In Print

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Up to yesterday I had never published a book. Today I have published three books.

They are unique because they are books of talks I have given on local and family history and they are limited editions - limited to one copy of each. Priceless.

Thought I'd share. What you see above are the three books. From the bottom up: The Shoemaker's Daughters - my Burgess ancestors; A Policeman's Lot - my Dwyer ancestors; and, The Corsican Defence - the restoration of a Martello Tower in Killiney Bay.

They are beautifully produced and bound, on hard glossy pages with bright crisp images.

My grandfather, Michael Dwyer, who joined the RIC from the family homestead in East Limerick and spent most of his career in Co. Mayo, principally in Ballyhaunis.

Martello Tower (No. 7 Dublin South) beautifully restored and armed by Niall O'Donoghue on a site where I used to attend, and I hope entertain, Patrician meetings in my youth.

Thanks to Eoghan and Susan for this magnificent present.

Further reading: Daughters Policeman Tower

Do you remember Froggy?

I am now 50 years out of Coláiste Mhuire this year. At a commemorative lunch the other day, one of my classmates asked "Do you remember Froggy?"

Do I remember Froggy? Of course I do. He was my first French teacher, and a very good one. Not exactly a compliment to a militant Fleming, but there you are. You can't have it all.

I did a post on this blog in his defence this month 6 years ago. I was incensed at the time at how Cathal O'Shannon (now RIP, but a journalist whom I once admired) and Senan Moloney (who had an agreement with Froggy in 1987, which he presumably considered expired on Froggy's death, heedless of the man's reputation, or the feelings or economic fortunes of his widow) both went for the man in an RTÉ series on Hidden Nazis.

Fortunately, his widow, who was made of stern stuff, took the matter to court and secured limited implementation of the 1987 agreement. Meanwhile, RTÉ cut from the transmitted programme a reconstruction of a Nazi interrogation in which Folens was portrayed in the part of interpreter.

If you are curious you can read my original post, but for now I just want to recall him as a teacher.

He taught French by the direct method (mainly). This may have been because he was in an Irish language school and didn't have much, if any, Irish. I suspect he would have used this method even in an English speaking school.

He operated an incentive system. Laxity or indiscipline in class earned you an X. Three Xs and you were sent down to the Head. An exceptionally good performance in class earned you a circle. This allowed you to skip homework on a night of your choice.

There was a period of weeks when less than half the class turned up in school. I think there was some flu epidemic or suchlike sweeping the land at the time. Folens put the curriculum on pause and regaled us with stories, tonguetwisters and songs, all in French. I thought this very enlightened at the time. Those who were absent through no fault of their own did not miss out on the course and those of us who were lucky enough to turn up got a bonus. Il était un petit navire. Le riz tenta le rat, le rat tenté tâta le riz tentant.

As I mentioned in the earlier post, his "cog notes" could be seen as first class, depending on your view of the objectives of the education system. I certainly found them great. They were Roneod and were the germ that subsequently grew into a first class publishing company. They were followed by modest volumes on the newer subjects, like civics, for which no textbooks were available, and, eventually, by the full range of high quality textbooks.

Anyway, I thought he deserved a mention, more than 50 years on.

Still Just Pat

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Just a note to reassure Pat's fans that he is still alive and well and doing brisk business under the arch of the old Irish Parliament building on College Green (Bank of Ireland to you).

They also serve ...

First time I've seen that on the front and side of a bus. This one was parked at a bus stop on Eden Quay on the banks of Dublin's River Liffey.

What does it mean?

Is it like those lunatic BABY ON BOARD notices which are supposed to have you make a special effort not to crash into the baby carrying car, or ignore the driver weaving all over the place as they try to change the baby's nappy? Balancing two motions, so to speak.

Is the driver a novice, just entering into the service of the company, and should we be especially patient if he wanders off the route?

Is this the bus's maiden voyage, so far untested on the turbulent sea of Dublin's opportunistic traffic? Should we be patient if the wheels fall off and quietly transfer to the tried and tested DART, assuming it's going where we're going?

Or has the driver just left the company to go into better paid domestic service? In the black economy? Croke Park and Haddington Road please note.

These were my thoughts as I went to cross the road. So distracted was I that I nearly walked under that bus's brother approaching at a fair belt from Bachelor's Walk.

The excitement of a trip to town.

I'm exhausted.

Whassit?

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There I was, happily guzzling my paté on cracker. I went to cut another bit of paté and hit something solid. I prised it out of the remaining block of paté and felt distinctly queasy.

What was it? Clearly it should not have been there. My first thought was a cooked mouse fetus. And before you summarily dismiss that as outrageous, I must tell you, I do have experience of mouse fetuses, albeit a long time ago in my youth when I was the proud possessor to two pet white mice.

A quick check of the ingredients established that such was not envisaged as one of them.

When the wave of nausea passed I was more inclined to think it might have been a mushroom that snuck passed the chopper, but I was not going to find out the hard way.

Back to the store, with whom I left the questionable paté; they contacted the supplier who contacted the supplier's supplier, who eventually contacted me. By this stage the issue was getting murkier as the store had by now lost the bag of evidence. However, the likelihood was that it was a mushroom and the man from the suppliers was very nice.

He said he'd be sending me something for my trouble, and sure enough, some days later a letter arrived regretting my cause for concern and enclosing a cheque for any inconvenience that may have been caused.

Now, this cheque has faced me with the following dilemmas.

It is crossed and made out to a variant of my name. So if I decide to cash it, I will have to lodge it to my bank account, and most likely sign it on the back using the variant, which I will have to practice for a week, my forging skills being what they are.

