Welcome to my site. Bill Griffin.

Never let a bad memory get in the way of a good memoir

Joanie Levinson

If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need

Cicero

Write to Live

I’ve always loved listening to people and the varying ways they describe their lives and the people that populate their world. Combine that with the way they use their bodies to complement their voice and suddenly you realise you are an observer of your fellow man wherever you happen to meet them. It was only a matter of time before I started to write it down. The last part of the writing jigsaw, for me at least, is how I applied it to my own life, both now and in the past.

Retirement has offered me the chance to pull together memories and experiences throughout my life and has resulted in four memoirs covering childhood and teenage years, my time in religious boarding school, my three years as a student nurse in a big institution and my six years as CEO of Galway Simon Community, a poetry collection, one short story collection and a collection of shorter snippets of retained memories. Go to the Publications tab at the top of the page and you will find more details about these books.

I am a self published author. All my books are available in paperback and e format by searching my name (Bill Griffin) or an individual book title under Books in Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk Three of my books are on a site for Irish self published authors http://www.buythebook.ie

Heaven in Earth

I’m not sure if I will ever truly claim to be a gardener. By that I mean some sort of expert, someone who actually knows what they are doing in their garden space. Gardens have a way of consigning even the most knowledgeable of its acolytes to the dunce’s seat. A certain humility is always useful as part of the toolkit. So maybe the best I can hope for is to be considered a keen gardener.

I stick to the gardening recipe of one part earth, two parts rain and three parts wishful thinking.

I can’t tell you that gardening will add years to my life, but I can assure you it will add life to my years.

My father used to say, if he was standing still in his garden, that he was listening for weeds. I think there was much more going on than that. The attached gardening posts are written to try and capture the reflections that are possible in the peace of the garden.

Dis and Dat

To paraphrase the line of the old Leslie Gore song Its my party “This is my blog and I’ll write what I want to”. Occasionally other things will come to mind inspired by people or events I come across. These will be categorised as Dis and Dat. The objective will be to entertain the reader and allow myself a bit of self indulgence.