Digging

The poet Seamus Heaney died the other day. I am a big fan and my favourite poem is "Digging." This poem tells how Seamus' father and grandfather had skills that he didn't possess - they dug peat and he wrote with a pen.

My old man and my grandfather were both bricklayers, indeed my dad was a master craftsmen working in refractory work for many years where the ability to mitre with brick internal chimneys and pipes was a must (and a skill not easily found). I am hopeless with anything other than a pen, a computer and, I suppose, a camera.

Here's the poet reading his own poem.

The picture shows houses my dad was "on the building of" in the early 1950s when he returned from National Service and took up his apprenticeship.