Chance a Change
written by: Eamon O’Leary
As we push on in years, any suggestion of change is, in my case anyway, met with a period of huffing and puffing coupled with a mixture of fear, rejection and/or a lack of interest.
However, after retiring, I quickly realised I needed something more than hacking up the golf course to keep me occupied. Some of the lads suggested I write a book. I laughed for, at school, being able to speak the language was enough for me and, I’m ashamed to admit, the works of Wordsworth, Joyce, Shakespeare, and the rest of the greats were lost on me. I was too busy acting the eejit!
And as for figurative language – well – oxymorons, metaphors, hyperbole, and yer man onomatopoeia were and, to a certain extent, remain something of a mystery.
Giving the driver and putter a well-deserved break, I took to walking the spectacular Carrigaline to Crosshaven amenity walk passing en route the chocolate box vista that is Drake’s Pool, named after the navigator, Sir Frances Drake. Far less stressful than the golf and as the days passed, striding along, seeds were sown and germinated as stories from yesteryear came flooding into my cranium.
Then came the time to harvest, and that’s when the torture started, for if I wanted to get this higgledy-piggledy cluster into some kind of order, I’d have to type, and I can’t type. Procrastination and his mate, doubting Thomas, came into the picture and matters came to a standstill. I was having serious doubts about this so-called new adventure.
Although we moan continuously about the weather, for once it came to my rescue for with rain and hail peppering the windows like gunshot for days on end, I wasn’t venturing outdoors and with nothing else to do started to tap tap tap with the one finger on the laptop. I should’ve mentioned it above, but punctuation is not my strong point. It took not days, not weeks, but months before I typed End, closed the file, and let it hibernate.
It could be there yet if a friend didn’t persuade me to try and get it published, and so, with much trepidation, I fired it off to numerous publishers. Most didn’t reply, the ones who did said thanks but no thanks. Except for one who liked it.
And now I’m a published author with my book centre stage in our local bookshop. Will it sell? Don’t know and don’t really care. I tried something new.
Four copies with a handwritten note inside each have been neatly wrapped and put away for our grandchildren. Maybe in years to come one of them might read my efforts and say, perhaps with pride – “My Granda wrote this.”
Oh, should add, that I’m still playing awful golf!
- Chance a Change - March 4, 2025
- Conkers - November 30, 2024
- Let’s Go - September 7, 2024
