We are Paul and my four border collies, who live on our farm in Cooleague in the North of the South of Ireland.

A dozen or so years ago, in 1995, I took a year’s unpaid leave from a position as a Consultant Anaethetist. That turned into 5 years and that turned into an early retirement. I had gone from being monetarily rich to poor but, in the same fine moment, went from poor to rich in so many other ways.

I actually loved my previous work in medicine and particularly when I worked in Leeds and in New Zealand; there was no poverty in that respect. The situation and personalities that caused me to leave a job I loved are not worth going into.

Life is too short to be embittered by the past by what (in the grand scheme of things) have been minor events. I don’t row my boat looking backwards as it ploughs forwards but stand in its stern looking largely at the heavens and mostly let the winds and tides carry me where they will.