Emails from Ireland. (This is the paperback colour edition. A much cheaper printed black and white edition is also available while the digital edition will also show the photos in colour.) I landed at Dublin airport early on Wednesday, the 26th of July 2006. I turned 54 that August, August 2006. Don't ask me why. Don't ask me why I came to Ireland less than a month before my 54th birthday. The answer may just depend on what the weather was doing at the time of asking, or what I was eating, or how much sleep I had the night before or how the Irish or Ulster Rugby team was playing. What I might have thought (that I know), was that I may just get on the plane and go back to South Africa whenever I felt like it, but not today. Not even today nearly eight years on. I will be 62 this August, August 2014. I had a job offer in July 2005 at roughly half of what I was then earning back in Sunny South Africa. I started working in Londonderry / Derry / The Walled City, Northern Ireland on Monday the 31st of July 2006. I did not know then that Londonderry / Derry / The Walled City is the same place. I also did not know that all the jokes about potatoes are true. There are still many things, about this most beautiful country in the world, which I don't know. I do however know that I am here to stay. I knew that from that moment when I declined the offer to go back to South Africa. That was about six weeks after first setting foot in Ireland. It took me less than a second to decide. It was not necessary to even think about it. The plane has taken off without me. It is so simple: life does not have a reverse gear.