tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-71562482024-03-13T01:54:11.431+00:00MARISEO'S HOUSEThe personal blog of Kilcullen writer and photographer Brian Byrne. All material strictly copyright of the author.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger153125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7156248.post-32692305375641143062023-08-06T11:14:00.016+01:002023-08-06T16:13:19.246+01:00The day trip<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimtN4PiKHyCoDstTWb7C3112PAN1wZFa1Jjm9wIbBLJLwtvx7tQiFdtYzxGmLNbXCzeSbfoXabzTelpvKA6zZ902MjdLwDVQqOLH2Jzm4-CnevU-74G0iRnviMtknNkqSZvGf-Lgf89p4sDmE7sbQlr5y_PgNV5OcVPRnaoAXoBJ4NvR6EsdLSrg/s1680/rover2200.jpeg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="944" data-original-width="1680" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimtN4PiKHyCoDstTWb7C3112PAN1wZFa1Jjm9wIbBLJLwtvx7tQiFdtYzxGmLNbXCzeSbfoXabzTelpvKA6zZ902MjdLwDVQqOLH2Jzm4-CnevU-74G0iRnviMtknNkqSZvGf-Lgf89p4sDmE7sbQlr5y_PgNV5OcVPRnaoAXoBJ4NvR6EsdLSrg/s320/rover2200.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div>“Hi,” the man said as he opened the passenger door and peered in.<p></p><p>“Hi,” I replied. “Where you headed?”</p><p>Back in the mid-1970s, people still hitched in Ireland. And those of us fortunate to be in cars frequently gave people lifts. For both parties it was something of a gamble. Of easy conversation, or not. Of possible personality clashes. Of committing to a distance or destination together that might prove to have been a mistake in as little as a minute or two into the drive. Of finding truth in the urban myths of either the hitcher or the driver turning out to be unsavoury or even dangerous. <i>The sad realities of that, which still reverberate today in cases of missing people last seen trying for lifts, hadn’t yet arrived in Ireland …</i></p><p>Most of my time driving then, usually when alone, I did pick up people. Particularly on my way out from Dublin to my home in mid-Kildare. Sometimes I might detour a little, to get them to Newbridge, for instance, when my own drive would have been directly to Kilcullen through Naas. The extra miles and time were no big deal to me, and yet often could make a significant difference to my stranger passenger. Sometimes there was interesting conversation, other journeys were made in silent listening to the car radio. In a decade of motoring before Ireland gradually joined the league of dangerous places for hitching, I had no bad encounters with people I gave lifts to.</p><p>The mid-1970s were before our motorways. The traffic lights at Newlands Cross on the outskirts of the city was a favourite spot for people seeking a lift, with cars regularly moving slowly off on the green. That facilitated both hitcher and driver with time to seek or decide. A stop there for down-country buses was a last-recourse option for those who failed to get a ride.</p><p>One morning, I don’t remember why I had been in the city so early, the lights stopped me at Newlands around ten-thirty. Waiting for the green, I saw a couple standing at the bus stop, both with backpacks, a duffel bag at the man’s feet. To me, just passed from my twenties, they looked not quite elderly, maybe my parents’ age. The man’s thumb was tentatively out as the lights changed and the traffic moved off. I decided, pulled over and waited.</p><p>After those introductory ‘Hi’s, the woman had caught up and also bent down to look in. She smiled, a pleasant, motherly kind of woman. “We missed our coach,” she said. “We’ll go as far as you can take us, where we can maybe get a bus onwards, towards Limerick?” The accent was north American.</p><p>I nodded. “Sure. I can take you to Newbridge. It’ll get you on your road. There are several Limerick buses through there.”</p><p>“Thank you,” the man said, his accent similar to hers. “I’ll put the bags in the trunk, if that’s OK?”</p><p>“Sure. I’ll come and open it.”</p><p>A few minutes later, the bags stowed, the man was in the back seat and his wife, as she turned out to be, sitting up front. We were on our way down the N7, an easy drive as far as Naas, the road had been dual carriageway since 1968. We quickly got through the basics, the ‘thanks for picking us up’, exchanged names. Alice and Tom. They were Canadian. Their first time in Ireland. Somehow, it wasn’t really clear why, they had missed the connection in the city to their group heading out on a tour of the south and west of Ireland. Someone had told them, ‘take a city bus to Newlands Cross, you’ll get a lift from there’.</p><p>They were nice people. I don’t remember now what they did, but my recollection is that they were probably within horizon’s view of retirement. Like most north Americans I'd met, they were easy, open people. Happy to talk, not yet sure of the protocols when hitching a ride in Ireland. We got on well. They shared happy anticipation of their tour, if they managed to catch up with it. They had no family connections to Ireland.</p><p>By the time we reached Newbridge I had made a decision. It was my weekend off in the family pub business where I worked. I knew where their tour was staying that night, in Killarney. Catching up with it by the national bus service was not a likely possibility. “Stay there a moment,” I said as I pulled in behind the bus stop. “I just want to make a phone call.” The phone box — no mobile phones in those days — was conveniently nearby. My wife wasn’t surprised. She was by now used to my habit of bringing people further than needed. "Your strays," she called them. At least this time I wasn’t also bringing them home for lunch. </p><p>“We’ll keep going,” I said when I got back in the car. “I’m not working today, and I like to drive.” My car at the time was a red Rover 2200 TC, and I loved driving it. Loved cars. Which, a whole other story, was probably part of how I became much later in my life a motoring and travel journalist. But for this day, I was driver to a couple of visitors to Ireland whom in a very short space of time I had come to like. Also, working in what is now known as the hospitality business, I had always been conscious of fulfilling our Irish reputation of ‘cead mile failte’, a hundred thousand welcomes. Truth, though — a spin to Kerry was a great excuse for a day out in the car.</p><p>But we took the long way. We stopped in Kildare to look at the round tower and cathedral, in a place of spirituality going back to the time of St Brigid. We drove through the pretty town of Abbeyleix, the oldest planned estate town in Ireland. We stopped at the Rock of Cashel, where the King of Munster was reputed to have been converted to Christianity by St Patrick. We paused at several other places on the way that were probably on the route of many a tourist coach. Some of them I knew from my childhood, when driving with my Dad, a much-thumbed hardback Road Book of Ireland on my lap. Published in the mid-1950s by the Automobile Association, its almost 300 pages included thumbnail write ups of virtually every village and town in the country, compiled by Michael Morris, also known as Lord Killanin. In a number of these places I also recalled owners of bars, as my Dad, a prominent publican, had friends in the same business, it seemed in every town in Ireland. </p><p>All that made it a very slow trip to Killarney, and it was dark when I helped Alice and Tom with their luggage up the steps of their hotel. The rest of their tour group were probably in the middle of their evening meal. “Stay the night,” Alice urged me. “We’ll pay for it. It's the least we can do.” I declined. It was time for them to join their own group, and for the rest of their holiday to find out with a real tour guide the Ireland that they had come to experience. We hugged, and I drove home.