On Old Grawky Hill

Things that thrill

2006-07-27T22:53:40+02:00

Things that thrill

Cold beer
Tractors in hayfields
Girls in vests on sunny days
riding bikes down steep hills
finishing work early
snow
cable cars

Makes me glad to be alive. What a wonderful world

Comments

Ghosts

2006-07-05T23:04:39+02:00

What is a ghost? Do they exist or is it just a big fairy story? I am sceptical about most alleged supernatural claims however I must confess to a few experiences over the years that have left me wavering.

On several occasions I have found myself suddenly thinking rather intensely about people I haven't seen for a while. A few hours later I discover they've died. Coincidence? Maybe, ESP, Telepathy or some other Psychic phenomenon possibly. At the back of my Christian mind a little voice suggests that it might be the dead person's soul departing with a quick cheerio to friends and acquaintances. Sounds like a load of bollocks when you write it down though. Its easier to believe in ghosts.

Does anyone have an opinion on this. Am I a deranged fantasist or do lots of people have similar experiences?

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Jobs - we all knew what people used to do

2006-06-01T21:48:58+02:00

The world has moved on a lot in the past thirty to forty years. In towns across Northern Britain huge swathes of heavy industry have disappeared, not too many folks work in textiles, mining or steel these days. In the country the horse, the spade and the pitchfork have disappeared in favour of machines capable of doing the same job as twenty men and a stable full of horses. Who apart from Fred Dibnah and the odd travelling fair uses a traction engine these days.

Despite all these changes more people are employed than ever before. Each day it seems Britain absorbs even more migrants to work in our mystery economy. What are they all doing? Who is paying for all the extra work? What do they produce?

I am baffled aren't you because not a day goes by without the Tories or the media warning of economic collapse. What does the modern economy run on? It looks like fresh air to me.

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Pubs

2006-05-29T00:22:24+02:00

When I was young my father, a man who liked beer would often call into a boozer for a libation when we were out and about. As a result I became familiar with the outside of such classy pubs as the Seven Seas in Kilbowie Road, Clydebank, The Ferry Master in Renfrew and the Kelburn or the Watermill in Paisley. Scotland being a fine Calvinist country didn't allow nippers even a sight of the interior of a Bar.

At home in Ireland every summer it was very different. Many a happy hour I spent supping a McDaids Football Special while Dad had a pint and a laugh with his cronies in fabulously friendly but dingy pubs with names like Currans, Friels and McLaughlins in little villages with no other source of entertainment.

Looking back I realise that my own love of the drinking life was developed by this early exposure. Even today I love the smell of stale beer you get in a really dingy pub. Something today's fun pubs and ridiculous theme bars never deliver. Irish pubs in the sixties and seventies were great fun to be in because of the people you met not the music or the comfy seats. Where did those leathery faced men in tweed go? Where did those old landladies go, the ones who gave me free crisps and always knew my name. These days in my local I am lucky if I get served by someone who speaks English.

These days taking your child to the pub for anything other than a full meal is socially unacceptable, my dad would probably be in jail for neglect if he was around today. Would it have made me a better person if I missed out on these memories, I don't think so. Society has moved on but some 'improvements' haven't made life better.

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21st Century Employment - its not all its cracked up to be

2006-01-17T16:54:00+01:00

As I sit staring into space at my high powered workplace. I sometimes forget that I am at work. Cuts and re-organisations have disposed of many of my colleagues and I often find myself alone with plenty of time to think.

Is this what those sci-fi writers in the fifties and sixties meant when they wrote those utopian novels about the Brave New world of science that would arise in the twenty first century. I earn far more than my father or grandfather did but I am rarely taxed physically or mentally. The occasional deadline may induce some stress but that is usually brought on by my concious incompetence.

Was life easier in the old days? Probably not. Our forebears bodies wore out due to too much work or unsafe working conditions. My body is likely to break down due to lack of exercise and a bad diet. Despite the high levels of inactivity most office workers experience these days Britain still has the longest working hours in Europe, I wonder why? Maybe doing nothing at work is more enjoyable than going home to do nothing in front of the TV or a PC.

I think it is time I took the advice of the seventies TV show 'Why Don't You' and stopped sitting around watching TV. Today is my new beginning, hobbies here I come. Anyone got any worthwhile suggestions on how a middle aged layabout can fill his time more usefully?

