I lived without mains electricity in West Cork for a few years in the early eighties. We eventually got a diesel generator, a huge Lister engine that thumped away in the shed for a few hours every night giving us a certain amount of light and running the washing machine. We had it rigged so that turning out the last light at night would automatically switch the generator off and we would lie in the dark listening to it winding itself down to silence. We also had paraffin lamps and candles and I don't remember missing the mains electricity though I'm sure I did. Our house was high on the hill and during the many power cuts the rest of the parish could see our light shining on. We were a feature of the night landscape where every light meant a person or family alone in their stretch of darkness. We got the mains electricity at the end of 1987 and relaxed into an easier life.

In May 2015 I found myself without electricity again. But this time I was living on the main street in Dun Laoghaire where everyone has electricity, everything is electric and I was taking electricity very much for granted. The cut off was like a slap in the face and I sat in my newly silent house sipping a hot drink made from the last boil of the electric kettle and felt stunned.

When action returned I tracked down my landlord who immediately emailed the relevant piece of information to Electric Ireland but when I phoned them they informed me that they could not open my landlord's email for two days. They took my phone number and said they would phone me back.

As it turned out by the end of the two days of enforced waiting I had put the electricity free system in place that was going to last me four months. Which was lucky because they never did phone me back.

The thing that happened to me with the electricity cut off was that I discovered my town. No washing machine? Never mind there is a friendly and efficient laundry two doors down. No broadband? Never mind there is a cafe two doors in the other direction equally friendly and glad to see me, thank you Two Beans. Though I later discovered that the wifi from the pub across the road reaches conveniently to my desk which is inside my front window - thank you Gilbert and Wright!  But mostly the lack of electricity budged me away from my all electric desk where I had been firmly lodged and walked me around my town.

It became my habit to do the researching part of my case work in the library every day. This gave me somewhere quiet and pleasant to work and charged my computer which meant I had another three hours of computer time at home. I charged my phone in the car. I ran a paper free office and emailed receipts because of course I had no printer. I found a printer – I mean a man, not a small electric humming thing that gobbles expensive ink – three minutes walk away who did an excellent job of printing my leaflets.

Life settled into a new rhythm. I have a gas cooker so I wasn't stuck for cooking though I burnt out two saucepans before I bought myself a kettle with a whistle. Apart from that whistle a house without electricity is very quiet; no radio, no podcasts, no you tube, no Netflix, no washing machine, no fridge. All those plugged in things hum and groan. I did miss the fridge but I soon got into the habit of buying only what we needed each day. 2 big supermarkets downtown - 2 minutes walk away.

I started to love the silence and the candle light. I washed by candle light in the basin with water ladled from a pot heated on the gas, the softness and slowness of it a pleasure. I would get up in the middle of the night for a glass of water and the 'flup' of the lit match and the glow of the candle would hardly disturb my sleepiness compared to the unrelenting crack of a light switch and the startling bright of the electric light. Reading in bed by torch light was another unexpected pleasure because you don't have to lie with your book angled to the light, rather your torch can follow your every turn. But night time light was another thing that the town thoughtfully provided – we had only to open our window blinds for the room to be filled with street light.

It was a good experience overall - having no electricity - though I felt I had to get it back when the damp, cold, dark of Autumn set in.  Getting it back was a gift of the town as well - Citizens' Information around the corner set me straight on how to deal with the electric companies and now, three weeks short of the shortest day I am grateful to  have it back..

The radio programme I made this week for Another Way on Dublin South FM is an interview with Sarah Jackson who is a member of the Society of Friends also known as Quakers. I edit these programmes myself which can take quite a long time depending on how erratic the actual interview is. I learn a lot that way – listening over and over again as I edit. It has been really interesting but this week it was a pleasure, there is something about Sarah's lovely voice which I found very calming. Dublin South FM are running the programme today, 25^th August, without an add break so that anyone listening can get a whole half hour of calm.


I wanted to talk to Sarah because some of the complimentary therapists I have interviewed, all people who deal with the whole picture of health when treating someone, mentioned spirituality as an important part of the whole person. This has got me thinking – what, exactly is a spiritual illness?


