This week on Talk Learn Connect, Writer Yvonne Reddin asks Author, Playwright and Horticulturist Patrick Osborne, to share some TLC (Talk Learn Connect)

Can you give a summary of your career to date as it is quite a varied one?

My first job was selling newspapers when I was eleven. Today, it probably sounds like something from a Dicken’s novel. The money was small but the tips were great, especially selling papers in the pubs to fellas who were half cut. It’s been all downhill ever since!

My grandparents had a coal yard and I used to help my granny with the scales and on the till. There was a lot of poverty back then, especially in Dublin’s inner city.  Some people couldn’t afford a full bag of coal so they would buy maybe a stone at a time. My granny was a lovely, kind woman and she always gave that extra little bit to people who were struggling.

As my interest in horticulture developed, I got a job in a gardening shop, Mackey’s Seeds on Mary Street when I was still at school. The shop is long gone and is now the entrance to the Jervis Shopping centre.

After starting college in the National Botanic Gardens, Glasnevin, I got to work in many different parks all over Dublin. These included  Merrion Square, the Royal Hospital Kilmainham and Malahide Castle. I also worked in Glasnevin Cemetery on the old side, where the Daniel O’Connell tower is situated. This was a fascinating place, steeped in history and well worth visiting.

"I was also employed as a Fás supervisor, spending five years in an old Guinness estate on a fifty-acre site in Chapelizod, near Farmleigh.  It was a stunning place and I loved it there"

After that I helped to set up a landscape and maintenance company called Cleansweep for the Daughters of Charity. The workers were adults with mild intellectual disabilities and it was a very rewarding place to work. I spent another five years in this job and one of our main contracts was in Aras an Uachtarain while President McAleese was in office. It was a brilliant experience.

In 2003, my wife Liz and I relocated to Kerry with our three young children - Robert, Rebecca and David. I spent the next nine years working as grounds manager for a large hotel group and again really enjoyed the challenge. I also set up my own landscape business and ran it successfully for over seven years but decided to get out of it at the end of the Celtic Tiger.  I would have had to expand the business and get more involved in the construction end of things to survive.

This would have meant working anything from sixty to eighty hours a week, so I re-evaluated my situation and came to the conclusion that my family were more important. I have since taken up a gardening position with Kerry County Council which gives me a far better family, work and lifestyle balance.

"One the hardest things for me personally was not being able to visit my family and friends in Dublin, especially my parents, my Dad is eighty-one and my Mam is seventy-nine this year. The other thing I really missed was sport"

As writers, we are comfortable with isolation life, have you begun another book or have an idea for another?

I’m comfortable in my own company so I can quite easily get lost in a book. I did find writing difficult to concentrate on initially even though I had a number of projects and ideas to work on.

Prior to lockdown myself and some friends had set up a drama group called the Four Esquires and we had successfully staged several short plays. We had to shelve our plans to put on other plays.  I did get to develop two more and all going well we will put them on soon.

The lockdown presented a new challenge in marketing my debut novel, Baxter’s Boys, so that has been a very worthwhile experience. I’ve also been working on my second novel. It’s a dark comedy, a kidnapping caper set in Dublin.

I don’t want to give too much away about it at the moment but as part of the research I spent an afternoon in Mountjoy prison where I almost started a riot.

Can you share any words of wisdom that helped you in your successful career?