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The Old House

2006-01-13T10:45:11+01:00

Folk songs can sometimes be very apt, I think this captures pefectly the emotions that we experience when it dawns on us that some of the big experiences of our lives happened a long time ago:

Lonely, I wandered through scenes of my childhood
They bring back to memory the happy days of yore
Gone are the old folk, the house stands deserted
No light in the window, no welcome at the door

Here's where the children played games on the heather
Here's where they sailed their wee boats from the burn
Where are they now? Some are dead, some have wandered
No more to their home will the children return

Lonely, the house now, and lonely, the moorland
The children have scattered, the old folk are gone
Why stand I here, like a ghost or a shadow?
It's time I was movin', it's time I passed on

I woke up the other day and realised my dear father had been dead for 30 years, I had known my wife for twenty years and it was 10 years since I left England for Scotland. Scary stuff, each event seemed as fresh as yesterday.

Years ago I went to visit the Welsh mining village where I lived briefly as a child. The main street hadn't changed much but when I went to look for the place where we lived it had disappeared, I was lost in a place I once called home. Proof I think that time and tide respects no man. Its best to surf the wave looking forward to a positive future because the past is gone forever.

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The value of Cousins

2006-01-05T15:59:21+01:00

Cousins are funny things. As a child they were the kids you played with when your parents dragged you out on Sundays to visit relatives. As you got older you probably saw them less and less until one day you realised you couldn't remember what they looked like.

At family funerals over the past few years I have become re-acquainted with a host of cousins I hadn't seen for a lifetime. Some had changed dramatically, afro perms and black pencil moustaches had given way to receding gray hair and lined faces. The curious thing though was how alike we all were. As we aged our inherited characteristics had emerged. The commonality of our genes had become far more evident than it ever seemed in childhood.

Looking around a family gathering I was reassured by the fact that so many people looked like me and shared similar personalities. I was though struck by the realisation that my own children would never have the same experience of having so many close relations. The small size of modern families reduces the number of potential cousins today's children have. I have around 100 first cousins, my children are unlikely to have more than ten. Is this a by-product of progress and prosperity we should celebrate or be concerned by?

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Life on the edge

2005-12-01T13:53:57+01:00

Living life to the full means what exactly?

To some folks its all about adventure going to dangerous places, doing dangerous things facing deadly foes. Extreme sports guys are never happy unless they are jumping off a cliff without a rope or a parachute. Strangely though few of these guys volunteer for really dangerous jobs like patrolling in Bagdad wearing a British or American uniform or climbing into burning buildings to rescue people or taking a small fishing boat out into the Atlantic. Extreme sports people secretly like to control the risks they take so being a soldier, sailor or fireman where the level of risk fluctuates dramatically has no interest for them. I suspect that that eliminates the extreme sports buff from the title of living life to the full.

Other people deem living life to the full as having a busy working life and an extremely active social life. You know the type, the guy who does a 12 hour day then goes straight to a bar to party the night away with his buddies before going home with a gorgeous woman. The problem with this lifestyle is that it comes to an abrupt end when the guy marries the girl either that or he never marries and ends up an embittered batchelor.

The bulk of us never feel as if we are living life to the full. Our lives are fairly mundane consisting of work, home and the occasional social outing or sporting activity. We generally feel as if there is something better somewhere else. The interesting thing is that so does the extreme sports guy and the soldier under fire. I suspect that living life to the full or living on the edge is something you can only do for a short time without getting bored. Life needs to be fun though so I suspect you need to have an equal balance of activity that is both exciting and mundane. When you feel a little jaded you can either pump up the excitement or turn down the volume. A full life is one that gives you a taste of all pleasures from falling asleep on the sofa to falling from a plane. Try the thrill you fancy today, it'll make you smile.

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Christmas a time of Goodwill

2005-11-11T16:42:32+01:00

Now that you are all busy planning your futures, remember to set aside time at Christmas to enjoy yourself. Reading the various newspaper and magazine articles about Christmas that appear at this time of year you could be forgiven for thinking that it is one constant period of celebration and parties.

I have yet to meet anyone who prepares the kind of Christmas meals the Tesco magazine promotes or goes to as many social gatherings as the people who write for Marie Claire seem to. In my world you have your work Christmas party, maybe a night out with your pals then spend Christmas Day and possibly Boxing Day closeted with your in-laws. Don't get me wrong I enjoy Christmas, its just that I just don't seem to have as much 'fun' as the media thinks I should be having.

I must admit that the thought of producing a Christmas dinner for twenty would fill me with dread and at my age attending lots of parties would mean spending the following day recovering from a hangover. Maybe you instinctively limit you social activity during the Season of Goodwill to something you can easily cope with.

In the old days Christmas Eve and Christmas Day were the big celebrations, the Christmas industry did not kick in until at least December not September as it does in the modern High Street. By the time the day comes round you really are cheesed off and ready to do anything other than actually celebrate Christmas.

I doubt if any modern child really has any concept of Christmas other than a major present receiving session. Christmas for me became a lot less exciting by the age of ten when people stopped giving me toys and started giving me clothes and toiletries as presents. I presume the change occurred because I was badly dressed and smelt 'a bit fresh' and not because my childhood was deemed to be offically over. Today twenty somethings openly ponder what their mum will get them for Christmas. There is something unseemly about that.

