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My Wexford Years

I was lucky enough to go to the old opera house at Wexford, in a converted cinema, about twelve years ago. This morning I’d like to introduce you to Margaret Tinsley who can claim with justification to be a genuine Wexford veteran and is a welcome Guest Blogger.

Art at the Merrion

Sated with opera and black pudding we drove up the M11 to Dublin on Monday morning. Six of us in a hire car with our bags is cosy and, sportingly, the General took the rear gunner’s seat at the back. We met the Judge and Mr and Mrs Dog Lover for lunch at the Merrion.

MV Kerlogue

The Wicklow Mountains is one of the last places you’d expect to find a World War Two German War Cemetery. There are 134 graves two of which are for crew members of a German destroyer and two torpedo boats sunk by the British in 1943.

Wash Doctors

Never buy or sell anything on the doorstep. This rule has served me well in the past but rules are made to be broken. Wash Doctors knocked on the door and hooked me.

Bernstein, Blood and Guts

It’s grand to be back in Wexford and the Talbot is as welcoming as ever. The sea view is magnificent and, in the foreground, trains glide silently past a car park.

The Last of the Mohicans

Two books that everyone knows are Moby Dick and The Last of the Mohicans – but I’ve not read either of them.

Three Operas and a Game of Charades

Saverio Mercadante (58), Franco Leoni (10), Umberto Giordano (14). It’s time to put the clocks back and it’s time to go back to Wexford to see operas by three prolific composers – they have clocked up 82 operas between them.

Witchfinder General

Yesterday I left you in Essex on a bank of the Stour estuary at Mistley. The Mistley Thorn where we lunched has a strange and disturbing tale to tell on a board on its west wall.

Wrabness to Mistley

On Tuesday I took a slightly shorter walk than usual, only five miles. As usual, it was along a tidal stretch of river – not the Thames, the Stour that divides Essex from Suffolk and joins the North Sea at Harwich.

From Sewage to Senile Treatment

In between Mortlake and Kew by the towpath there is a substantial plant that was used by Thames Water to treat sewage. It’s proper name is a biothane plane but that needn’t concern us as it shut in 2015.