Just when I thought I’d never sail again…

This week saw a return to sailing that, a few weeks ago, I feared might never happen. I’d had 14 fractures in my arm and wrist from my accident at the start of August and they’d given me the impression that putting Humpty Dumpty back together would have presented less problems. I can’t describe the sense of elation I had, then, when I was able to set off in my little boat and do all the rope tugging, tiller gripping and hanging on that was required to take her around the island of Ireland’s Eye and safely home. I’d set up a small camera to record the momentous occasion and my thoughts and all began well. I was just saying how, when I’m on the water, I make it a rule to switch off the technology, however, when, the radio mic cut itself off – offended, no doubt by my gadget-laden hypocrisy. My point was, though, that sailing is more than a recreational pastime for me. In fact, I get the same boost from it that I get when I walk on the Camino de Santiago. When I’m on the boat I get to switch off the world and loose myself in my thoughts and nature. It’s a chance to recharge the batteries. As Dublin’s much loved singer songwriter Damien Dempsey puts it; “Howth was the place I buried my troubles at sea”.

Lately I’ve had so many friends confide in me that they’re feeling a sense of anxiety all the time. In most cases they’re not even sure what it is that they’re anxious about. I suspect that it could be something to do with being so hyper-connected all the time. Social media and carrying the internet in your pocket has massive advantages. When I was a good bit younger and traveling to see the world there were so many people that I met who I would love to have stayed in touch with but, although I carried their phone numbers around in an address book for years, it would have seemed a bit strange to randomly pick up the phone and say “Hey, it’s that Irish guy you met in Mumbai.” Now, though, half my Facebook friends are people I met in those kinds of circumstances and, even if we don’t talk frequently, I have a good idea what they’re up to in life and if I find myself in their part of the world or they find themselves in mine we touch base. The downside, though, is that lack of separation between social life and work. I’ve never worked nine-to-five hours but there was a time, quite recently, when you knew that after 5pm you weren’t going to be contacted by anyone who did have that kind of office job. The first time I sent a document to a civil servant on a Sunday night and got an immediate response totally shocked me. It’s now quite normal. People don’t seem to switch off.

I don’t know if you have something that you do to step off the rollercoaster for a while but I hope so. If it’s particularly good please do share it with us in the comments. Out on the boat is my little “zen zone” for an hour or so while I potter around Ireland’s Eye and watch the seabirds. When I need a real break I spend a week walking to Santiago along the Camino, just switching on the phone once each day to make sure everyone’s okay before switching it off again and getting back to chatting to the people that I bump into who are usually also there to escape the digital ratrace for a while.

If you’ve got this far, thanks for reading 🙂

 

Come to my launch!

The ‘powers-that-be’ suggested Thursday, October 12th would be suitable for the official launch of ‘Pins and Needles’ in Hodges Figgis – one of my favourite bookshops – on Dawson Street, just a stone’s throw from Trinity College Dublin. I made a series of phone calls to all my friends, checking their availability, and found that both of them are free 🙂 so, we’re locked in. The rest of the day was spent deciding on things like “plastic or glass wine glasses?”, “will I talk for few minutes or make a short video?”. With the book’s connection to the Camino de Santiago I’ve decided on Spanish wine and something along the lines of tapas. This prompted another string of ponderings on the nature of the latter. The main thing is, I guess, that the launch is on and I hope that you’ll be there to tell me if the wine choice was right and if the tapas hit the spot. Put it in your diary. It’s at 6pm in the aforementioned bookstore. I’ll be setting up a Facebook event so RSVP there. If we’re not Facebook friends then please rectify this situation :)You’ll find me here: http://facebook.com/declanjcassidy
In the meantime, someone got on to me to ask me if I was aware that my book is on sale on Ebay in Australia! Not only that, but it’s selling at $54. I had to check it out and, sure enough, there it is. At least it’s not going at a bargain-basement price 🙂

Kindle launch means free preview…

With today’s launch of the e-Book version of ‘Pins and Needles’ on Amazon, there’s now a preview available that you can read immediately before deciding if it’s for you. The link is below. I also want to send out a huge thank you to all of you who have bought the eBook or paperback and I really appreciate the feedback from those who have finished it. Thanks for passing it on too. The more readers the merrier 🙂

800 years of the Irish in Santiago

Hundreds of scallop shells, each hung there by a passing pilgrim and each one with a personal message. So many stories…

Since at least the year 1220 there have been Irish people leaving St James Gate – home, now, to Guinness – and heading by sea and land to Santiago de Compostela. Of course St James is the English name for San Tiago. I’d left St James’ Hospital a little dejected at having been told that post concussion dizziness and fatigue take on average 43 days to pass if you completely rest the brain or, on average, 100 days if you use your brain (that’s me, I fear, as I don’t know how to switch my brain off), when I saw the sign, pictured below, outside St James’ Church on St James’ Street.

There is an office, there, in the church, staffed by volunteers, giving information and documentation for those intending to walk the Camino de Santiago. I decided to drop in and see if any of them wanted to come to the book launch next month (date to be confirmed). A friendly chap there told me that, when excavating to build the Dublin City Council head office on the banks of the River Liffey they found thousands of scallop shells, such as those above that I photographed on the Portuguese way while researching Pins and Needles. According to the guy, it was customary for pilgrims arriving back in Dublin by boat from their Camino to Santiago to throw the shell that they’d carried for the entire trip overboard and this is what led to the huge number of them on what would have been the riverbed. I’d been surprised, when first arriving in Santiago, to find that Galicia is a Celtic culture and that the people there see themselves as being connected to us here in Ireland. It seems that our connection does, indeed, go back through the centuries.