</p><p>For many years after that, around the anniversary of their trip to Ireland, there was a postcard from Canada signed by Alice and Tom. Just to say they were thinking of the day they had spent with me. After some years, the card only had Alice’s name.</p><p>Eventually the card didn’t come at all. But, though details are lost in the mists of overcrowded memory and the passage of too many decades, that day remains one of my fondest. In showing that couple some of the places on our journey, I had relived many of my own early years on the road with my Dad. They often were slow and staggered trips too.</p><p>I had done Alice and Tom a favour, sure. But I had got at least as much in return. </p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7156248.post-11729909081760728002023-07-07T14:15:00.001+01:002023-07-07T14:15:11.216+01:00"Please wait, I'll put you through."<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiocRcsyc15jFNi5kBIVnG9bbHnX87nfTM7NV2JtmE-dtkXYH3SuQ7jJvEluEL15yAQ4qGUIf2ugaJz8O46GdAcA3l_uaxgG_x-pWn4J-EN4LEJ3egegpW7haimkcUTFcaUSObIuJbDlShhpFd-JUNw1fC0JUTqMR8uQOvSY3Bie-ASSyFVmRIGcQ/s558/JuliaBuckley.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="558" data-original-width="362" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiocRcsyc15jFNi5kBIVnG9bbHnX87nfTM7NV2JtmE-dtkXYH3SuQ7jJvEluEL15yAQ4qGUIf2ugaJz8O46GdAcA3l_uaxgG_x-pWn4J-EN4LEJ3egegpW7haimkcUTFcaUSObIuJbDlShhpFd-JUNw1fC0JUTqMR8uQOvSY3Bie-ASSyFVmRIGcQ/w130-h200/JuliaBuckley.png" width="130" /></a></div>To most of my generation, Julia Buckley was a somewhat forbidding figure, as we grew up in Kilcullen. To go in to buy a stamp, or a savings certificate, from 'Miss Buckley' was something of an adventure, because, as most people in responsible positions appeared to us children, she was a symbol of authority, just as much as Miss Griffin, Paddy Byrne or Guard Bradfield.<p></p><p>However, there is, and was, more to Julia Buckley than meets the eye. She was reared on the edge of the Curragh, and when she left school, she got a job as Post Office clerk in Ballina. She came back to Kilcullen on holidays and applied for a post here. However, there was no vacancy at the time, and it wasn't until almost a year later that she heard of a vacancy for Postmistress in Kilcullen sub-post office. She applied for, and won, the position, and took up her duties on December 13th, 1949. The opening morning as Postmistress the first two men to call with good wishes were Jim Byrne Snr and James Nolan. At that time, there was only a telephone in the office for receiving and despatching telegrams. Two years later, an exchange was installed, and local people were able to have phones of their own. Mrs P Nugent started with Miss Buckley in the early time of her work here.</p><p>After another two years, a twenty-four hour service was inaugurated, and it was not uncommon for Miss Buckley to have to get up eight or nine times in the night, to put through calls to and from the local subscribers. The problem was aggravated by the fact that Brannockstown exchange was transferred to Kilcullen after six o'clock! Miss Buckley's voice became well known to every telephone user in Kilcullen during the fifties, and though tempers might sometimes become frayed, both she and her customers held each other in high regard, in the heel of the hunt. Times were more leisurely then, and the local operator played a very important part in the community. An era ended in 1963, when Kilcullen exchange was transferred to Naas, and eventually to the ultra marvellous, perfect (?) automatic, time saving (!) STD system. Miss Buckley could at least get an unbroken night's sleep!</p><p>Many people do not realise that a sub-post office is run entirely from the Postmistress's salary. There are no profits to the office from the sale of stamps etc, and rates, rent and all the overheads must be met from the wage packet of the person running the place. This does not apply to a full office, such as are in Naas and Newbridge, etc, so if you think your Postmistress is finicky about the pennies, she has a very good reason to be!</p><p>Julia Buckley retired on December 16th, 1975. She intends to carry on living in Kilcullen and enjoy her retirement in the town, and with the people she knows so well. She will live at the pace of life of the time when people were not too busy to have a chat with the operator before a call was put through. What price progress?</p><p><i>(Reprinted from my original article in The Bridge, March 1976.)</i> </p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7156248.post-43004172146309985942023-03-22T12:03:00.006+00:002023-03-23T09:37:35.502+00:00Sally sticks and bamboo biffs<p>Anyone born before 1977 won’t have had experience of being beaten by teachers in Ireland’s schools when corporal punishment was still part of a child's education. It took 60 years after we gained our independence before a patently barbaric practice inflicted on the children of our nation was outlawed, but such punishment was finally banned in 1982. It was four years later before state schools in Britain followed our lead, though it wasn’t until 1998 that the same prohibition was applied to English private schools. And teachers in Northern Ireland could use sticks and leathers on their pupils right up to 2003. Even if the Irish Republic was somewhat ahead of our neighbouring jurisdictions in getting rid of the practice, it remains a shameful stain, among several others, on our nation's character.</p><p>We had corporal punishment in Kilcullen when I was a child. I don’t recall any while we boys shared the early classes in the Girls National School run by the Cross and Passion sisters, but when we transferred to the Boys School after our time with the nuns, things were different. There were two teachers in the Boys School, Miss Griffin and Mr Byrne. Both had been there since long before I arrived. Miss Griffin was in charge of Second and Third classes, while Mr Byrne took the Fourth to Sixth classes in the school’s second room. Miss Griffin wasn’t a nice person. As were so many of her peers in education at the time, she was an enthusiastic proponent of corporal punishment. By the time I came under her influence, she had developed this to a particularly fine degree. </p><p>Her weapons of choice were sally sticks. Willow rods cut to length and kept for ‘seasoning’ in the teachers’ outside toilet at the back of the school. She would use them regularly for punishing incorrect answers and wrong or absent homework. Occasionally she would break one on the hands of her victim, and would then send him out to the toilet to get a fresh one before completing the punishment.</p><p>Very little of that happened to me. The same Miss Griffin was a class snob. My parents were in business in the village, which gave me a certain level of immunity while the more frequent victims of her thrashings were from less well-off families. It’s not surprising that when she was eventually laid to rest in her native Kerry, long after her retirement, that a former pupil offered to deliver a load of concrete for her grave ‘to make sure the b———— didn’t come back up’.</p><p>I switched to Newbridge College as a Day Boy in 1956, after a misguided attempt by my parents to send me as a boarder to Clongowes Wood College quickly failed — for which I have always been eternally thankful. As a by the by, the Jesuits had their own leather instruments for punishment, as had the Patrician Brothers primary school which I attended for a year before going to the Dominican College.