LitskiLite: April 2026

Carrick-On-Shannon Marina at sunset

The island of Ireland is the westernmost country of the European Union (for now), and politics aside, its location in the eastern Atlantic makes it simultaneously the safest place in the northern hemisphere in the event of a new world war, and the most dangerous place to go outside when there is an R in the month.

The howling wind that blows off the Atlantic combined with the endless cloud, horizontal rain and short daylight hours made the winter a particularly cheerless time, but most importantly, it didn’t feel at all like we were going to die: a stark contrast from the devastation wrought on the Valencians back in 2024.

For the most part, the children got up, went to school, came home, ate, watched TV and went to bed. But in all that, Things Were Actually Happening. For example, Livia had some life-defining tests that confirmed – officially – that she has a light form of autism.

What happened next was a complete breath of fresh air compared to the treatment she received elsewhere: she can be assigned a qualified Special Educational Needs professional in the classroom, who will support her, give her moral guidance, and crucially help her learn at her own pace.

Livia’s school is located in a tiny town in rural Ireland, but the staff have made her feel at home – she no longer stays in bed as long as possible in the mornings trying to avoid the inevitable: she doesn’t relish school, but she isn’t having mini panic attacks at the thought of spending the day there.

What’s more, Livia has actually started applying the things she has learned: she even wrote a full sentence without any help, which caused me to spontaneously stand up in surprise and sheer wonderment at how far she has come in such a short time. She is expressing herself fully, making fewer monosyllabic noises when she wants something, and answering questions, albeit often after having repeated them.

She has always had a mischievous sense of humour, verging on the slapstick with a side-order of absurdism, and this has developed a great deal in the meantime. She can be either great company or a total blight on the experience, but this is the very essence of her versatile character.

Dainoris has flourished at school. He has developed a keen interest in the animal world, and can tell us facts about all sorts of creatures that we have never heard of. He will often watch a full Attenborough documentary, pausing only to blink or occasionally breathe. His room is full of animal figurines he has collected – some from the German Schleich brand, which are anatomically extremely accurate.

He also likes to play board games, as does his mother, so they spent the dark winter evenings bonding a lot playing mainly Frustration and Snakes and Ladders. I occasionally joined them, but it was mostly their thing. Besides, I am more into Scrabble and 15-ball pool.

On top of all this, he has a close relationship with a young lady from his class, that we shall call Manon. Her mother is coincidentally Belgian (Walloon this time) and father British, both with hints of German. The mirroring to our family history is quite uncanny. They hang around in school a lot and also after school on Fridays at the playground. Manon has a younger sister, Marie, who likes to play with Livia and Milda: she also has spectrum-like overtones, which puts her in pole position to make Livia a perfect playmate.

As for Milda, she is going places. She pays attention to everything going on around her; she listens to adults’ advice and tries to apply her new-found wisdom; she is super easy to tend to, and she’ll eat what you put in front of her, although less so these days than she used to.

Despite being the youngest, she is also the most articulate and erudite – she loves a good chat on anything, no matter its nature, and has a penchant for making complicated phrases out of straightforward explanations, much like this sentence. I am surprised she stops for air sometimes. Her brain is so methodical and rational, that she gets angry with herself for making mistakes. Methinks we have a perfectionist in the household – I am going to try to teach her to understand that mistakes are good ways of learning and remembering better ways to accomplish things.

Bonny Bee has been very busy this winter with her translations – she has a great number of things on the go at the same time, and relishes her daily activities. I have been doing the auxiliary tasks, like driving everyone around, shopping, cooking, and developing the garden. Now that spring has arrived, I have started on the project of landscaping the grounds, including putting in two ponds, five trees (to start with), and some decent paths, rocks, flowerbeds, and seating areas.

As well as this, I have almost totally completed my pivot from adult language training to writing and my debut novel made it to the shelves in February. It’s been a difficult birth, but finally it saw the light: I wrote it back in Luxembourg in 2022, and after a year getting the illustrations right, I found myself in Spain. So I had to coordinate that as well as our integration into Spanish society. By the time it was finally published, we had moved to Ireland.

So what’s next? Well… we are getting on with the house renovation, slowly but there are signs of progress – we hope to have a bathroom and utility room fitted by the end of spring, then we will move on to the roof and ceilings before tackling the bedrooms. Once they are properly installed and equipped, the central room will need attention, and then I think we can move in. I’m hoping by this time next year.

Imagine: if it weren’t for a group of defeatist boardroom directors in a private school in Luxembourg, we would probably never have had these experiences. I love to turn adversity into positivity.

On 22 January, Milda turned 6. We decided from now on, every child will have a party for their birthday and a cake. This particular one was made by Anna Kaczmarek, owner of Cake Me Away in Carrick, and it was better than some people's wedding cakes.