To the left hand side of this church front on James Street is the Camino Ireland Office, staffed by volunteers and providing a wealth of information for anyone considering walking the Camino.

Birth of a character captured…

I was archiving old video footage and came across the clip below from walking the Camino De Santiago while researching my book ‘Pins and Needles’. It’s the moment when I decide that I need a character who will be able to help the Spanish speaking vagabundo and the priest to communicate. The rest is history. You’ll now find the character Álvaro in the book…

To chose ‘the road less travelled’

The pilgrim passport or ‘credencial’ in which you collect stamps from places you stay or eat along the way. This is your proof that you’ve done the walk so that you can get  your certificate or ‘compostela’.

When people say they have walked or wish to walk ‘the Camino De Santiago’, they usually mean the French route from St Jean Pied de Port in France to Santiago De Compostela in the Spanish province of Galicia – a journey of about 800km or 500 miles. The fact is, though, that ‘the Camino’ is a network of routes that converge at the Cathedral of St James in Santiago. My book, ‘Pins and Needles’, is set on the less popular Portuguese way which starts in Lisbon. Actually, my book is set on just the last 100 kilometres or so. One hundred kilometres is the minimum distance that you must walk abefore you can claim your certificate or ‘compostela’, as they’re called. It’s also an ideal distance to cover if you have a week to get there, do the walk, check out the city of Santiago and get home. I’ve done the final 100km of both the popular French route from Sarria and the Portuguese route from Valença or Tui neighbouring towns across the River Minho – which forms the Spanish/Portuguese border – from each other. For me, the Portuguese way is ideal for this short Camino. I’ve listened to many walkers who have hit the this last stretch of the French way and moaned about the sense of tourism that they are suddenly faced with after weeks of an experience that they found much less commercial. I could see what they meant. The little engraved plates on the milestones that tell you how far you must still walk have pretty much all been stolen by souvenir hunters on the final few days of the French way. Instead, the Portuguese route – which I walked over 10 times in researching ‘Pins and Needles’ – still feels genuine. The signs are still in place. You meet other peregrinos but not in such vast numbers.

I’m putting the finishing touches to a free downloadable guide to this ‘one week on the Portuguese way’ that gives general tips on walking the Camino as well as how I recommend the trip to be broken down into five stages. If you subscribe to or keep an eye on this site I expect to have it available within the next couple of weeks. If you want me to send it to you when it’s done, drop me a mail at mail @ screenpublications.com or leave a comment to let me know.

By the way, may I add that ‘travelled’, with a double ‘l’ isn’t, as my spellcheck insists, incorrectly spelt. Unlike in the USA, it’s how we spell the word in Ireland and Britain.

When readers give birth to books…

The seaward side of Ireland’s Eye – a haven for all types of sea birds – pictured from my little Hunter 19 Europa sailboat.

I was out sailing my little boat from Howth around Ireland’s Eye and, as often happens when the towering rock face blocks the wind, the sails fell slack and the boat was left bobbing in a sort of micro-doldrums. I sat  contemplating the myriad seabirds ensconced in every nook and cranny of the cliff as I waited for the breeze to find the canvas again and set me back on my way. Many times during the writing of Pins and Needles, when I’d been stuck at a plot twist or character development problem, I’d come out here for a sail to clear the mind. Before joining the yacht club at Howth I used to sail from Malahide and I’d just had word that the first bookstore I’d approached – Manor Books in Malahide – had agreed to stock the novel. It set me thinking of the new publishing reality that marries traditional printing, e-books and ‘print on demand’ – in my case through Amazon. The traditional print run of Pins and Needles that is underway at the moment is necessary so that people who decide to get hold of a copy of the book can do so on the same day in a bookstore. However, watching the tiny young seabirds finding their feet on cliff ledges or in the sea around me, it struck me that there’s something rather beautiful about the relatively new world of ‘print on demand’.  When I finally signed off on the book it became available to buy through Amazon but didn’t, at that point, exist in physical form anywhere. Each person who then clicked on the ‘purchase button’ to buy a copy was, I realised, actually, breathing life into a physical manifestation of my book. Each purchase meant that the buyer had caused a book to be born, packed and shipped into the world. At various places around Europe now copies of my book have been created in answer to readers’ requests. As they make their way by courier to their new owners they are starting a life that could take them anywhere but they are starting their lives wanted. It’s a pleasant thought for a writer.

Keep an eye on this website if you want to know which bookstores are stocking Pins and Needles. We expect the first copies to hit stores around mid September.

Four key packing points for the Camino

On the Camino your material world often comes down to what you’ve decided to carry on your back.

I’m immersed in writing a guide on walking the Camino De Santiago that I plan to make available for people who are considering following the footsteps of my “Pins and Needles” characters along the last 100km or so of the Portuguese route. I’m on the bit about ‘what to bring’. When it comes to packing – and I get asked about that a lot – I realise that there are two areas of advice – general and specific. The specific deals with what type of backpack works best, what footwear to go for and what to avoid et cetera. The general, though, comes down to these four points which I thought I’d share here:

1. Make sure that clothing is light and fast-drying. You can layer up for warmth but a thick, soggy article of clothing is something you want to avoid.
2. Be prepared for cold rain and hot sun. Either can happen – and quite possible on the same day. But don’t overdo it. Remember that your raincoat could remain unused and your sun cream might come home unopened. Ten day weather forecasts are pretty accurate so consult them.
3. Don’t bring a large bag. You’ll end up filling it. A smaller backpack forces you to be economical with what you bring.
4. There are shops in towns along the route. If you forget something or find you need it you can buy it. On the other hand, if you bring something you don’t need you’ll be stuck carrying it.

Well, I’d better get back to writing the guide…