I find this ABC Tales website a warm and welcoming community where writers of all abilities can share their work in the knowledge that it will be appreciated and encouraged. But what makes the site particularly special for me is that a close friend from long ago was a popular member here, regularly posting poetry and prose years before I joined. Julia Macpherson (ABC username Overthetop1 ) left this world far too soon, and at a point where too few had recognised the high standard of her writing talent. Following her death in 2016, her mother Coral (ABC’s seashore ) and her sister Sarah worked with Cerasus Poetry, and with the support of ABC members and the MIND mental health charity, to publish a compilation of her work. I lost touch with Julia in the mid-1980s, but found her again through ABC Tales and the pages of her book, Waiting For Another Velvet Morning .
Wee Bach
Posted on Wed, 17 Dec 2025
The Stranocum avenue of trees is a lovely thing to see but it really does make me sad to know that the trees are suffering because of their fame. I forgot to mention in my story that they have also been damaged by graffiti as people with...
Read full commentPosted in A Hare's Breath 5 - The Dark Hedges
Trees
Posted on Wed, 17 Dec 2025
We will persevere but it may well be that the ABC Beech Nut Germination Challenge 2026 doesn't kick off until the autumn. I've sadly resigned myself to the fact that I will see very few of the seeds that I sow grow into mature trees in what...
Read full commentPosted in A Hare's Breath 5 - The Dark Hedges
Beech trees
Posted on Wed, 17 Dec 2025
I'm not sure Di, I'll have to do a bit of research. Some of our national park areas are mountain wilderness with only rough tracks or no roads at all, and we only have a Fiat Panda. But places we can find reasonably easily we tend to go to more...
Read full commentPosted in A Hare's Breath 5 - The Dark Hedges
Save the trees!
Posted on Wed, 17 Dec 2025
Hello Di.
I googled European beech trees and it says they typically survive for 300 to 350 years, so it saddens me deeply that the Stranocum ones were living up to expectations until the recent arrival of the tourists.
I...
Read full commentPosted in A Hare's Breath 5 - The Dark Hedges
Close shave
Posted on Wed, 17 Dec 2025
It was a war really and these things happen in all wars. Although there’s war everywhere, our generation in our part of the world is generally untouched by such events. We’ve been very lucky, so far.
A few years ago I was on a walking...
Read full commentPosted in A Hare's Breath 5 - The Dark Hedges
Fairy cars or fairy cakes?
Posted on Wed, 17 Dec 2025
That’s mad, but I’m not surprised. I’ve never got my head round the existence of ‘biscuit’ as a colour for a car.
You’d think that naming cars would be the easiest job in the world. I’d love to have a crack at it. I remember in an episode...
Read full commentPosted in A Hare's Breath 5 - The Dark Hedges
Belfast Frank
Posted on Wed, 17 Dec 2025
I suspect Frank was right but I'm not really qualified to comment because we left before the paramilitaries took to running the show and things got really bad. I know that as well as in the cities there were checkpoints set up by the UVF/UDA, the...
Read full commentPosted in A Hare's Breath 5 - The Dark Hedges
Lucozade
Posted on Wed, 17 Dec 2025
I take many photographs of beautiful places so I suppose I’m a little guilty in this respect, but I’ve been doing this for most of my life and it’s almost always been with a proper camera. However, it pains me to say that the photographs that my...
Read full commentPosted in A Hare's Breath 5 - The Dark Hedges
Wellies and hares
Posted on Mon, 15 Dec 2025
Good morning Jenny. It’s 1:55 a.m. at the moment in Bulgaria but I can’t resist replying to a comment from an ABC friend.
Bearing in mind we’re talking about Ireland in the 1960s, there’s a strong possibility that the lights at the faerie...
Read full commentPosted in A Hare's Breath 4 - The Horror
These shoes!
Posted on Mon, 15 Dec 2025
The old man who sits by the well with a cigarette lodged neatly in one of the gaps in his front teeth and fingerless gloves that weren’t always fingerless but he’s never been much good at striking matches has lived in our village since ancient...
Read full commentPosted in A Hare's Breath 4 - The Horror
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