The stories in these three books have taken many years to write and are brief moments captured from my life in Dublin, Donegal, Ditchling, and some of the places around the world that stunned, sustained and stayed with me. These are for you my family and friends. I hope you can enjoy these brief fragments and reflect like I have that although we can explore the world and enjoy its wonders, the majority live in hunger, poverty and conflict. And while it seems we can do very little to change things we can do something. Resilience, strength, taking risks in times of uncertainty, have been my companions along with being loved, nurtured and believed in. I hope these stories convey the gratitude I feel for all of you who contributed to the vital sense of well-being in my life.
Margaret’s short stories bring together a tapestry of landscapes and people from around the world. She was brought up in Dublin and Donegal. Her various occupations included working as a Civil Servant and a laboratory Technician in Dublin before training as a nurse in The Lourdes Hospital Drogheda.
With her quality training, she left Ireland to work in Texas, in the Intensive Care Unit of a busy Heart Hospital. On return to Ireland, she volunteered to go to Ethiopia, Tigray Province to work on Famine Relief and Rehabilitation with Concern Ireland. She met Mike there, married him in Dublin and they returned to Africa for a further five years. So many questions, so much poverty, dignity, and so many landscapes.
As a mature student, she studied International Relations with Development Studies at the University of Sussex and an MSc in Environmental Epidemiology and Health Policy at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Completing a Creative Writing Postgrad Diploma provided great opportunities to retrain and rethink.
As her family grew up, she spent twenty years working full-time in Public Health on Cancer Prevention, Early Detection, Treatment and Care for the NHS. Shorter travels continued with walking and climbing in the; Himalayas, Karakorams, Tien Shan, Corsica and the Pyrenees. With Mike, in his Vancouver 28 they sailed the South coast of England and around Ireland in all weathers. And now these short stories are a way of explaining herself to her children and grandchildren.