Maybe its time we all rejected the commercialism and just had fun at Christmas. Exchange goodwill instead of expensive presents and see how people treat you.

Comments

Getting the most out of life

2005-11-04T13:09:02+01:00

Life is one of those things that for most of us just happens. I suggested the other day that those of you fed up labouring in dull jobs should take control of your lives and go and do what you want to do. I received the odd response that suggested that sometimes you can't succeed no matter what you try to do.

I don't believe that, its the old self defeating prophesy thing, if you fail to prepare, prepare to fail. Most of us agree with the sentiment that we could have a better life if we took some form of action. The problem is identifying what action we need to take.

If you are serious about taking steps to improve your I recommend that you make a formal plan. To do this you should write down all the things you believe you need to do. Prioritise them and set yourself a date to achieve each one. Don't be too ambitious, just look one year ahead and decide where you want to be in 365 days time. It works as long as you commit to doing what is required to achieve your objective. It is also important to be honest and realistic with yourself.

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Expectations

2005-10-31T15:35:45+01:00

What were your expectations when you left school? Get a job, get rich,buy a big car, live in a big house, marry an attractive spouse, have many children and live happily ever after. Maybe you had a dream to be something specific such as an actor, sportsman or maybe professional such as a lawyer. Statistics say that the people who wanted to be something specific from an early age are the ones who end up happiest. Those of us without specific objectives who just planned to have a good life end up dis-satisfied no matter how successful we become because we usually end up doing something we don't really want to do.

How can we solve this malaise, I suppose we really need to decide what we want to do with the rest of our lives. It doesn't matter when you do it the important thing is to have something achievable to aim at. Plan to do something that you want to do for your benefit. It apparently has a really cathartic effect on the rest of your existence. The only reason most of us don't end up doing something we enjoy is because we listen to the negative views of others. I wonder how many emigrants left their poverty or war ravaged homes without someone, possibly a parent saying "Are you sure you are doing the right thing? Its not too bad round here compared to where you are going."

So my advice to those of you sitting in boring jobs living humdrum existences is think about what you really want to do and go and do it. Your life will never be the same again.

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Being Appreciated

2005-10-28T15:48:11+02:00

Why is it that no one ever gets the praise they are due when they are in a position to benefit from it? At funerals most people agree on the dead person’s good qualities in a way they would never have dreamed of if they were still alive. In the workplace we are constantly told that we must improve that matching last years performance is not enough. How often have you gone into an annual review and walked out convinced that your both recognises and appreciates the scale of your contribution? For most of us this never happens. Reviews usually go along the lines of you do your job well but you need to take the initiative and work more autonomously or some other psycho-babble. Generally the extent of someone’s contribution only becomes clear when they leave and some new person takes months to master what seemed like an easy job.

A colleague working on an Infrastructure restructuring project for a big government department put a huge amount of effort into a really unpleasant job that resulted in office closures and redundancies. As the project neared closure, he was marked as surplus and told he was being transferred to a frontline post at a lower grade. Naturally he took umbrage and found himself a better job elsewhere. Shortly after he left a package arrived addressed to him. When he popped in for a visit he opened the package and discovered it was a framed certificate signed by the Chief Information Officer and Chief Operating Officer thanking him for his efforts on the project!

So your thought for today should let the people in your life that help you know that you appreciate their efforts. If everyone knew that they were valued the world would be a much nicer place.

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Parents

2005-10-25T14:04:43+02:00

All families have secrets, one of the most common ones is who is your father? Most of us at some point in our lives wonder if we are really related to our parents. People whose values are the polar opposites of our own.

As we age the things we like about our parents become irritating and the values we opposed become our values. I remember reading somewhere that unfortunately our parents have such a great influence on us that we are doomed to repeat their 'mistakes' with our own children. This concept of a life template being handed down as your Dad chases you to bed with his belt swinging is fairly horrible but accurate nonetheless. Maybe by now we have generally moved away from the physical chastisement our parents and grandparents favoured but other 'parental' treats are still being offered such as holidays.

As a child I went on holiday to Ireland, my wife went to the Scottish highlands and later to other hotspots like Scandinavia and Austria. In our courting days we frequently laughed at how bored we were on these annual jaunts. Where do you think we took our kids on holiday? Spain or Florida? No chance, as if directed by a homing beacon we have dragged them to Ireland, Scotland and Scandinavia and plan to go to Austria next year. I swear to God that this has not been deliberate, we just seem to choose these places as if we are on auto-pilot.

My conversation increasingly resembles my parents, recounting endless tales of my youthful glory days to anyone who will listen. I frequently demand that my children obey behavioural conventions without ever explaining why, just as my folks did to me. Larkin was right your parents do # you up.