</p><p>My six years in Newbridge were generally pleasant. Largely because I was a Day Boy, one of some 50 in a school of 300 or so — the rest were boarders. But the college had its own punishment terrors. The system used ‘lists’ made each day by individual teachers of boys earmarked for punishment, usually for not knowing stuff when asked in class. The lists were delivered to ‘The Biffer’, one Fr Henry Flanagan. </p><p>Fr Flanagan is still remembered for his cultural activities in Newbridge College, teaching music and art and earning a wider national reputation as a highly respected sculptor. But for my generation the apparent enthusiasm he showed for his ‘biffer’ role is probably what sticks most in mind. His 'biffing' sessions were after lunch and at the end of classes in the afternoon, and any boy on a list had to report to his office upstairs for punishment. Some could be on a couple of lists if their day hadn’t gone well. Junior House students would receive two slaps on the hand of a thin whippy bamboo cane for each list mention. Senior House boys earned three wallops per nomination. There were add-ons. If any boy tried to minimise the slap by letting his hand drop at the moment of impact, a quick flip of the cane would sting the back of the hand. Then an extra full slap to make up for the thwarted one. Raw striped fingers and stifled teary sobs were all too common on that landing. But it wasn't only the agony at the time of punishment itself, there was also the anxiety of anticipation suffered by those who knew their mid-day or afternoon break would include the Biffer treatment. </p><p>For anyone deemed to be causing trouble in class there was another twist. The miscreant would be told to stand in the corridor outside. Fr Flanagan would regularly patrol the corridors, and anyone found not in their class would receive a summary on the spot biffing. Sometimes we’d hear it delivered as we continued with our class work inside, a succession of muffled 'swish-slap' sounds that was all too familiar. </p><p>Teachers had different attitudes to punishment. Some didn’t send lists at all, depending on their skills as educators to help us learn. Others ordered punishments only for egregious behaviour. But one whom I remember vividly added his own twist. Fr O’Halloran taught Maths and Latin. Not particularly tall, he had the blocky stance of a boxer, and his manner was brusque and intimidatory. He liked to leave the blackboard and stalk between the desks as he asked questions. Wrong answers would often bring a thump on the arm. Painful thumps — he knew the most sensitive areas — and the assault would usually be accompanied by a derogatory comment. He’d also like as not add the victim’s name to a list for subsequent biffs.</p><p>One day I got something wrong, and received an immediate crunch of knuckles to my left arm. Something snapped and I punched back, hitting him in the chest. It wouldn’t have been a hard hit, I was just a young lad and far from aggressive. But sheer surprise stopped him in his tracks. He stepped back, his eyes slitted in an evident fury. It took some moments before he found a voice. “Byrne,” he hissed. “Byrne, you just hit me. You just hit ... a priest!” I was scared, but somewhere found a voice of my own. “You hit me first,” I said. “You ... you shouldn’t be hitting us.”</p><p>He coloured, his temper made worse by my answer back. He took another step backwards and swung his hand towards the door. “Get out of my class, Byrne. Get out now. And when Fr Flanagan comes along, tell him. Tell him exactly what you’ve done.” Shaking, with anger as much as fear, I did as told. I was then left outside wondering what would be Fr Flanagan’s reaction. I waited, in a gathering sort of numb terror.</p><p>It was some time before I heard the slow slap of leather coming down the stairs at the end of the corridor. I saw the black shoes first through the banister uprights, then the white Dominican habit with the long black hanging Rosary. But when the wearer’s head came into view it wasn’t Fr Flanagan’s bald pate. It was the college headmaster, Fr O’Beirne. His office was at the top of the tower that enclosed the staircase, one floor further up from the Biffer's feared office.</p><p>Fr O'Beirne's style had always been more gentle than most of his colleagues, and my apprehension eased. A little. He saw me standing in the corridor and looked mildly concerned, even a little surprised. He knew me, both by family and by name. </p><p>“So, Brian, what’s happening?”</p><p>“I ... I’ve been put outside by Fr O’Halloran,” I answered.</p><p>“And why did he do that?”</p><p>I blurted out the truth. “Because I hit him, Fr O’Beirne.”</p><p>That got his full attention. “And why did you ... hit him, Brian?” His mid-sentence hesitation suggested that mild concern was escalating to a worry. On the other hand, if it had been Fr Flanagan quizzing me, I knew he would have already been pulling his cane from the folds of his habit.</p><p>“Because he hit me first, Father.”</p><p>The headmaster considered this. “Let’s go up to my office,” he said after a few moments, turning away and striding down the corridor. As we climbed the several flights of stairs, I tried to avoid thinking about what might happen next. I was only too well aware of the enormity of a boy hitting a teacher, let alone a priest.</p><p>“Sit down, Brian,” Fr O'Beirne said when we got to his office, which overlooked the wide space across to the the Senior House, and the Liffey flowing alongside. “Now, tell me, what exactly happened?” </p><p>I detailed the incident, including that Fr O’Halloran had similarly hit a couple of other boys before he got to me. "He’s always doing it,” I finished, to establish that this hadn't been a one-off thing.</p><p>He sat there quietly, digesting what I’d said. I was expecting some level of anger, but instead he sighed. “I’m sorry, Brian. I've heard something like this before.” He went silent for a while again, then raised an eyebrow, his eyes on mine. “I suppose there’s no chance that you’d apologise?” This wasn’t a chastisement in any way. Quite the opposite. I was surprised, but I shook my head. “No Father, no. It wouldn’t be right.”</p><p>He nodded, and absently looked out the window for a few more moments. Then he stood up. I did too. “Go downstairs and find an empty classroom," he said quietly. "Wait there until your next class, and if anyone asks what you’re doing, just say you've been to see me. I’ll deal with it.” I was both confused and relieved as I made my way down the stairs. But I was happy in the knowledge that I wasn’t going to have to deal with the Biffer, that day anyhow. </p><p>It was a couple of days later before I had another class with Fr O’Halloran. He came in with his usual brusque demeanour, looked briefly at me, then got down to the class work. For the whole class, and for the rest of the term, which was the last and shortest of the year, he never spoke to me. Never acknowledged my presence in his class. But he also stopped hitting the pupils in that class. In my Inter Cert at the end of term I did manage a pass in Latin, a subject which I actually liked, but I dropped it for my subsequent Leaving Cert programme. A programme that was also two years during which I never had to interact with Fr O’Halloran again. </p><p>Leopards don't change their spots, though. I heard subsequently that he had resumed his classroom hitting habits. Many decades afterwards I was told that, without knowing about my previous encounter, another young student had taken him on in a similar way some few years later. That this boy was also from Kilcullen, and is still today one of my long-time friends, is one of those strange coincidences of life. And proof that people will eventually take a stand against bullies, even if it is only a token rebellion. Enough rebellions will eventually force change. </p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7156248.post-45197512932178233362022-07-25T09:06:00.009+01:002022-07-26T09:22:28.516+01:00"Where you from?"