It is for a trivial amount, and as cheques are now being phased out, I wonder if I held on to it would it actually increase in value, as cheques become rarer and one for this amount rarer still, if not unique.

Nothing is simple in this life.

My friend Vivion has pointed to the simple fact that I am still here irrespective of what the damn thing was. I surrender.

TRASHED

Dioxins cause deformaties in fetuses/babies.

There is a very lively, and sometimes acrimonious and bitter, debate going on in Ireland at the moment on the subject of abortion.

While the debate usually takes place between parties calling themselves by the non-exclusive categories "pro-life" and "pro-choice", there is a deafening silence on another "pro-life/pro-choice" issue which affects a much larger number of people.

This is the heedless and irresponsible disposal of trash which is destroying vital parts of the eco-system on which all human life depends.

The new landscape - a trash mountain.

The quantites of trash being disposed of have reached gargantuan proportions. Land, air and sea are wilting under the strain. The traditional disposal method has been landfills. These are now not only full but wildly toxic and are contaminating watertables, plants and the like. Next we had dumping at sea. This great sink is now rapidly filling up with materials which are not biodegradable, or only so to a limited extent. And that great space saver and energy producer, incineration, is now shown to be pumping toxic dioxins into the atmosphere at a rate of knots. The effects of dioxins on fetal development was most graphically illustrated in the effects of Agent Orange in Cambodia, which is where the above baby photos, featured in the film, come from.

Apocalypse Now.

So what do we do?

Viewing the film "Trashed", from which these stills are taken, would be a start.

The film has recently been brought to the attention of the Minister for Education and the Lord Mayor of Dublin, both of whom seemed interested.

The model of cooperation in the Arts between the Departments of Education and Arts, launched recently as a much hyped "Charter", might be applied in the case of the Departments of Education and Environment, to sensitise innocent children to the current destruction of the environment in which they will have to live their lives.

The Minister for Arts, himself, recently opened the inaugural World Actors Forum in Dublin, at which the film was shown. Hopefully he either watched it or took away a DVD and will alert his Cabinet colleagues to how little time we have left to take action.

And then we get rid of 90% of packaging, and such packaging as is needed should be 100% recyclable. Remember the recyclable milk bottle or the redeemable jam jar. Anyway, most packaging these days is just a marketing con.

And we go back to fixing things rather than throwing them out when a bit of them breaks. That used to be the old way. Remember the valve radio. Throw out the valve, keep the radio. We don't have to go back to AM mono, but the principle is still valid.

Dioxins cause deformaties in fetuses/babies.

Albert on the Lawn

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While in real life, Prince Albert (1819-1861) died 40 years before his consort Queen Victoria (1819-1901) there is one place where he survives her, so far, by 65 years. That place is Leinster Lawn, in the garden of the Irish Parliament. The huge statue of his Queen was removed from the Lawn in 1948 and is now in Sydney, Australia.

Albert's statue is a fine one by John Henry Foley RA, who also did O'Connell in O'Connell Street, Dublin, the Albert Memorial in London, and the bust of Emily Lady Hughes in St. Iberius church in Wexford Town.


It is surrounded by four figures representing the Prince's interests, and I was intrigued to see a very old fashioned camera at the base of the one above.






Wikipedia gives me loyal and sure as a translation of the Prince's motto, Treu und Fest, while Google gives me faithfully and firmly though it also offers laid as an alternative to the latter.

The Prince in Wikepedia.

And the story of Queen Victoria's demise here.

Guns for Hire

What with the NSA spying on my every online move and the guards turning out in force for Ruairí Ó Brádaigh's funeral, I couldn't resist clandestinely shooting these army guys when I caught them hanging around the Permanent TSB premises in the middle of Wexford Town.


And then, in they went. I wondered were they going to take out some banker fellow who had barricaded himself inside and refused to come out and face the post-Celtic-Tiger music. Or were they really robbers dressed up as army. Hardly a film as there was no camera or crew.


Then I saw the cash van belonging to that famous security firm which could not do the needful either in UK prisons or at the London Olympics. For a split second I wondered if the army were moving in on the G4 guys but that ecstatic thought didn't last long, and I figured they were just helping out.

I do hope they were charging the going rate.

Blur

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It looks like I'm not the only one who blurs out car registration plates.

However, I have decided to give it up except in exceptional cases.

I don't see the rationale for it here on what I guess is a Northern Irish registration (though it could of course be over from mainland!).


I am now going into hiding.

Poverty Index

I never realised how dire was the poverty out of which I came until I read a piece on Max Clifford by Andrew Lynch in the Sunday Business Post (2/6/13).

It appears that Max's "family was so poor that newspapers had to be used as toilet roll".

I don't think that would be news to many an Irish person of my generation. We habitually consigned the Irish Press to the lav, cut up into neat squares, pierced at the corner and held together by a piece of twine. No matter that the paper was more efficient at spreading the stuff than absorbing it.

And, furthermore, it was my privilege in this life to be dependent on an outside unheated lav in my twenties and thirties.

So you'll pardon me if I don't share Andrew's sense of amazement at this poverty index.

Talk about technological progress. We graduated from the newspaper to the medicated (shiny) roll and then to the science fiction that was Andrex.

Excuse me, I think that's Pat Kenny on the phone, looking for a scoop.

Appeal

Raheny News

Sunday, 26 May 2013

LETTER

Dear Editor,

I have lived in Avondale for a good few years and have always had animals in the garden. They have never been touched until I bought an alligator. Unfortunately I had to go to hsopital and on my return it had disappeared. I cannot believe that someone can take something from someone else's garden. I really would love to have him back please.

Finnie Fay

Like I said before. There is no lack of excitement in my village.