Learning to accept the stones alongside the fancy diamonds

Country Living with Francis Farragher

There’s a ‘not-so-old’ country ballad that I occasionally have a go at singing when the ‘next-up’ call is heard in the local, called ‘Some days are diamonds (Some days are stone), written by a Dick Feller around 40-years ago, and recorded many times by people like John Denver, Bobby Bear and of course ‘our own’ Marc Roberts.

It’s a song that that seems to rustle through my brain during the drearier days of October when the light of day gets tightened up with each passing day and many of us just feel a little bit down as the Winter approaches.

As most people are aware of now it can set in motion what is known as the SAD syndrome or Seasonal Affective Disorder, which is a form of depression, felt by many people as natural daylight gets scarcer and the gloom of Winter looms.

Of course, the wonderful thing about living in Ireland in 2022, is that for the most part, we can talk about such things quite openly and candidly, without any fears or stigmas being attached.

The story of Dick Feller is a tale in itself for another day as he made a transgender transition from male to female and is now Deena Kaye Rose, something that in my younger days we wouldn’t have even heard of. One of the lines from the song is: “Now, the face that I see in the mirror, more and more is a stranger to me,” and it just have to an autobiographical vein to it, given the inner conflicts faced by the author in his his/her younger days.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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