<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhiBV-hNzsfYBGI9l_qkVCXf8H23Rr7U54eYbyre6ZFgK8hEyFOzlKdOUYEDY5droLDjX4Lsq-pLp9hAvhyYxVV-OpS9IKtV46BPybxy1LPrhTHG7lyJ2_EDUhJjRRpuwtBfnl_4p5eeie4P108ANyfmHtCAmNFeHhmZh1yTVGf2IpbHDx-14/s1276/Screenshot%202022-07-25%20at%2008.08.45.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="774" data-original-width="1276" height="389" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhiBV-hNzsfYBGI9l_qkVCXf8H23Rr7U54eYbyre6ZFgK8hEyFOzlKdOUYEDY5droLDjX4Lsq-pLp9hAvhyYxVV-OpS9IKtV46BPybxy1LPrhTHG7lyJ2_EDUhJjRRpuwtBfnl_4p5eeie4P108ANyfmHtCAmNFeHhmZh1yTVGf2IpbHDx-14/w640-h389/Screenshot%202022-07-25%20at%2008.08.45.png" width="640" /></a></div><br />He got up from his table and walked across the parking lot, threw his crumbs on the asphalt. <p></p><p>“The birds need feeding,” he grunted when he returned. Then he sat and smoothed the foil that had wrapped his sandwich. He got up again and brought it inside the deli where he had bought the food. </p><p>“Do they recycle the foil?” I asked when he came out, sitting again at his table. He shrugged. “Just the way I was brought up. Nothing should go to waste. People today, they wad everything up and throw it. I always bring it back in, give it to them.” A few moments later— “They say 'thank you' when they take it.”</p><p>He's old. Probably the same age as me, but he seems a lot older. Everyone going in and out of the deli appears to know him, has a word. “Hi, Gus, how's it goin'?” “Hey Gus, you good today?” He has a word back always. “Yeah, I'm OK.” “That a city truck you're drivin’ now?—How d’you like it?”</p><p>“Like it pretty good, Gus, have it about eight years now. “</p><p>My question about the foil had opened up a connection. “Where you from?” That was going to happen. My accent wasn't from around here. “Ireland,” I said. “Here visiting my son.” </p><p>He nodded slowly. “I always like to hear about Ireland,” he mused. Then went quiet again. After that, from nothing— “A great guy over there.” He pointed across the busy road to a building with a number of pickup trucks outside. “He started with a lawnmower, doing folks' gardens around here. Built it up to a big business with 30 people workin’ for him.” He pondered on the memory for another while, then added— “Pity he's not around any more. His sons run the place now. A great business.”</p><p>Then he was quiet again, in the rumbling from the trucks on the road beyond. And his memories. “Where you from?” he asked. I told him, again. “Always like to hear about Ireland,” he said. Then he went on— “Would have liked to travel. Couldn't afford it when I was young. Now I'm old, can't do it.” A few more seconds, then— “was up near Boston once.”</p><p>We watched a few more trucks rumble by. </p><p>“Where you from?” he asked. </p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7156248.post-27698844940058622902018-03-22T08:08:00.001+00:002020-04-01T13:47:59.482+01:00The King of Greenhills<i>This is an article I first published in The Bridge magazine in the mid-1970s.</i><br />
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The old man sat by the fire burning on the ground. He watched the smoke rise across the stones of the roof, and make its way out through the opening to the sky. The smell from the burning logs filled his nostrils and he coughed softly as the smoke caught in his throat. The wind rising outside pushed it momentarily back in and his eyes smarted. As a draught ran up his back, he shivered and thought of the fast-approaching winter.<br />
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A man sitting in his cave a million years ago? No, an old man living today in the ruins of what was once the home of the Bishop of Kildare. Jack Gorman has lived in a corner of the old ruined castle in Greenhills for the last 25 years. The smoke from some 9,000 fires has blackened the stones of the room to an almost tarry texture. Describing his home as a ruin is perhaps a bit grand, because it is more of a hole in the wall. There are no doors or windows, just an opening into a darkness that your eyes take a bit of getting used to. When you can see in the gloom, the first thing that strikes you is the orderliness of what little material wealth that Jack Gorman does have. A niche for a tobacco tin; a shelf for a frying pan; and stones carefully laid on the lids of two buckets of water, so they won't be knocked over by the seven cats that share the ruin.<br />
<br />
Most people would express shock and pity that a man in his seventies lives in such circumstances, within just half an hour's walk from Kilcullen. Many would say that he must be rescued from the hovel that he lives in, and be placed where he could be taken care of. But Jack Gorman can take care of himself, and he has a definite independence, not only of people, but of many of the trappings of civilisation that most of us take for granted, and indeed regard as essential to living. He doesn't need television, "... if there's something that I want to see, I can watch it in the pub in the town ...". He doesn't want to be put in an old peoples' home, "... I couldn't live in an institution, where I had to be in on time, and couldn't smoke my pipe in case it made the place smelly ..." and he resists any attempt to put him in one, "... Dr M tried to get me to go to Athy, saying I wouldn't live much longer in this smoke, but that was ten years ago, and many that went in then are dead now ... when these legs of mine can't carry me any more and I can't look after myself, then maybe I'll go in ...". He doesn't envy anyone better off than him, "... when Ari Onassis died, his family just squabbled about his money, and anyway it didn't stop him from dying ...".<br />
<br />
People may laugh at Jack Gorman, and think him crazy to live where he does, but he's nobody's fool. He keeps in touch with what's happening in the world by listening to an old transistor radio that somebody gave him, and can hold his own in any conversation about what's happening. An old man, not too proud to accept the help that he gets from organisations and individuals, but with the principle to be his own man, regardless of how he may be looked on by others. We must always respect the right of a man to be himself.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7156248.post-17138495860084641242017-01-02T20:27:00.000+00:002017-02-24T04:21:43.376+00:00Time to recharge<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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If you're in the habit of complaining about how quickly your smartphone battery runs down, be thankful that you can charge it from virtually anywhere and retain your connection to things all over the world. And for a cost that doesn't make any noticeable impact on your electricity bill.<br />
<br />