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The changing of the Guard

2005-10-10T17:04:45+02:00

Families are funny things. For long stretches they can survive with minimal contact between the constituents. The key events that bind are weddings and funerals. Times when long forgotten friendships and emnities re-emerge. In my own family we are reaching a changing of the guard moment my Grandparents are long gone, their influence usurped by my parents generation who set the agendas and kept in touch. Now that group too are slowly passing on, leaving the many cousins slightly leaderless.

Do you carry on trying to function as a unit or do you break away completely and found your own dynasty? For the Aristocracy family ties seem to go on forever with fifteenth cousins twice removed being not unusual. For the rest of us a couple of generations can be enough to break the bonds. I suppose life is too short to complicate by keeping track of your cousin's son's nephew's new baby etc.

Having said that Genealogy is one of the world's most popular hobbies so maybe the truth is we all like being part of a family no matter how distant. Modern life does encourage the breaking of bonds, visiting your kith and kin is nowhere near as much fun sometimes as watching soap opera characters living a close knit family life. I suppose we all want Family Lite, relatives we can list but don't have to listen to. It is the inter-personal side that is most complex. Relatives frequently develop into the kind of people you wouldn't chose as friends.

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Age and Conversations

2005-10-04T12:51:06+02:00

As I get older I frequently find myself telling long convoluted stories about mundane events. This I believe is the first sign of codgeritis a problem that afflicts everyone from early middle age onwards. Think about it, how many times have you waited for a parent or grandparent to get to the point of a story. Why is that older folks feel the need to fill stories with wads of unecessary detail.

I remember first noticing this problem in my mother about twenty years ago when a story obout a gas leak being repaired lasted about three hours with digressions into who was passing, what the weather was like(cold), how long the front door had to stay open, the neighbours' initial suspicions, the number of magpies and squirrels in the garden and the potential causes. Nothing wrong with that I hear you say, it was an exciting event that she wanted to share with you in all its glorious detail. Well as I said originally it was merely the first incidence of codgeritis, things got much worse. Trips to town are described in copious detail, trivial conversations are recounted verbatim. I now feel as if I have intimate knowledge of half the local population of geriatrics.

My in-laws are about ten years younger and until they reached their early fifties were reticent folks who generally provided clipped, accurate accounts of events before getting on with normal conversation. By their mid fifties the rot started to creep in, stories progressively became longer and every event developed links into seemingly unrelated information. From people who spoke rarely they too became information factories broadcasting minutiae.

Its as if when you reach a certain age your information quality filter shuts down. Instead of telling people exactly what happened, you feel that the facts need to be 'Jazzed up' with some local colour. Why does this happen? Is it some subconscious urge to capture peoples attention as long as possible in order to halt the ageing process? I really don't know. The worrying thing is that I can feel it starting to happen to me and the people I spend the bulk of my time with. Where once our conversations were a blizzard of one liners and smart quips we now sit respectfully while we each recount epic tales of how we watched our favourite DVDs, surfed the web, crashed our cars or fainted when a young atractive woman smiled at us. By then end of an average night we may have only discussed one topic but know what the barmaid was wearing, what make the patrol car was and what colour the surgeon's hair was!

Maybe this information is important or am I developing some kind of late onset autism that is forcing me to gather and recount useless trivia. Maybe codgeritis is just a defence mechanism that nature developed centuries ago to fill long dark winter's nights without TV? Maybe I can get codgeritis registered as a disease, there must be some form of finder or discoverer's fee.

Comments

Irish Railways

2005-09-30T16:13:44+02:00

Rail travel in Ireland is ok if you live in the environs of Dublin(you can get the DART) or if you live in Galway, Cork, Wexford, Waterford, Limerick, Sligo or Belfast in which case you can get one of Iarnrod Eireann's irregular services.

For folks in remoter counties such as Donegal rail travel ceased in 1960. The old Lough Swilly Narrow Gauge Railway with its quaint stations at Newtown Cunningham, Manor Cunningham, Letterkenny and beyond into the Gaeltacht was a lifeline for the people of the county. It bonded them to Derry their nearest city and to overnight boat to Glasgow where many of their relatives had migrated.

When the railway disappeared the Derry to Glasgow ferry ceased and coming home to Donegal for the holidays became a lot harder. Roads were terrible and a trip to the west coast could several hours. Even today Gaeltacht towns like Dungloe and Gweedore seem a long way from Letterkenny by road. The place is ideally suited for a light rail network that would reduce traffic problems and ultimately cut the number of fatal road accidents. Bad driving is the bain of life in the county with youths frequently driving the sixty miles home from the pubs and clubs of Letterkenny in a less than sober state.

