Publisher's Synopsis
Emails from Ireland.(This is the paperback colour edition. A much cheaper printed black and white edition is also available while the digital edition will also show the photos in colour.)I landed at Dublin airport early on Wednesday, the 26th of July 2006. I turned 54 that August, August 2006.Don't ask me why. Don't ask me why I came to Ireland less than a month before my 54th birthday.The answer may just depend on what the weather was doing at the time of asking, or what I was eating, or how much sleep I had the night before or how the Irish or Ulster Rugby team was playing. What I might have thought (that I know), was that I may just get on the plane and go back to South Africa whenever I felt like it, but not today. Not even today nearly eight years on.I will be 62 this August, August 2014.I had a job offer in July 2005 at roughly half of what I was then earning back in Sunny South Africa. I started working in Londonderry / Derry / The Walled City, Northern Ireland on Monday the 31st of July 2006. I did not know then that Londonderry / Derry / The Walled City is the same place. I also did not know that all the jokes about potatoes are true.There are still many things, about this most beautiful country in the world, which I don't know.I do however know that I am here to stay.I knew that from that moment when I declined the offer to go back to South Africa. That was about six weeks after first setting foot in Ireland. It took me less than a second to decide. It was not necessary to even think about it. The plane has taken off without me. It is so simple: life does not have a reverse gear.
