In life things are seldom as permanent as we think they will be when we are children. The art of accepting and living with change is one of the secrets of life, and one that all of us will struggle with at some point, whether it is the end of a relationship, a job, or a dream.
For Nevielle Presho though, the loss he experienced was one-of-a-kind, and so unusal the BBC made a semi-dramatised podcast about it, and his ensuing search for justice. What did Neville lose you ask? A house. It feels preposterous, but indeed Neville moved to New Zealand, and borded up his house on the remote Irish island of Toraigh, not sure when he would see it again. Indeed, he never did, for when he returned to the island years later there was no house. The island’s tight lipped, close knitt community was unwilling to speak of what had happened, even though many of them appeared to disapprove.
Presho, is quite rightly not able to believe the stories he hears that the house burnt down by accident, or alternatively blew away in a storm. He spends decades trying to peruse justice through the local Garda, and it takes it’s toll, triggering his bi-polar disorder and a string of hospital stays, and ultimately the demise of his marriage. It is the depths of the effects on Presho of his house’s disappearance that pushes this story from the possibly whimsical and quirky, into the serious.
In the end Presho is vindicated by the Irish courts, however, the victory is pyrrhic as no judgement can restore to Presho the life that he lost, this invisible things he had, his marriage, his health, his career, which were torn apart and ruined blown away like ash on the wind, just as his physical home was.
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