Back in the 1950s when I was growing up in Kilcullen, we had full mains electricity. But outside the town there were many families who still depended on paraffin for light and wet batteries to keep their radios going. Some farms had electric light before the arrival of the rural electrification scheme, but also depended on banks of the wet batteries.<br />
<br />
These batteries were made of heavy glass, with lead plates and sulphuric acid inside which, with connection from the red and black terminals on the top, provided power to listen to whatever stations your radio could drag into the system.<br />
<br />
They had to be recharged every week, by bringing them back to the Exide agents in town — among them my grandfather's hardware/drapery shop where Eurospar is located now. Dowling's Garage (beside what's now Nichola Kennedy's Optometrists) was another. Most people did it as part of their Saturday shopping, leaving in the discharged battery and taking out a charged one, at a cost of 6d a week for each (if you couldn't afford the deposit for the second unit, you had to come back when it was ready). A small amount, maybe, but when an agricultural labourer's wages were 30 shillings a week, that was one sixtieth of his income. In today's earnings value terms that could be €5 a week. A significant chunk even out of today's pensioner's income just for listening to a radio ...<br />
<br />
But a radio which was a lifeline in the winter's darkness. Unlike England, which had enjoyed a rudimentary TV service in some cities during the 1930s, Ireland remained a radio nation until the end of the 1950s. Radio Eireann offered a very limited daily service, and while a number of British and continental stations were notionally accessible on the radio dial, hearing them required more than the standard aerial. Talking to some people who used the wet battery radio then, they rationed their listening, because the battery wouldn't last the week otherwise. Which was an issue when you had to walk in, or cycle with the device and probably also with the can for the week's paraffin requirement.<br />
<br />
In my home growing up, we didn't have those issues. We had the electricity because we were in a town where it had been available readily for some years. I have <a href="http://mariseoshouse.blogspot.ie/2011/04/smells-in-memory.html" target="_blank">previously documented</a> the programmes which I listened to while growing up, so we'll not go there again.<br />
<br />
But today, like anyone reading this, I'm able to listen to radio from all over the world on my phone, on my iPad, on my various computers, even streaming from my TV if I want. And that's not including the increasingly ageing technology of ordinary radios which are in almost every room in a modern home.<br />
<br />
The powering of the various devices which are used to access all this depends on what they are. Anything plugged into the mains isn't an issue. But neither, much, is it for those which depend on regular, often daily, plugging into low-voltage USB chargers which are available in our homes, on our computers, in our cars, and as rechargeable external power sources. Even my local pub provides a free recharge service for its customers' phones.<br />
<br />
OK, our smartphones, if we use them to their extraordinary limits, tend to run out of juice quickly enough. But, unlike an 84-year-old friend whom I've just been talking to about the 'good old days', we never have to cycle three miles each week, the glass battery on one handlebar, the paraffin can on the other, to both bring home light and be 'online'.<br />
<br />
Let's hope that in what looks like could be an extraordinarily volatile 2017, we're not dragged into a nuked world where we're brought back to depending on smoke signals. Then, we'd really have reason to complain.<br />
<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7156248.post-78473315923532765562016-11-14T21:14:00.002+00:002016-11-14T21:30:04.620+00:00Milking the memoriesWe're not so far from the past, really. Only a conversation away.<br />
<br />
I was talking with someone recently about Glasnevin in Dublin in the 1950s, when its edges still touched countryside. She recalled how milk was delivered then by a farmer from a churn on his cart, residents in the new houses coming out to have their jugs filled. No pasteurising. No bottles with silvered tops. No clatter of glass from a milk float. But there was a daily conversation with the farmer who had milked the cows himself.<br />
<br />
Milk supply in Kilcullen wasn't as advanced then. We collected it in lidded tin cans with skinny wire handles that cut welts into our small children's hands by the time we brought them home from Tom Molloy's milking shed, where the Valley is now. I was ten, eleven, twelve. It was one of the daily chores, usually before teatime.<br />
<br />
Cows have to be milked at regular times, so the milk was fresh at the same time every day. Still warm when it was poured from Mr Molloy's tall jugs into our cans. Which got heavier for us as we walked back up the hill, the footpath then including a series of steps. By the time we passed Lambe's the hill was flattening, and the trek became easier still as we went by Nolans butchers. Eventually home, beyond the pub, beyond the cottages, and past the green galvanised fence that hid part of our garden where every winter were stacked the logs that helped keep our family warm.<br />
<br />
Those milk cans were badly designed. We brought wads of paper so we could fashion more comfortable handles. They were still hard, though we couldn't complain much because they were sold to everyone who used them by my grandfather's hardware store. There were other cans with comfortable wooden parts to the handles, but they were more expensive.<br />
<br />
Earlier in the day we'd have watched Mr Molloy herding his cattle down to be milked, from the fields he had up near Nicholastown. Or maybe we wouldn't have, because it was just part of every day, not to be noticed unless, which never happened, that he didn't drive them through.<br />
<br />
His routine impacted traffic too. Kilcullen then was on the main road south from Dublin to Carlow, to Kilkenny and, ultimately, to Waterford. Every vehicle going in either direction — cart, car, lorry, bus — had to take its pace from the daily cattle drive, if it happened to arrive in town at the same time. Overtaking the small herd if there was an opportunity, otherwise slowly following Mr Molloy and his beasts down or up the road as was appropriate to the time of the day. Steaming clumps dropped during the procession added another layer of texture to local life. And to the vehicles which slushed through them.<br />
<br />
Cattle have to be fed through the winter, and that brought another, seasonal, colour to our child lives. The saving of the hay which Mr Molloy also produced on his land. We'd go to see him and hired workers cut it, spread it to dry, and later toss it into haystacks. It was quite something, watching sweating men with pitchforks lift the laying hay, and build it into a pile that grew to be what seemed perfectly rounded stacks. Producing regular lines of those stacks to make a harvest pattern in the field.<br />
<br />
Sometimes we 'helped', lifting small armfuls, throwing them up, mostly not very successfully. And, when no adult was looking, we'd often climb up onto the stack to slide down again. Not doing any good for the hard toil of the real workers. We went home afterwards with bits of hay stuck through our jumpers, scratchy in our underwear, and dusty in our shoes and socks. God bless our mothers, long given up complaining.<br />
