crepes, savoury galettes, all manner of fish and seafood, really good ice cream, and the insanely tasty kougn amann, a Breton pastry soaked in caramel. The most famous wine from this region is Muscadet, just perfect with the oysters and mussels which are served everywhere.  

We just stayed one night,  with two full days on either side, as the ferry left at 11pm on Friday night. A gorgeous dinner, lunches, breakfast watching the seagulls swooping and the tide coming in, ice-cream stops, and coffee and kougn amann mid-morning filled the days easily, with the obligatory shopping in between.

This trip isn’t for everyone, I know. Firstly, you have to like boat travel, and not suffer from sea-sickness. It’s also more expensive than flying, and slower, but for us, the whole trip was the experience, not just the destination. There’s weather to contend with,  which can’t be planned around, but that can affect any holiday plans.  

I am a lover of slow travel, and the overall dropping of tempo which comes with it. For my mother, whose mobility is fine for short walks, planes and airports are hard work. The pleasure and ease of this boat journey gave her the joy of realising that she can still travel to foreign parts, and the journey is all part of the fun.  

• brittany-ferries.ie 

• Hotel Mercure, Roscoff 

In fairness we have it easier in West Cork. The Atlantic is never far away, and a sea breeze is almost always blowing. We have green fields and parks, with trees for shade. 30 degrees Celsius in an office with no AC, or when you need to commute using the Underground or Metro can be a taste of hell. I was in Madrid a few years ago when the temperature was 35 degrees Celsius at 11 o’clock at night and it was definitely challenging. When I see that Paris reached temperatures of over 40 degrees, I can’t help but feel sorry for those living in buildings that were not meant for the heat. A garret room at the top of a chic Parisian apartment can seem romantic until the temperature turns the charming ‘chambre de bonne’ into an oven. I watched a clip of a man frying an egg in a pan that he left out on his tiny balcony in Paris. He then proceeded to pop some popcorn!

The problem, like our reactions to any extreme weather, be it storms, freezing weather, or excessive rain; is that we are not prepared. The heat is easier to deal with in Spain because the houses are built for it. People have AC or at least an army of fans. They know to drink loads of water, take lots of showers and to wear light, loose clothing. When I was visiting my cousins in Spain during a major heatwave we spent all day indoors in the dark with several fans going, sipping lots of cold drinks and eating cold, light meals. We did not venture out until after dark when my cousin would hose down the walls of the house and the patios and courtyards to cool everything down.

The forecast for July is mixed – some good weather, some showers. It looks like we won’t be seeing really high temperatures again, which will suit most of the tourists that are starting to arrive on our shores. So far there has been a 30 percent increase in visitors this year. It seems that many of them are coming to Ireland precisely because it does not get hot and rains quite a lot. ‘Coolcations’ are becoming trendy with northern countries such as Ireland and Scandinavia, drawing holidaymakers escaping the heat in their own countries. One person’s ‘roasting’ is another person’s ‘cool’. Even June’s heatwave felt pleasant to visitors whose homes were scorching at over 40 degrees. I kept meeting tourists who were delighted with our ‘Irish heatwave’.

The next decade will see temperatures continue to rise around the planet. Ireland will break the record of 33.3 degrees Celsius (Recorded in June 1887, in County Kilkenny), and we will probably see 35 degrees in a few years. Maybe even next summer. However, according to meteorologists it is unlikely that temperatures in Ireland will ever exceed 40 degrees Celsius. Or at least, not before the end of the century. Which is good news for the tourism sector. I predict that we will soon see adverts in the Med, encouraging people to come and cool off on the Wild Wet and Windy Atlantic Way. Imagine that: Tourists coming to Ireland for the weather!

On a recent trip to Antwerp my intrepid partner and I found ourselves in hardhats traversing the city’s historic canals. But for flash lights we were in darkness, walking in a line along a canal bed, for the waterways, known as ‘ruien,’ had been vaulted over, enclosed, for many hundreds of years. We were effectively walking underneath the city, traversing the route that canal barges may have once taken, passing under what once would have been bridges and sluice gates.

Being a book-hound, I later found a wonderful tome with photographs of the ruien from the 1800s. There, in sepia, standing tall in the openings of the ruien, were ships, slim one-masters huddled hull to hull along the canal walls; and larger three-masters docked along the Jordaenskai, the quay breasting the River Scheldt. The photographs also showed, amongst the tall ships in the Willemdok, the tall, dark flues of steam ships, for this was the age when both the new and the old mingled together, as famously depicted in William Turner’s ‘The Fighting Temeraire.’

Turner’s painting of 1839, set across the channel on a pearlescent River Thames, shows England’s gallant old warship being towed by a dark-flued tugboat. The warship was at the end of its life, a metaphor for what would soon be the end of the ‘age of sail,’ as the industrial revolution powered ahead. 