An important aspect of treating an individual patient is understanding where is the centre of the case in that person. If someone has stubbed their toe or caught a flu germ these are both external physical causes and could be treated with homoeopathy by matching the physical symptoms that ensue from the physical cause. But look a little deeper and there is possibly more to see; perhaps the person with the stubbed toe wasn't looking where they were going – perhaps they were not concentrating and the lack of mental concentration is actually the cause of the stubbed toe? In that case I must treat the bruising of the toe AND the lack of mental concentration if I am to see a good result and a person who is able to protect his toes in the future. What about the flu germ? Not everyone who meets a flu germ is able to catch it but perhaps my hypothetical patient has been having trouble sleeping because of grief or anxiety – if someone has been worn down by his emotions to the point where he is vulnerable to catching the flu then, when I treat him, I have to treat the emotional cause as well as the physical cause if I am to get a good result.


So what is a spiritual cause? I think, perhaps, loneliness. I am interested in other suggestions? I was interested to speak to Sarah because my radio programme looks at other ways of doing things and the Quakers certainly do things differently, but nearly the whole way through the programme Sarah talks about communication, connection, listening and hearing and it strikes me that it is the spiritual part of us that does this work, making us part of the whole, keeping us connected to our fellow man, holding us in the community or connecting us to nature or even to the beauty in man made things which is, after all, an expression of the creative in man.


I enjoyed making this programme, I hope you enjoy listening to it. www.homeopathydublinsouth.ie

watching the tide turn


I was lucky enough to catch a ten minute talk by Jason McChesney yesterday at the Dun Laoghaire chamber B2B meeting. Jason is a business coach and I found every minute of his talk inspiring – it was all about goal setting and in only ten minutes he managed to get across the nitty gritty of How to set goals in a way that was very useful.


But the thing I have come away with was his question why. Why do I want the goal I have set? My goal is always boringly, more patients, more work; I need to pay my rent, I need to make ends meet. But after Jason's talk, when I really stopped to ask myself why, the answer was that the satisfaction of treating someone successfully with homoeopathy is breathtaking. And I don't necessarily mean the big things like less pain for someone with arthritis or a diabetic needing less insulin or someone coming out of depression and feeling it is ok to try to live again though those things are pretty amazing. The thing that I am hooked on is seeing the way that people's lives take a different direction as their health improves – I love watching the tide turn.


You may have heard of the cascade of intervention that can happen in a labour where, if a woman is induced, her pains will be much harder to bear than normal so she will need pain relief which may make it more difficult for her to push when the time comes which may lead to the use of forceps which requires an episiotomy or even a C section. You end up with a sore and traumatised, stitched up woman and a baby who might not want to feed because he is bruised and full of drugs which upset his stomach just at the crucial time when you are trying to establish breastfeeding which will strengthen the bond between mother and baby, protect the baby's health for years to come and protect his mother from breast cancer. The war is lost for the want of a nail. (Homoeopathy is incredibly useful in labour and if you are my patient I will give you every help I can to ensure good progression in labour and pain relief). But I am referring to the cascade of interventions in labour just as an example of how one thing can lead to another and another to the next.


There are so many knots that we can get our lives into where small things add up and up over the years; think of the teenager who has a sports injury, looses physical confidence and doesn't want to go back on the pitch, puts on weight from lack of exercise then loses confidence some more and doesn't want to see her friends. Or think of the teething baby who cries night after night, ends up with an exhausted mother who is dragging through the days unable to meet his needs which makes him more and more clingy and her more and more exhausted and both of them anxious when it is time for the baby to go to the creche where he catches every available bug because he is so below par. If that teenager had the homoeopathic remedy arnica on the day she hurt herself and the baby had chamomilla for his teething neither of these stories would unfold like this.


Most of the people I see in my practice have a back story where one thing has lead to another and another and at each step their health has suffered, hardly noticeably at first but worse as the years go on. People end up in situations they find intolerable; the job they once loved is now too stressful, the people they live with give them no peace. As health suffers over the years so does patience and sense of humour and courage and love.


My job as a homoeopath is to listen to the story, try to understand the tightest part of the knot and how it got tied then find the homoeopathic remedy that matches that particular situation. This is when I get to see the tide change that I love. The remedy gets the person back on track and they begin to use their energy to sort themselves out. Health improves, confidence builds, a sense of humour returns. I have literally seen lonely people find their soul mate and fall in love, troubled teenagers welcomed back into the bosom of their family and people re-engaging with a work situation or a home life that they had thought was impossible. I can't claim that homoeopathy did all that but it did untie the knot that was preventing those people from living the happiest, fullest life that they could live.


It is a full year today since I returned from Tanzania. I miss my friends and patients there intensely but it has been a very satisfying year's work watching the tide turn for so many of my patients here.