Now I suspect the powers that be, realise just how short sighted the railways closure was. Unfortunately to re-open the links would cost a fortune. As always the point I am getting at is that the old days and the old ways were not quite so backward as they seemed in the go-ahead sixties and seventies.

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Gaelic Football - Tyrone champs again

2005-09-27T17:48:57+02:00

Well done Tyrone All Ireland football champs for the second time in three years. In my youth I dabbled with Gaelic but never mastered the game, the handling and bouncing stuff was just too confusing. It is however a great game to watch and generates tremendous enthusiasm across the country during the summer. Amateur sport in Britain simply can't match the GAA for community involvement. With the exception of Varsity rugby I don't think any amateur sport in Britain has the capacity to draw more than ten or twenty thousand fans to showpiece events. The GAA on the other hand can fill Croke Park the largest sports stadium in the British Isles several times each summer plus big crowds at county grounds across the country.

Why has amateur sport died as a spectator sport in the UK? I suspect that a combination of limited media interest and the impact of Margaret Thatcher are the key factors. The media are only interested in professional sport where money is to be made with advertising etc. The result is a bland product which churns events out, the characters common in the amateur world are rooted out because their inconsistency makes them unreliable. Professional Rugby is a classic example of this effect, pre 1995 Rugby was an antidote to football a sport played by men who loved the game and liked a laugh. Now it is played by men who love the income and status the game provides, the fun has gone, avoiding defeat is the most important objective.

Where does Thatcher come in well she said there was "no such thing as society" and set about proving it. By the time she left office traditional British society had changed forever. The traditional industries that had been a production line for amateur sportsmen in various disciplines had ceased to exist. In their place Britain has turned to a centralised approach to sport with bizarre concepts such as academies and centres of excellence. Sportsmen are products now not people doing something they love. Its no surprise the consumers complain about the quality.

At least in Ireland the concept of sport as something to be enjoyed remains. Why else would kids turn up at their local GAA ground to learn the arts of hurling and football when they know there will never be any financial gain. Maybe its time we all started to do things for the fun and nothing else, lifes too short to take sport too seriously. I think I will pop down to the Moss tonight and practice my frees.

Comments

What is a job?

2005-09-22T15:47:18+02:00

What is a job? Is it something you do simply to earn money or is it something that you do to define your role in society. When you tell a neighbour what you do at a social event do they mist over and make a swift exit to the drinks trolley or do they interrogate you remorselessly to find out if their perception of your job meets your experience?

In keeping with the bulk of the population I find that other people's jobs always sound more interesting than mine. Sitting in an office staring at the computer and occasionally answering the phone do not make for an exciting life.

Education and a changing economy have denied me the kind of working life my father enjoyed travelling the world building pylons and other structures. My grandfathers were agricultural workers, one a ploughman and the other a labourer who lived their lives in the open air. As did their fathers and forefathers, with the occasional fisherman, sailor or soldier thrown in.

My pedigree is pure outdoor worker so maybe its something genetic in me that makes office work feel so stifling. I have reached a point where those childhood memories of playing in the fields and breathing fresh air are more vivid and attractive than anything I do on a daily basis. Is this a mid life crisis or simply a realisation that I deserve a better life?

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Full Circle

2005-09-15T16:50:50+02:00

Before the 1960's woollen underwear was deemed essential for life in the outdoors particularly in the winter. Wool went out of fashion as wonder fabrics like Rayon, Polyester and Nylon were used for almost everything. For sheep farmers the profits in wool have dropped alarmingly over the same period.

During the eighties and nineties adventure sports became very popular and with it people developed a desire for clothing that did not leave you soaking with sweat when exercising in the cold. Various high 'wickability' fabrics have been introduced in recent times promising to keep you dry no matter how hard you exercise. Few of them worked all that well. Anyone who tried to use the camping wonder towels that came out in the mid nineties will remember the way these super absorbent materials simply pushed water around without ever absorbing it.

I found it rather amusing the other day to discover that the latest wonder fibre is good old merino wool which has an extremely high 'wickability' rating and is also blessed with a naturally anti bacterial quality which protects wearers from smelling bad if they have to wear their underwear for several days in a row.

Suddenly it looks as if the old days were not quite so bad after all. Progress has brought underwear right back where it started. Wool the 21st century wonder product, maybe we will have a jobs boom for shepherds.

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Fuel Crisis

2005-09-13T10:09:33+02:00

The current 'Oil Crisis' may well be a product of some sharp practices by the oil producing coutries and the big oil firms to push up the wholesale price of crude oil. Certainly other than increased demand from China there is no reason to justify a trebling of the price of oil in the past couple of years.

