The Old Man with the Spring Onion Leaves

Have you lately seen the Old Man pushing a wooden cradle filled with fresh green spring onion leaves coming through the Zuhai-Macau border crossing toward the the market in Macau around ten in the morning ?
He was doing that when I met and talked to him about two years ago. He had on a cloth cap, faded grey shorts and a short-sleeved shirt and a pair of old sandals. He had just cleared through the Chinese border checkpoint without a passport or document. He told me had been doing that each morning for over twenty years. He would push his cradle fully loaded with the vegetables to sell to customers in the town and returned back the same way later about noon.

He told me he owned a small plot of land for planting his vegetables just past the border on the Zuhai side. Most of the immigration officials on both sides of the border knew him well and never asked him for his personal documents. I told him that Macau had been returned to China and there was therefore no need for him to have travel documents to cross the border.

He looked at me without understanding and just laughed at what I said and pushed off down the road with his vegetables.
If you are in that vicinity, I hope you have seen him.

I think he's still doing what he did, crossing the border each morning.

The Way to Glencree

Take the local train from Dublin to the seaside town of Bray in County Wicklow. The next part of your journey has to be done by using mini-buses and, as far as I know, there's only one bus service that goes up to Glencree each day. So you need to be aware of the correct time when this bus leaves Bray station before you depart from Dublin.

The town of Bray is a very interesting Irish town popular with Dubliners who go down there for its beaches during weekends and other holidays. I seem to remember a popular tune called "The Vicar of Bray" which is found in school recorder text books.

You catch the bus and ask its driver to take you up the winding roads to Knockcree and then to Glencree where there is an youth hostel near the church there. It seems that during the war, some German soldiers were killed in this part of Ireland and were buried in a nearby cemetery.

Glencree, on the top of the downs, is lovely in spring with lots of yellow gorse flowers on every fence and all the fields are covered with daisies and other wild flowers. The air here is fresh and invigorating. The road up passes through beautiful countrysides and picturesque villages and forests; Wicklow is one of the most beautiful counties of the emerald Irish isle.

Visiting Kirkby

I don't think you would want to go and visit Kirkby. You don't know where it is. Let me tell you. When I was there in the middle 1950s,
it was a small village about fifteen miles east of the city of Liverpool. As its name suggests, it had
a small church built out of stone and bricks by a small lake past the railway station and the small cluster of village shops. As to be expected in all Lancashire hamlets or villages, there was a pub where many of the inhabitants gather to drink and gossip in the evening.

It could snow heavily in the winter months, usually after January, and the snow covered most of the potato and hop fields all around the village.

A road, coming through the nearby town of Fazakeley from Liverpool, branched off just before the railway station to the trading estate and to Southport, about ten miles to the north. West of the village, across a man-made canal, was to be found the famous race course of Aintree.

What will you find there today if you go there ?

I guess the whole area has changed quite a bit. The fields between the two towns of Fazakeley and Kirkby would have disappeared and taken over by houses. The church, railway station and pub would probably be still there.
The inhabitants are no longer farmers but workers commuting daily by the train service to work in the city of Liverpool.