Category: Non-Fiction Short Stories

Jim Nelson is a sixty-six year old, wheelchair bound, incomplete tetraplegic, following a DIY accident in April 2016.

Prior to that, he had a forty-five year career in the world of underwater, happiness, awe exploration, science, engineering and the oil and gas industry. During his tenure in the latter, he played a small part in the destruction of this beautiful planet, and he is feeling horribly guilty about that.

Contradictorily, he has always been a noisy advocate on behalf of all of nature, especially those creatures who inhabit the oceans, where he routinely witnessed the wonder of them, as a perk of his job.

He has a keen interest in psychology, psychiatry, anthropology and psychological
anthropology.

He has a higher diploma in human psychology and a diploma in drug and substance abuse counselling.

Throughout his life he has written, and kept diaries which are full of stories from the far-flung places that he has worked.

His short stories are written from experience, and he likes to think that the sense of humour in his cartoons, come from there also.

In 1977 he qualified as a finished artist and a copywriter for the advertising industry, in
which he never worked. However that love of art and words stayed with him throughout his life, and now that he has nothing but time on his hands, and one reasonably good hand, the left one, which he has forced to behave somewhat like his right used to. He indulges himself drawing and writing.

A short story of his, has been printed in a regional newspaper, the Tipperary Star, and it is due for publication in the annual edition of a weekly, national magazine, Ireland’s Own on 10 September https://www.irelandsown.ie/

Ireland’s own have also undertaken to publish another short story in their weekly magazine; however a date has not been set as yet. 

Three of his original cartoons were published in the September October edition of the online literary review Spadina http://spadinaliteraryreview.com/ in Toronto Canada and they have undertaken to publish a short story and three more original cartoons in their next edition, February / March

He is married with three children and  lives in Dublin Ireland with his family and their two dogs, bearded lizard, snake, tail- less whip scorpion (at least) three cats, a tortoise and many hundreds (perhaps thousands) of ants.

Printing.

Written in Crescent Beach Hotel June 2013

In any worldview, printing has to be second only to the creation of writing in the top ten of humanities pivotal cultural milestones.

Can we possibly imagine a world without printing? Even in this day of instant media, e books, i pads and smart phones, could our culture have developed to the point where these innovations would have been possible without books? I doubt it; certainly our World would be a very different place without the printed word.

Continue reading “Printing”

Theory of Everything

12^th March 2003 Rocky 1 North Sea.  

Jims Theory on the Evolution and Development of Homo Sapiens  

I will write this as if I am speaking directly to you. Of course, this gives me the writer, the advantage over you, the reader (listener) because I can just keep talking without interruption on contentious points, of which there will be a few (many) I can only leave you the option to stop reading or listening.

Continue reading “A Theory of Homo Sapiens”

It was like a kick in the stomach when I received a BBC alert on my phone last year in April, telling of the fire at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris.

The Great Rose

I felt physically sick watching the news reports as the spire collapsed and the fire consumed those ancient timbers and who knows how much irreplaceable artwork. The drone shot of the entire cathedral roofless and blazing from end to end filled me with despair. I thought it was a total loss.

Continue reading “The Rose Window in Notre Dame Cathedral.”

My First Football Boots:

A Short story by: Jim Nelson

From the age of five until I realized that I was never going to be a professional player (Around the age of 40), I was obsessed with football, and when that realization dawned upon me, I became an enthusiastic participant until I was too old to play anymore. Now I am just a huge fan!

Continue reading “My First Football Boots.”

The other day, I heard the song ‘Only a Rose’, sung by the Swedish tenor Jussi Bjorling and while I listened, I was transported backwards in time to the early 1970’s, when my mother and I would listen to ‘Your Choice and Mine’, a weekly half hour Opera show on RTE radio, presented by the incomparable Tommy O’Brien.

Continue reading “Tommy O’Brien Opera for the masses. .”

Running Dublin’s Docks.

The closer we get to a no-deal Brexit, with its implicit threat of a border, either hard, around the six counties of Northern Ireland, or wet down the Irish Sea, the more my dock running PTSD affects me.

Hard or wet, the imposition of a border between Ireland and Britain, means the re-imposition of customs formalities, hence my Post Traumatic Stress Disorderdness.. 

In 1976 I was 19 and working as a customs clearance clerk for a shipping company in the port.

Mostly my job was writing customs entries in the office, bringing them to the various landing stations around the docks, and picking up clearance slips.

For the first eight months working there I had had a company supplied Honda 50 which was fantastic (once I learnt how to change gear) because my girlfriend lived in Churchtown which was a two hour walk (once I learned that there was another shorter way than the bus route) from where I lived.

Having transport in those days was important because buses were notoriously unreliable, and taxis out of the question.

Continue reading “My early motoring life.”

It was in October 1979, that over a foggy winter weekend I drove my bosses, 80% seatless  Peugeot 604, crammed to the roof with dress  jewellery from an important customer to their European head office in Rantigny France, about 60 km north of Paris.

I was the manager of the Ro-Ro and Deep Sea Export Department for the shipping company based in South West Dublin.

The shipment of urgently required high-end costume jewellery had to be in Rantigny first thing on Monday morning, and would normally have been shipped air freight from Dublin on Saturday via our Air Freight office at the airport, but due to the fog which was  expected to prevail all day Saturday and into Sunday, there were no flights leaving Dublin airport.

Continue reading “A Surprise Trip to Paris.”

Sandymount Strand

Sandymount in Dublin Ireland is where I grew up and lived for the first 30 years of my life.

It is a seaside district on the south side of Dublin Bay, with the greatest expanse of open sand imaginable at low tide.

It’s been a while but I thought that I’d go down recently to visit my childhood.

Continue reading “Sandymount Strand.”