<br />
For us boys — and a few girls too — the really good part came when it was time for those same stacks to be brought down to the hayshed at the back of Mr Molloy's milking shed. This was the time of the bogey. A flat horse-drawn cart without sides, the timber of the rear edge covered in nailed-down tin so that it wouldn't wear out. At the front, on each side, were long handles that worked the ratchets which pulled the wire that hauled up the stack. It was, though I didn't know it at the time, a lesson in engineering for which I would later learn the theory.<br />
<br />
The big fun was getting a ride on the empty bogey as it went up the town to the field to collect its cargo of haycocks. The braver of us sat on the edges with our legs dangling. Children's legs, safe enough from contact with the road even when the cart swayed up and down.<br />
<br />
On the downward trip there were always a couple of us sitting on the back, our shoulders in the stack, the others running behind as it was driven down the hill before swerving into the laneway to the milking shed. At that point there was nothing left for us to do except wait for the next trip.<br />
<br />
That was, of course, just a small segment of the year's milk run. For the rest of it, we carried the cans. How well off were our equivalents in the Dublin outskirts. They had deliveries to their door, poured into what were probably blue and cream striped jugs, which were then brought directly to the kitchen table and covered in muslin to keep nosy winged creatures away.<br />
<br />
Ask a youngster today where milk comes from, and they'll have the answer. The supermarket, in cardboard boxes with a plastic pourer.<br />
<br />
Oh, what they've missed.<br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7156248.post-63257344981349820822016-03-27T10:41:00.001+01:002016-04-07T08:32:36.780+01:00The world comes to those who iron<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-_F9iYxbMwQc/VveqMUP78aI/AAAAAAABDlY/m7wKulIt7_cCClYUJIKzVVl4BQFRwZ37ACCo/s800-Ic42/IMG_0236.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-_F9iYxbMwQc/VveqMUP78aI/AAAAAAABDlY/m7wKulIt7_cCClYUJIKzVVl4BQFRwZ37ACCo/s800-Ic42/IMG_0236.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
It was Terry Prone who told me that she used to get her best writing ideas while ironing. And that at the time she scribbled down those thoughts on the white worktop in her kitchen, using a washable magic marker. The image has always stuck with me.<br />
<br />
I came late to ironing, and I'll immediately admit that I don't do much more than my own shirts, maybe pillow cases, and sometimes a rough stab at the sheets. I'd be afraid of ruining anyone else's clothes, is why I keep it at that.<br />
<br />
Anyhow, I like to listen to the radio when I'm ironing. It was always my favourite medium, much more so than TV. Even today, when I am both a consumer and producer of material on the internet, it is still my place to go for keeping up with the world.<br />
<br />
Like, for instance, when more or less pressing the creases out of my latest batch of washed shirts, I was entertained and informed about how botanical archaeology is illuminating our transition from a hunter-gatherer society to agriculture many thousands of years ago. Also about the work of Capability Brown, an 18th century British landscape architect who is apparently a hero amongst those who garden <i>(I don't)</i>. And how Viagra came about. A rich mix indeed as the iron swished and steamed over my fabrics.<br />
<br />
I wasn't listening to a traditional radio. There isn't one where the ironing board lives in our house. And anyhow, in Kilcullen I wouldn't have easily been able to access the BBC World Service, or any of thousands of global broadcasters, on an ordinary radio set — the town area is notorious for being a 'valley' in terms of radio reception. Nope, thanks to the magic of the internet and the portability of my <i>(now venerable generation 2)</i> iPad, I can listen to the world with ease.<br />
<br />
<i>(I can watch it too, on internet videos on virtually every news media as well as Youtube, but radio still produces much better pictures than does TV. One word if you're puzzled by that remark. Imagination.)</i><br />
<br />
I'm like my iPad, heading towards venerable in age terms, though thankfully in humans it still takes much longer. So I can remember when there was only radio. When we had to sit down and listen to it in one room, because that was where it was. In our case a tall unit in the corner of the large sitting room, which also had a place to stack the 78rpm records which could be played in another part of the unit.<br />
<br />
I have strong memories of winter Sunday afternoons lying on the floor, listening to 'Living with Lynch' <i>(the late Joe Lynch of later 'Glenroe' fame, who in his radio days was also a regular visitor to our home)</i> on Radio Eireann, following that with afternoon BBC family comedy programmes 'Life with the Lyons' and 'The Navy Lark'. The BBC also contributed to my lifelong interest in space travel with 'Journey into Space', the exploits of astronaut <i>(the word didn't exist then, though)</i> Jet Morgan and his intrepid crew. Radio Luxembourg on a Sunday evening provided the gripping science fiction exploits of 'Dan Dare, Pilot of the Future' against his arch-enemy, the Mekon, aided by his faithful pal Digby.<br />
<br />
Those were Sundays, and before the days of central heating we only used that room in winter on that day. So we did have another radio set, a small one in the small living room heated by a twice-a-day-sulphurous anthracite stove. That was where we children spent our winter weeknight evenings. In my case usually reading a book while listening to Radio Luxembourg, snuggled close to the stove. On Sunday nights I smuggled that radio up to my bedroom to listen to 'Top Twenty' between 11pm and midnight, the set muffled in a 'tent' under my bedclothes, the electric cord to the skirting board socket a dead giveaway if any parent looked in. I think they chose not to.<br />
<br />
In my mid-teens, a friend of my Dad's was going on a holiday trip to America. For most people we knew, something unachievable. The transistor radio was then the thing, and over here we knew that there were relatively affordable 'pocket' sets available there. I asked my Dad's friend would he bring one back to me, I'd pay him whatever it cost. He did, and refused any repayment of the $16 <i>(which, secretly, I'd been counting on)</i>. I now had a personal, and pocketable, radio. It was about the size of today's iPhone, much smaller than any of the European 'transistors' available at the time. And very cool when I brought it to school in Newbridge College.<br />
<br />
Of course, there was an American disadvantage. The radio only came with AM, no Long Wave that we depended on in Europe to listen to our only other English language regular broadcaster, the BBC. And with 'just' six transistors, it wasn't powerful enough to easily pick up AM stations in Europe like the AFN and Luxembourg. Though at night, Luxembourg was possible. There was only one Radio Eireann station broadcasting then, and not all day either, but it was still something special to have my own, and electrically untethered, personal radio. I also remember it being expensive to run — it used that small chunky PP3 9v battery with the two terminals on top. Which you could test for remaining capacity by putting your tongue to both together and assessing the resultant tingle.<br />
