Authors Electric

During this glorious May Bank Holiday, when the temperature rose to 25C and the house smelled of summer, I spent much of my time in the garden. I sat and read, watched the frogs in the pond but I also got down to some desperately needed weeding. It was when I was dealing with this year’s explosion of dandelions when I was struck by an odd comparison. Like a good novel or short story, the dandelion has hidden depths. Not only do the roots burrow deep and tenaciously, they spread themselves throughout the vegetable patch, just as a novel can insinuate itself into the subconscious--  a case in point being the archetypal romantic hero, forever characterised by the urbane Mr Darcy, or the wild Heathcliff. They may not be the best role models, certainly neither of them would make good twenty-first century husbands but they would be hard to eradicate from the female psyche, however liberated we believe ourselves to be. As would be the image of the feisty heroine such as Demel...

How does your garden grow? Dandelions are a curse for gardeners and right here, right now in Ireland, those yellow flowers are popping up all over my lawn. They elbow their way to the surface and push away the grass. Even if you dig them out they leave a muddy patch for the grass to re-colonise and Alfie the dog is likely to dig a fresh hole there as he loves the smell of dandelion roots. Yet, when Alfie and I take a stroll over the field across from our house, those same dandelions are delightful to look at, showing their sunny faces as a reminder that the long wet winter has passed. But can it already be a whole year since the last time they rose up, flowered and shook their seeds into the wind? Perennial pests are a good reminder of our planet completing another solar orbit. I count car and house insurance policies in this category. The annual slap around the head of increasing car insurance premiums, which should surely be falling as I get older, can be mitigated by ...

The other day, I noticed that one of the tiny dandelion weeds that had rooted themselves in a crack in the pavement adjacent to my front step had unexpectedly flowered, and the sight of it filled me with such joy and tenderness that I photographed it. The image has come out at an odd angle - the paler grey is actually the horizontal of the step, but here it looks vertical. Why is there so much folklore around the dandelion? Like many kids, I used to be told by my mum that if I picked them I would wet the bed, and there is, I believe, some truth in this, as I think dandelions as herbs have been used as a diuretic, in which case, might eating it in a salad, or enjoying a bowl of dandelion soup, have a similar effect? I love its original French name: Dent de Lion - lion's teeth . At present I've been reading Ayaan Hirsi Ali's fascinating, knowledgeable, and very scary book: "HERETIC" If you haven't yet heard of her, she's a Somali woman raised as a stric...