Most oil companies are using this price rise to fund exploration of untapped reserves in previously inaccessible areas such as the deeper areas of the North Sea. If the price goes any higher then some bright spark will resume shale mining, which would be a boon for budding miners in Central Scotland and various areas of North America. The environmental impact however would be considerable, travellers into Edinburgh from the West of Scotland will all be familiar with the huge shale bings that litter the landscape. Poignant reminders of the original British oil boom.

Regardless it is clear that fuel shortages have the potential to cause major disuption to life in the British Isles. Modern city dwellers frequently do not have fireplaces or chimneys in their homes. If the oil and gas run out they have to hope that nuclear, hydro and wind powersources will keep enough electricity flowing to heat their homes. If not then a real wood burning stove and chimney will become the must have item for the standard semi-detached.

Suddenly the lifestyle of forty or fifty years ago based on coal, turf or wood fires doesn't look quite so unattractive. I remember turf cutting expeditions as a child, exciting affairs that had a certain romance about them. We'd travel up the mountain road to the bog past cottages full of old shepherds with leathery faces who stop anyone for a chat about the world down in the glen, a place they only visited on market days.

The bog itself was on a wind swept hillside where the weather changed by the minute. Cutting the turf was easy it was the spreading and stacking that wore you out. Spending a day bent over building little cairns of turf killed your back. It was a real factory style process, Dad cut the turf, us kids carried the turf to a flattish area and stacked it in little cairns to dry. Once that was done we turned our attention to turf we had cut on our last visit. If it was dry we stacked it ready for transport to the house. If it was still damp we had to turn each turf in the little cairn. After handling several thousand pieces of turf in the mountain air you had a raging hunger, that a lorryload of sandwiches wouldn't cure. If the oil does look as if it will run out I will buy myself a few patches of bog and get back to nature.

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Does Civilisation disappear when the tap water stops flowing?

2005-09-08T12:09:15+02:00

Watching events in the American South I was struck by the differences in the way the New Orleans and Mississippi hurricane damage and aftermath has been reported. In New Orleans it would appear civilisation has broken down whilst in Mississippi it has disappeared. Strangely there have been no reports of violence and anarchy in Mississippi.

Maybe because Mississippi is a more rural area they are better equipped to cope without running water and power. In New Orleans it would appear that the lack of these amenities has apparently driven the population insane. It is worth noting that journalists seem able to travel around New Orleans with impunity. I have heard one reporter say he took a taxi to the Superdome when it was crowded with refugees. If he could get there why couldn't the people in it, leave?

The answer may well be that when you live in a city you lose some of the basic survival instincts that are absolutely essential in a situation like this. Country people understand that food and water don't just appear out of thin air. In a crisis like this they know they have to forage for these essentials. For older rural dwellers worldwide running water and power are still novelties. Sixty years ago my parents grew up without running water, electric lights or piped gas. Despite the absence of these "modern necessities" the rural Ireland they lived in was a very civilised environment.

Urban dwellers are different they are divorced from the food production process all they know is that the end product is always available in their local stores. When those stores aren't open or the deliveries don't come through, they don't know what to do. The criminally minded start looting while the honest folks just sit waiting for help. Like the Texas Long horn cattle who were too stupid to dig through prairie snow to the grass below modern American city dwellers appear have lost the basic survival instincts. If taxis could reach the Superdome then maybe it would have possible for the survivors to walk out of the city.

Hopefully this reality check has arrived just in time to focus Americans on what is good and what is bad about their consumer dominated society. A life spent eating cheap convenience food purchased from 24 hour outlets does not prepare you for hardship.

Comments

Custard or Indian Buck

2005-09-05T17:32:03+02:00

In the old days of the thirties and forties people lived a lot more simply than they do now. Luxuries were few and far between and many families were practically vegetarian through necessity rather than choice. My mother recalls a diet of porridge in the morning followed by potatoes for lunch and dinner and maybe as a special treat more porridge for supper. Four meals a day but hardly appetising.

Unsurprisingly no one liked to admit to eating this poorly. Childhood neighbours of my father once called their children in for supper, shouting loudly for the whole area to hear;

" Come in weans your custard's ready"

When quizzed later on what this wonderful custard stuff tasted like the neighbour's children replied;

"Custard be damned it was just porridge mixed with Indian Buck!"

For the uninitiated Indian Buck was ground maize, probably something like polenta so you can imagine how tasty the "custard" was!

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The Good Old days

2005-08-22T11:21:48+02:00

Down by the shore of the Sea Lough in between the glistening ranch bungalows stands my Great Grandparents house. It is still owned by one of my distant cousins but it has fell into rack and ruin. My father's cousin a hard drinking fool left the house derelict after his father the last occupant died. Sad tales abound, of the treasures that were lost in the house; pictures of ancestors long dead may have gone on the fire.