<br />
Moving on rapidly, like every household in Ireland we eventually became part of the television era with the advent of <i>Bealach a Seacht</i>, Radio Telefis Eireann's TV channel space. Of course, families were once more confined to one room, and mostly to one channel unless they were lucky enough to live in Dublin or in border or east coastal areas where there was access to BBC and ITV.<br />
<br />
I remember discussing with a friend who had technical electronic knowledge the possibility of making a DIY television using relatively small cathode ray tubes. Wasn't really doable, he concluded. Of course, 'personal' TVs eventually arrived, albeit being more 'luggable' than portable, and still needing a mains power source, and also beyond the means of a very young man not long out working.<br />
<br />
There's no need to go all the way through how we arrived from there to today. Most reading this are probably young enough to take it for granted. Which is, I think, the point of this whole and rather rambling piece. From a child lying on the carpet in the sitting room, listening to the outside world as broadcast through just one, and a large, 'radiogram', I'm now a grandfather able to have visual chats without pre-organisation with my grand-children in Australia and America, no matter where I am in the world.<br />
<br />
I have various personal devices, computer through iPad to smartphone, by which this can happen. I can be, and have been, travelling in different countries when my phone rings and my grandsons in America show on the screen because they 'want to say hello to grandad' as they have their breakfast. Our grand-daughters in Melbourne do similar things, and when one was making her First Communion on the other side of the world, we were able to watch it as our daughter streamed the ceremony from her iPhone.<br />
<br />
Against all that, listening to the BBC World Service while ironing seems small beer indeed. But it's just as important. And to my mind, being able to choose to listen to — and watch, if video is your preference — anything in the world, thanks to the internet, is, well … isn't it a kind of magic? For me, that Viv and I and our family are no longer tied to sitting in one place to be connected, that I can watch TV programmes or listen to radio from all around the globe, it is truly magic.<br />
<br />
And ironing … it's really kind of relaxing? I can see where Terry Prone, a friend those many years ago, was coming from. It's where this piece came from. I just didn't have a white plastic surface to write the idea down … <br />
<br />
And I suspect there weren't the unplanned creases in her clothes that mine are left with.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7156248.post-10935376411332246332016-01-24T11:38:00.002+00:002017-04-12T07:51:14.520+01:00Good Friday in The Hideout<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipTUpzXfVhjH8I8nHsR0Sk1o2VzL40UxvD-sZHTkb4HxByNn4t1eZSOPpbnK_w3JNiuQvFYECbNoBzR_DSw2zgyI6QcuvSZyW57eLCVDa1g4woEyB2Sysx1JEYDnCxR_kZxrq-/s1600/hideout1.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="302" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipTUpzXfVhjH8I8nHsR0Sk1o2VzL40UxvD-sZHTkb4HxByNn4t1eZSOPpbnK_w3JNiuQvFYECbNoBzR_DSw2zgyI6QcuvSZyW57eLCVDa1g4woEyB2Sysx1JEYDnCxR_kZxrq-/s400/hideout1.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Not Good Friday, but a memory from the Hideout in the 50s: Vanessa Liddy, George Speirs, Monica Byrne, Myles and Bobbie Murphy, Jim Byrne, Tommy Wallace and Jim Kelly.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Good Friday was always a special day in The Hideout, It was the day when there was a chance to get things done that couldn't easily be managed during the rest of the year when the place was open from nine in the morning until 11 in the evening every day except Christmas Day. While there were no customers on the Friday commemorating the Crucifixion, the place was always abuzz with activity.<br />
<br />
It was the day when cleaning and painting could be done. When the artefacts that filled the walls and shelves were taken down, to be dusted and cleaned in whatever way was appropriate. It was the day when tiles on the floors of the bar and kitchen could be replaced, when new carpets could be laid. When, occasionally, even walls could be knocked down to change the layout of the place, or expand it into a new lounge area that might have been built out the back. Paddy Bathe, who had done most of that building work, was a mighty man with a sledge-hammer on those particular Good Fridays.<br />
<br />
It was a day of scrubbing, painting, papering. And since there was generally more work to be done than might be easily managed by those of us who normally worked there, it was a day when there was always a call for volunteers from amongst 'regulars'. There was never a shortage of answers to that call. <br />
<br />
Some of the most unlikely among the regular customers claimed skills with paint-brushes, carpentry tools, and more for Good Friday. Some of which claims proved not to be well-founded as the day wore on. A number of these 'volunteer workers' became 'supervisors' at the bar counter rather quickly. Funny thing, we always knew which ones they'd be, yet their bona fides were accepted each year anyhow.<br />
<br />
<i>(Oh yes, I do remember the names. But we will be kind with anonymity.) </i><br />
<br />
There were jobs that no one particularly wanted. Among the worst was scrubbing the ceilings with sugar soap to remove the nicotine of a year, prior to repainting. If that wasn't done, the nicotine would burn through the new paint within weeks. Which maybe was one reason I never smoked, figuring that it wasn't doing the lungs of the smokers who caused the brown staining of the ceiling much good. Scrubbing it was dirty, wet, eye-stinging if you didn't wear goggles against the splashes from overhead, and hell on the arms.<br />
<br />
The next least popular task was cleaning the artefacts — the heads, ancient tools and weapons, the extraordinary bric a brac which had accumulated over the decades and made the pub such a fascinating place. The solid surface items were OK, probably polished up several times during the year in quiet hours anyhow. The animal heads were less so, full of dust, a lot of which was likely cigarette ash in those days long before the smoking ban. Then there were the carpets. If it wasn't one of the years they were being changed, they had to be deep-cleaned. There was a machine brought in for that, but lots of embedded stuff — tar, grit, gum, and god knows what else — often had to be laboriously lifted off with a putty knife. In the kitchen area, a fundamental scraping of the deposits that couldn't be reached without taking out all the cooking machines was also one of the seriously nasty necessary works of the day.<br />
<br />
If Paddy Bathe was in action against an old wall that year, we tried to make sure that was done first, and preferably early in the morning or even after closing the previous night. The amount of dust through the whole place was multiplied, making the cleaning and painting even more awkward. No matter how much the back bar and kitchen areas were covered, it percolated onto, and into, everything.<br />
<br />
We tasted that dust too even in the lunch organised for all concerned by my mother and Carmel Kennedy. Always fish, it being Friday, and a special Catholic Friday at that. But it could be washed down with the beer that wasn't available to everyone outside. That did help. Enormously.<br />