Just as steam power revolutionised shipping, the birth of photography began to revolutionise the way that we see. The photographs reproduced in my fortuitous find stand in stark contrast to Turner’s painting. They are not regarded as great works of art, but as traces of moments frozen by a mechanical device. They are the work of a new technology, of a mechanical eye, that would soon vie with the painter’s hand for supremacy in the realm of simulacra, in the realm of reproduction.

Photographs from the 1800s always feel ghostly: stevedores at work rolling barrels along the quay of the Brouwersvliet (the Brewers Canal), passengers and sailors grouped at the Willemdok, boys wading into the Margueriedok at low tide. The latter are seen in a photograph from 1897, and one cannot help but wonder at the lives they lived. For where a painting of the same may have been in some way staged, edited or invented, our attention taken by the brushstrokes and the whimsy of the painter, there can be no doubt in the photograph, of a moment frozen in time, of the hesitancy of one boy and the daring of another, at the light and shadow of a particular time of day, of the longboats, half in the water, beside them. Who were those boys? What lives did they live? Did they survive the Great War? Did they survive the month? Did they know the legend of ‘Lange Wapper,’ the trickster who would lead one into the waters?

‘Lange Wapper’ is a mythic figure in Antwerp, a shape-shifting trickster of the canals who would lure drunks into the murky waters late at night. A sculpture of the trickster graces the forecourt of the Steen, Antwerp’s ancient fortress facing the Scheldt. As in the photographs of the boys, there is no changing the sculpture’s shape. The ‘real’ Lange Wapper is the spirit of calamity, a legend forged, perhaps, to warn a populace against the treachery of Antwerp’s ruien, the malign spirit of the hungry waters that could cut lives unexpectedly short.

Old photographs haunt; they beg stories of past lives. That is not to say that old paintings don’t; in many cases they are far more alive. The main difference is that paintings are hybrid creatures: they tell us as much about the painter as about their subject, bearing as they do the visceral trace of the painter’s hand. A good example here is ‘A view of the Koolvliet’ (the Coal Canal) from 1875, by Jan Michiel Ruyten, which predates a photograph of the same canal from 1881. Working from life, Ruyten had no way of ‘freezing’ his figures; they are approximations, evocations, rendered with deft economy, giving us an authentic flavour of the life of the canal. The photograph, however, is tantalisingly free of that trace, one step removed from human touch, giving it the aura of time embalmed, at once alluring and distant, at once full of life and the knowledge of its passing.

The dialogue between photography, sculpture and painting, has in our own time, of course, a rich history. Think of Any Warhol’s famous screen prints of Marilyn Monroe, of Gerhard Richter’s series of blurred photo realist paintings. Perhaps most moving of all are Anselm Kiefer’s multitude of lead books, the ‘pages’ of which are endowed with photographic prints, seared and emulsified into the lead. Such ‘books’ Kiefer has, over the years, forged into installations: as mobile library shelves, as sculptural stacks, as the ‘cargo’ of lead model ships, which in turn are attached to monolithic canvases. Through the likes of Kiefer the contemporary artist has swallowed the photograph just as the whale swallowed Jonah, only for it to come out again as something new, an artefact transformed. And so here we are again with the ships; this time they are Kiefer’s: lead effigies of WWII, just as Turner’s ‘The Fighting Temeraire’ was an effigy of Waterloo.

Camilla Griehsel has everything on board to be a diva. And in several senses of the word she is one. Exceptionally talented, a highly accomplished performer, she’s had her brushes with fame and fortune, brief or enduring. But the word ‘diva’ also has negative connotations and those do not apply to her at all writes Moze Jacobs. The Swedish singer is a musician, actress, (song)writer, mother, colleague, friend, and all-round sound person who has lived in West Cork for 23 years. 

Born in Stockholm, Camilla grew up in a loving family where music was part of normal life. “My mom played some piano and sang songs with us when we were small. No one really had any musical ambitions but my parents would encourage me to sing.” She describes her inner experiences beautifully on the inside cover of the 2-CD set of her album Mamasongue: Source (2023), a semi-live recording of what started as a 2-hour show across West Cork plus Dublin, Cork (Everyman, Opera House) between 2018 and 2024: 

“I have been aware of (…) the powerful role that music plays in our lives since I was a five-year-old girl singing to a room filled with adults. I saw tears in their eyes and understood then that music has the power to touch the deepest parts of our beings. When we listen to music with open hearts and minds we become present to the moment and captive to our feelings. If we experience this together we join a network that transcends all (…) cultural barriers and is united by a musical language that goes beyond words into pure sound. This network elevates us from being isolated individuals to being part of a shared consciousness that we might call family, community, benevolence, or love.”

