Home Sweet Home

I was at home recently in Northern Ireland to visit friends and family and I must admit I missed the old place. I still have my parents, one of my wonderful sisters and her lovely family and my extended family still living there. My other sister is happily married and living in England with yet again her wonderful family. I love to go home and catch up on the local gossip as Im sure most of you enjoy doing also. What does dominate the conversation is chat of how many of the people I knew and grew up with have passed away. Your probably thinking, 'The cold winter nights must just fly by at his place', but I am surprised at the amount of people that have fallen over. I do laugh at my old man, who in his local pub has nicknamed a bench seat, 'Death Row', because he says, 'as each of the old guys who sit on it and gets to the end, he croaks it and they all move down one'. Not a very good thought when your second from the end I've told him. As I was saying I do miss the place and where I used to go over at least once every 3 months, its now once a year if I'm lucky. What I do know is though I wouldn't swap my birth place for anything because absence really does make the heart grow fonder.