Ryan Dennis

It’s the worst part of being a foreigner in Ireland: immigration registration.

The office opens at 7:30 a.m. Because there are only two officials who work the Galway office, to be seen that day – most of us have requested the day off of work or arranged babysitters – one has to stand outside the office doors at 5:30 in the morning in a country that is always cold and raining.

I don’t know what put the idea in my head, but I assume it was one of my father’s stories about making maple syrup as a teenager. Or maybe it was simply that it allowed him to buy a nice car in his teens.

A new guilty pleasure of mine has been watching horror films. I used to scorn them for their predictability, cheap tricks and poor plot development. Now, I can’t get enough of them.

In 1939, Patrick Kavanagh left his farm in County Monaghan, Ireland, and moved to Dublin to become a writer. When he was young, he would recite poetry while working in the fields or scribble down ideas for his own poems while attending to other farming chores.

Farming is seldom at the heart of social and political controversy. That is not the case in South Africa, however.

President Cyril Ramaphosa has recently begun to make good on his promise to expropriate farmland owned by the white population and redistribute it to black citizens.

The baler greased and put in the shed. The insulated boots dug out from the cellar. The barn battened down and winterized.