Personal Columns

The band played the old Martha and the Muffins song “Echo Beach”.  Taking off the jacket to dance, the 50th birthday receded over the horizon for a moment.  They play at the Druid’s Chair this Saturday evening.  There is a temptation to go along to recapture that sense of agelessness.

A lady in her late-90s defined the feeling succinctly, “The problem”, she said, “is that I don’t feel that I am the age I am”.

When she declared herself to be feeling tired one day, I said to her. “You…

Ireland

“Late night pharmacy,” declares the neon sign above the shop in Dun Laoghaire.

Paddy never needed such a sign; he didn’t even need to be at the shop.  Pharmacist in an isolated town on the western seaboard, there would be callers at the house on a Saturday evening.  Frequently the callers would arrive by tractor; the only journey of the week from a remote farm.  The trip would take in shopping, Saturday evening Mass, a couple of pints in a bar, and, when necessary, a call with Paddy.

“I can’t…

Spirituality

It is three years today that forthefainthearted.com appeared on the Net.  Begiining in 2004 and having its infancy as fainthearted.blogspot.com, it was transformed after an RTE television piece on blogging led Richard O’Connor, Grandad in the RTE feature, to come to my aid.  Richard’s long-suffering attention has kept the blog alive and bug free since March 2007.

Looking in the archive, the very last blogspot post was a piece of spiritual reflection.

“Contemplative prayer at church this evening reflected on the words, “I have carved your name on the

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Ministry

In a West Country childhood, there were always magical stories.  There were tales of people who had met Merlin, the great wizard, keeping watch should he need to rouse Arthur and his knights from their earthbound slumbers.  Should they again need to ride forth, everyone knew they lay in wait in Cadbury Hill.

In Somerset, there were there knights in shining armour who would ride back from the dead in the moment of need and, in Devon, a navy waited the hour when it would again put to sea.

The…

Cross Channel

A Google search for the death of King George V suggests a reluctance on the part of the British media to comment upon the circumstances of the British monarch’s final days.  The New York Times online archive has its report from 1986 of the revelation, fifty years after the event, that George V’s doctor hastened his end.

As he lay comatose on his deathbed in 1936, King George V was injected with fatal doses of morphine and cocaine to assure him a painless death in time, according to his

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International

• KENYA AIRWAYS – KQ 101
• WED 28APR      LONDON GB        HEATHROW           2000
• THU 29APR       NAIROBI KE      JOMO KENYATTA      0630

• KENYA AIRWAYS – KQ 448
• THU 29APR     NAIROBI KE      JOMO KENYATTA         0810
• THU 29 APR    KIGALI RW        KIGALI INT’L                  0835

The charge came though on the credit card.  tickets for Dublin to London, London to Nairobi, and Nairobi to Kigali, for less than the price of a package holiday to a Spanish Costa.

The trip is for work, to visit projects and to talk about developing…

Church of Ireland Comment

“Protestants don’t do revisionism”, said my friend.

He being far cleverer than I, not a Protestant, and it being one of those arguments that was so subjective that no conclusion was possible, there seemed no value in arguing the point. Do we really not do revisionism?  Do we really not rewrite the past in our own minds so that we appear differently from the way that others might see us?  Is it the case that we don’t sometimes simply misremember things?

Revisionism is a rewriting of history and his point,…

Monologues etc

A Hyacinth Bucket character encounters a distasteful scene

Really, it wasn’t nice. It wasn’t nice at all.

I was just saying to Leonard, my husband, that it wasn’t nice. Leonard has just retired as an important civil servant and he knows about things. He agreed with me, “Not at all pleasant,” he said to me. “Not the sort of thing that decent people like ourselves should have to see”.

You’d think the Government would do something about it, wouldn’t you? I mean to say, if this sort of thing started…

Notice Board

From ‘Hurt for Haiti’:

Hey Folks!

On Sunday, 21st February, we are holding a massive event in aid of our brothers and sisters in Haiti who are in such despair.

We have a huge day planned with some top entertainment on hand. The venue is The Bentleys Complex- all the upstairs and downstairs rooms AND The Brazen Head next door. It’s going to be a great day out and for a great cause.

We’re gonna kick off around 3 in the courtyard with Jon Kenny and Mike Finn on hand…