New Beginnings

September 1st seems like a very appropriate date to start something new.  I have always thought that this day,  rather than January 1st, is a time for fresh starts. The weather has also decided it is time for a change and it is quite autumnal here in London.

I have had a blog for over twenty years and I have been prevaricating for months and months about making the decision to move to Substack.  In the end the decision was made for me as Typepad announced a few days ago that they are closing the platform.

One of the reasons that I didn’t shift to Substack earlier is I couldn’t think what I would write about.  On my blog I didn’t have anything in particular that I wrote about other than my day-to-day life and things that amused me.  Sometimes I was more serious and wrote about family history or current events or things that didn’t amuse me. A lot of the time I just wrote about whatever nonsense came into my head. The word “ganching” is an Ulster-Scots term used frequently where I grew up and it means talking rubbish or going on and on about something..  Twenty odd years ago it seemed the perfect name for a blog and it was.

I guess I should introduce myself.  I’m Irish but have lived all my adult life in London.  I am a woman of a certain age which really means I am now close to being a woman who is really old.  I stopped working three years ago.  On my blog I never talked about where I worked because I could have got myself into quite a lot of trouble if anyone who I worked with had found out about it. I worked in the public sector and I was politically restricted which means I couldn’t talk about politics in public or bring the organisations I worked for into disrepute.  This makes it sound as if I work for MI5 or in the Cabinet Office.  I didn’t. I  worked for various Local Authorities in London and spent most of my working life in meetings with lawyers, architects and developers (and yes everything you have ever heard about property developers is true) and many of my evenings in community halls being shouted at by angry residents. I used to have my own hard hat and wasn’t remotely embarrassed wearing high-vis jackets.

Now that I am retired I have a little hobby business and sell books and bits and pieces on Etsy.  I really enjoy this although I wish HMRC would leave me alone and Brexit and Trump are not helping matters either.  Currently I can’t sell anything to anyone living in the EU or America.

I do hold strong political opinions and like anyone with any shred of humanity am appalled at what is going on in Gaza.  I find myself living in a country where currently I couldn’t vote for any political party. 

I grew up in the north of Ireland and lived there during the conflict which I know has impacted on me in quite a significant way.  I come from a large Catholic family and have six siblings most of whom would now define themselves as cultural Catholics.  I believe that Ireland should be united.

I live in a small flat in SE London and two of my friends have flats in the same house.  It is not unusual to be friends with your neighbours but what is rarer is when friends buy flats in the same house.  TB lived here first and then another friend, SF bought the flat above him, and a couple of years later I bought the flat above SF.  This works very well for us all.

So that’s me.  I have quite a few readers who still read my blog so I’m hoping that they too will migrate to Substack.

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