In resonance with the spirit of these words, ‘Mamasongue’ is both her own artistic project and the outcome of a highly creative collective process. It features songs, as well as musicians, from across the world: Niwel Tsumbu  (guitarist, singer, composer), originally from the Congo, resident in Ireland since 2004. Donegal-born Éamonn Cagney (percussion, vocals, composer) is known as Ireland’s foremost hand-drum percussionist. Concorde Nkabinde (bassist, vocals, composer, arranger), an award-winning jazz musician born in Soweto (Johannesburg, South Africa) has worked with many great musicians and is prominent in South Africa’s music scene. Rory McCarthy (piano, keyboards, vocals, composer) hails from Cork. The first song on the first CD opens with a rhythm that is intimately familiar to everyone on earth from before life started. It stretches across an intricate tapestry of music and vocals. And overlaid by Camilla’s crystal clear voice: “The first music I ever heard was my mother’s heartbeat (…). The music of our ancestors. The music of creation. This bitter earth, what fruit it bears (…).What good is a love that no one shares? It be so cold (…) yet someone may answer my call. And this bitter earth may not be so bitter after all. True believer, a long way from home.”

At least six or seven languages can be heard on Mamasongue (English, Irish, Swedish, Lingala, Zulu, Spanish, Aquitanian). “I love the different languages,” shares Camilla. “Not that I can do them perfectly, but I become like a different singer in Spanish. Or Zulu. As if all my Swedish inhibitions are gone.”

When Camilla was 10, she was invited to audition for a renowned music school, “like a normal school but with more music added.” It opened doors to many different genres. “Choir singing. Or performing as a soloist in church. I loved that.” She joined a barbershop group, went busking with three friends in Stockholm’s old town, became a jazz singer, sang for tourists in Gran Canaria and in Switzerland. “Singing in a piano bar at night and skiing all day. Living my best life.” 

Suddenly, aged 24, she got headhunted to replace the singer of a 1980s Scandinavian pop band, One 2 Many, followed by a brief period of almost instant chart success in Europe and the US. It turned out to be not to her liking. “To be honest, I found it all quite embarrassing. The glitzy limousines, everyone wanting to interview me, recording next door to the Bee Gees in London. Whereas all I’d done is sing 10 songs that I didn’t even write anything. It really wasn’t my thing and it made me lose a lot of confidence, initially.”

At the same time, it spurred her to fulfill a long-held dream: to sing opera. “It also led to me meeting my husband on a boat on the Thames, doing promotion. We were with the same record company.” By that time, Colin Vearncombe (stage name: Black), a serious singer-songwriter from Liverpool, had already had a major hit, ‘Wonderful Life’, originally released in 1986. A bittersweet song, it celebrates the magic and beauty of life from a perspective of utter loneliness.

“On that boat, our eyes met and both of us felt, ‘Oh my God, who is that?’” shares Camilla. “And then we were friends for a very, very long time. Nothing happened for nine months. It was lovely to get to know someone for that long. But he proposed soon enough. Out of the blue. I had to take an hour to think about it.” They married in 1990. 

In 2003, with their three young sons, they moved to Schull where a flourishing collaboration started with the band Interference, founded and led by Fergus O’Farrell, a close neighbour. It sprouted an offshoot called Dogtail Soup (from a line in one of Colin’s songs, ‘Cold Chicken Skin’, originally coined for Game of Thrones) and attracted many other brilliant musicians, including Glen Hansard and Liam Ó Maonlaí. 

Then tragedy struck. In January 2016, on his way to Cork airport, Colin Vearncombe was involved in a two-car collision on an icy road. He remained in a coma for 16 days. Camilla had to make the decision to turn the machine off. “Horrendous. I speak about grief a lot. And yes, it’s painful. Like having a large chunk of ice inside your body. But I’ve been chipping away at it. Bit by bit, it melts. He’s still in the living room a lot of the time and when I have something to talk about, I go there.”

It turned out to be an intense conflation of life and death. Her uncle died the next day. Within a week, the magnificent Fergus O’Farrell finally succumbed to muscular dystrophy, aged 48, not as previously predicted, before he reached 20. In the aftermath, Camilla’s mother also died. “A long time ago we decided together that, whoever dies first, we’ll both look at the moon if we want to reconnect. It really is a comfort. I feel her a lot. Yet around Colin’s death, our son Max became a father. So there’s life, too.”

The Dogtail Soup Trio (Camilla Griehsel, Maurice Seezer, Paul Tiernan plus potential guests) play Levis’ (Ballydehob) on June 7 and Prim’s Bookshop (Kinsale) on June 9, with more dates to come in August. Camilla Griehsel plays eight concerts with Barefoot Baroque in July. See next month’s gig list for more details. The documentary ‘Breaking Out: The Remarkable Life of Fergus O’Farrell’ can be purchased or rented on YouTube.