So how was your 2022 and what are your hopes for 2023?

2022

HIGH 1

In 2020, my 95 y.o. uncle died leaving me and my sister a tiny dilapidated cottage and beautiful area of riverfront land in rural Ireland. While hardly Downton Abbey, the place has been in my family for almost 200 years and since I spent many my childhood holidays there has huge emotional significance for me.

The fly in the ointment?

Before he passed away, my uncle sold about 0.6 hectares of forested land at the back of the main plot to a pair of chancers – a rich entitled Z-list celeb and her oleaginous husband – who had “befriended” him.

Having paid my uncle rock bottom rates for the site knowing full well development there was expressly prohibited, the pair wasted no time in illegally erecting two huge sheds. The first is easily adaptable into a house, while the second destroys the view from the tiny cottage where my Dad and his four brothers and sisters were born and raised.

The fact that I eventually learned that the pair had used lockdown to remove all of my uncle’s tools from … Continue reading How was your 2022? What are your hopes for 2023?