Back in 1918 it was a sad house as my grandparents and their children were racked by the great flu. Five died including both Great grand parents. Standing outside this link to a sad past is quite evocative. Trees have taken over the house and grow up through the roof and block the front door, as if nature has decided to regenerate the spot and remove all traces of human habitation.

For all of us there are many ancestors houses but few of us know where they are. Only the aristocracy have family histories that can be linked to particular buldings for more than a century. Does the lack of a history have any effect on the present?

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TB Vaccination withdrawn

2005-08-17T12:31:24+02:00

Yesterday I read that mass vaccination for British schoolchildren against TB (the dreaded BCG) has been discontinued. The grounds for this are somewhat cloudy but cost and a shortage of the vaccine appear to be the main reasons. TB is apparently now confined to the homeless and foreigners and they are only ones who will be vaccinated. My understanding is that it is a very infectious condition that needs to be strictly controlled, I may be wrong as my experience is based on my family's reminisences about the good old days when you had real illnesses.

Quite how anyone managed to reach adulthood in Ireland before the Second World War appears to have been a miracle. The Spanish Flu killed thousands in 1918 and the survivors fought their way through Scarlet Fever, Diptheria, Blood Poisoning and Whooping Cough. Measles and Mumps were things you ignored and Chicken Pox was a wimps illness. If you didn't have a tapeworm you were from a family too poor to eat meat. Most people were probably malnourished. In addition they dealt with the poverty ailments like Scabies and Bad Chests brought on by poor hygene and damp housing. They all however were deeply scared of TB which they regarded as a death sentence.

The demise of mass vaccination for TB in the UK is a cause for great concern in my opinon but no-one else seems to care. Am I becoming over cautious in my old age? The health authorities are more concerned with predicting the next "Spanish Flu" I would suggest that if TB takes hold again a lot more of us will die of it than any Flu pandemic.

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Transport

2005-08-15T17:01:44+02:00

My great uncle Pat was the first man in Grawky area to own his own car, back in the 1920s. Before that people walked, travelled by horse, train, bike or boat. In the 1930's my father became the pride of his family by getting a job driving a traction engine. A noisy mode of transport but quicker than walking.

By the sixties transport in the area took a serious blow the railway was closed, the river traffic dried up and the port was closed. Suddenly the road was the only way to travel and the roads were not up to it. Buses to the wild west took hours to travel thirty or forty miles. Many areas slowly emptied and rural depopulation began to take hold again. No work and no means of getting to where there was work made the area unattractive and emigrants left in there droves.

In the nineties it all changed, now everyone has a car and the roads are slowly becoming motorways and you can get to the west almost as fast as you could on the train. Progress is a wonderful thing but I'd rather be back on the traction engine or the narrow gauge railway it was a lot more fun.

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Tourism

2005-08-12T12:56:31+02:00

Tourists have always enjoyed visiting sites of antiquity to see how ancient civilisations lived. The Grand Tour of the Seventeenth, Eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was about absorbing the culture of foreign countries as well as their history. There has though also been a voyeuristic element to tourism particularly since the industrial revolution whereby wealthy well fed city dwellers have visited the country to see how poor rural folks live.

St Kilda and famine era Ireland were early victims of this phenomena. It continues unabated to this day world wide with back packers turning up in Mongolia to live with the nomads, Kenya to dance with the Masai, South Africa to hunt with the Bushmen etc. Some of the motivation is down to seeking some truth in one's life, particularly if you feel you are trapped in the rat race of modern society. Others just turn up to see how backward the third world is and they are often disappointed if the poor they came to look down on, change back into their modern clothes after finishing their tribal dance.

Irish emigrants like me often suffer the same sensations when they go "Home" for the holidays. In the sixties and seventies the gap was huge between our life in Britain and the way our families lived at "Home". I remember staying for the summer holidays with relatives in houses with no running water, dry toilets, no baths and meals cooked on the range or open fire. In Britain this would have been unacceptable. My parents would grumble about the backwardness of the country but would display great happiness at being "Home". On our return to Britain we rarely mentioned the privations except to people like ourselves who would understand. Years later I am fascinated that I could have survived anywhere for six weeks without a flushing toilet or a bath, yet my memories are of happy days playing in the fields and laughing with my kith and kin, toilet activities just don't feature.

Now when I go "Home" it is to a different country. The landscape is unchanged but the housing has. Instead of little white washed cottages my relatives live in Ranch Bungalows packed full of toilets, baths and showers. Mains water has reached almost everywhere except the Lagan Desert where my dear Aunt lives in a timecapsule cottage still drawing water from the well and cooking on the range. Despite this she seems just as happy as the folks with the en-suites.

Life's truth doesn't lie in living close to nature because you have no choice. The road to contentment comes from realising that you are well off and helping others to reach a level where they are comfortable and secure. Everyone has their own level and we should respect that.

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Castle on the Hill

2005-08-11T11:11:35+02:00

East of Grawky is another hill. At the top of which is an ancient castle. The view from here is wonderful looking down on the the Big City in the North and out across the Lough to the glens beyond with the Atlantic in the distance.

Its a magical place where the ancient kings held court and welcomed Phoenecian traders. All that is left now is ruins, that were re-organised into a Victorian idea of a hill fort during the nineteenth century. Even so if you stand inside you can almost hear those ancient voices. Quite why ancient sites still hold such evocative power I don't know maybe we leave a trace of ourselves wherever we go.

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The Plantation Town

2005-08-09T10:31:04+02:00

About eight miles west of Grawky is an old Plantation Town. It used to be a port and a rail head but both industries died out in the early twentieth century. From the forties to the nineties the town had an air of quiet decay. Paint peeling on storefronts of shops selling clothes that only an Edwardian gent would wear. Pubs with brown interiors and the welcoming smell of stale beer and tobacco. People worked on the land or in the sweet factory. The chemical works that appeared in the seventies brought a small boom.

The country folk lived as they always had and only went to town to shop or for the show. Life in the town didn't atract them. My Grandfathers walked the eight miles to town a couple of times a year and the rest of the time it could have been on the moon for all the interest they took in it. For most people the hospital was the only reason to go town.

Suddenly in the early nineties something happened, the Celtic Tiger effect. The town with the longest main street on the island now began to expand. In the mid nineties supermarkets and shopping centres appeared. Restaurants opened and new houses sprang up. By the millenium's end suburbia had arrived, no more ranch bungalows now people were building streets of semis and detached executive homes.

The roads between the Plantation Town and the big City in the North have changed from single track to virtual motorway. Now people come to the Plantation Town for pleasure. Hotels, restaurants and fun pubs dominate the main street. Walking in from the Port Road a visitor could be excused for believing that they have arrived in a glitzy seaside resort populated by Stag Nights and Hen Nights. Northern and Southern accents mingle everywhere. The only sound you don't hear often is the old Back Country accent. The country people are changing and becoming much smoother and sophisticated as the wealth spreads out from the town. For emigrants like me the change is frightening the world we left has gone forever. All we have is our memories of how things used to be.

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Childhood Games

2005-08-04T09:44:57+02:00

As a child I remember playing all the time. From the age of three onwards I played outside with the rest of the kids in the area. I got into scrapes fell in burns, got caught in barbed wire, fell off derelict buildings, got chased by stray dogs and knocked over by cars, and so did everyone else. It was all good fun. Around Grawky there are many spots where I skint my knees or spent hours trying to catch frogs. In the summer holidays I occasionally helped with the hay making though my main job was running back to the house for bottles of water or tea and sandwiches. Haymaking was dangerous for a child there were tractors, bailers and big rakes everywhere but I wasn't worried I was having fun.

As I look at my children and modern children in general I realise that they lead rather safe secure lives closeted from any risks. I was not a particularly adventurous child but by the age of seven I had the survival skills of a trained commando compared to todays seven year olds who have never done anything dangerous in their lives. God knows how they will cope as adults, childhood should be a preparation for real life where your mum and dad aren't around to save you.

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Where did the linen industry go?

2005-08-02T11:25:16+02:00

Listening to my parents and their friends talking about the old days was sometimes fun and frequently tedious. Life in rural Ireland in the 20's, 30's and 40's was hard. If you didn't like broughan and spuds you would have starved pretty quickly. This long lost world of donkey carts, hiring fairs and hard work thinning turnips or howking tatties seems to have gone forever.

One activity which is now almost invisible was the Linen industry. Working with the 'lint' as my kin called it was a hard and unpleasant job. The lint had to be harvested by hand each plant pulled out by the roots. It was then rotted in a dam dried and then crushed and 'scutched' in a mill. The scutching was an extremely dangerous job where men fed handfuls of lint into the blades of a spinning wheel to break it up. There were many accidents at this stage with hands and arms being torn off. Once scutched the lint went for sale where only the best quality would be purchased. The industry thrived in times of war when other material such as cotton was scarce. The American Civil War and the two World Wars were peak times for the Irish linen industry. It won the Battle of Britain you know. The legendary Hawker Hurricane fighter plane's fuselage was made out of Irish linen.

Walking round Grawky and the surrounding area now you will see no sign of the industry. The scutch mills and the dams have disappeared. Thank God say the former workers because it was back breaking labour for little reward. The slaves on the American Cotton plantations didn't have to work as hard. The next time you lay out a linen table cloth or complain about the wrinkles in your linen shirt spare a thought for the effort the poor workers in India or wherever put into getting that product to you.

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