<br />
Work continued through the afternoon. The 'supervisors' getting less attentive to the work and more talkative on their usual interests, mostly involving golf, horses, dogs ... and all those again. And again. <i>(I've just remembered how boring it often was in the years I worked behind the counter, listening ad nauseum to the multiple replaying of a particular hole of golf, or the rehash of the final furlong of a certain race, or the arguments over the pedigree of a greyhound. A barman does his Purgatory during his lifetime.)</i><br />
<br />
By teatime — another, lighter, meal provided by Carmel — much had been settled. The tree-stump tables with a new top coat of varnish. The embedded cigarette ash and other detritus of the previous year now gone. The sawing of carpenter Ned Maloney and the hammering and plastering of Paddy Bathe done. Most of whatever additions or renovations they had constructed ready for revelation to the punters the next day. Refurbishment of parts of the electrical system — always on a knife-edge in my recollection — completed as far as was possible.<br />
<br />
Dad, who had put in as hard a working day as those who worked with him, would settle with the 'supervisors' for a well-deserved Crested Ten or two. Their number likely diminished, as the A- and B-button public phone behind the fireplace would have rung a number of times, spouses wanting their partners back home. It wouldn't be a late night for any of those left — my mother would make sure of that, making her own call at an appropriate time. By eight o'clock or so, the place would be back in the darkness that a Good Friday night in a pub was supposed to be.<br />
<br />
I was reminded of all that with the recent calls by vintners — mostly Dublin-based — for a revision of the law that closes a pub on Good Friday. I'm long out of the business, and have no particular interest either way. But I do remember how important it was in our own busy family pub, allowing a brief if hectic interlude. In its own way, it truly marked the transition from winter to spring, with the pub offering a refreshed face to all the next day, ready to start the whole roller coaster all over again. Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7156248.post-59940261033183904582015-01-29T21:27:00.002+00:002015-01-29T21:48:18.245+00:00Byrnes in Kilcullen: How The Hideout came about<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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The internet, social media, the now almost old fashioned newspapers, and ever-present TV chat shows, make becoming a celebrity, or instantly promoting a business, available to everybody. But back at the turn into the 1950s that wasn't at all the case. <br />
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My dad, James J Byrne Jr, had recently taken over Byrne's Hotel from his father, James Joseph Snr, becoming the third generation of the business Byrnes in Kilcullen.<i> (In this photograph, Dad is on left, with Grandad, and Dad's cousin Barney.)</i> The hotel was part of a network of traditional village enterprises which had originally been established by my dad's grandfather, also James Byrne, and dad's own father. Dad got the hotel and the funeral undertaking businesses. His brother Tom took over the hardware and drapery, and the auctioneering. Their aunts, Peg and Nora, still ran the original grocery and bar from which Myshall-born James Byrne had started his career in Kilcullen. Its location is part of what's now the Eurospar supermarket.<br />
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Dad hadn't intended to be a publican. In the mid-30s he had studied for a degree in accountancy in UCD, a plan which was cut short when he was required to come back and help his parents. By then, his shopkeeper-publican father was also a county councillor, and a farmer and auctioneer. He had a lot on his plate at a time when the economic position of the country was far from stable. A man of means, and influence he was certainly. But not necessarily a man with a lot of spare money. Sons were required to pull their weight.<br />
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My dad was married seven years before his father took that leap of faith and effectively handed over all that he owned to his two sons, at the relatively young age of 62. But then, he himself had taken over from his dad when he was very young, on the demise of the original James Byrne. Perhaps he hoped to enjoy a long and happy retirement. As indeed he did, until his heart stopped one Sunday afternoon at the age of 82.<br />
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Anyhow, in 1950, dad and my mother already had three of their eventual five children. Dad felt they needed to move things on from the fairly ordinary crossroads pub. It then comprised a bar, a small terrazzo lounge, a big downstairs kitchen, and a yard for all the outside work. <br />
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The premisses would have served travellers since the first regular bus services began in the early 20s, the bus stop being strategically located outside, where it is to this day. Providing passengers and bus crews with refreshments, light food, and essential facilities at a time when the journey from Waterford to Dublin was significantly longer and far less comfortable than it is today.<br />
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By then too, there was a growing number of travellers with their own cars. There was a heritage of them stopping, as previous to my grandfather establishing it as Byrne's Hotel, the business had been Flanagan's Motor Bar. This was, I presume, partly an acknowledgement to the 1903 Gordon Bennet Race which had a strong connection with Kilcullen.<br />
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The 1950s was an age of new ideas, and an easing of the austerities caused by World War 2. Dad and mum liked travelling, and had already holidayed in various places in Europe, and even North Africa. When they decided to upgrade the 'hotel', they brought to it some of the things they had seen away. <br />
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So was born the The Hideout. A lounge bar, but with a difference, converted from the original large kitchen. Bark timbered inside, and gathering eventually an eclectic collection of interesting things. The first of these was a pair of fox heads presented by local landowner Ken Urquhart. Old guns, pike heads — and an axe which had been thrown at John Redmond — followed. As did ornaments crafted by German internees on The Curragh during the War, and many more unusual items. For those travellers who came by bus and car and stopped by, The Hideout became a place to talk about to their friends with a certain wonder. <br />
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What was eventually to be the core part of those conversations came about a couple of years after the establishment of The Hideout, when dad acquired the mummified right arm of the pugilist Dan Donnelly. Donnelly had fought a major encounter nearby on The Curragh, so his arm was mounted in a glass case above the granite fireplace that was the centrepiece of the lounge. The story of the arm itself had a history as fascinating as was the man it originally belonged to, and it became one of the things which eventually made the small village bar internationally known.<br />
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The food service was also changed, from the usual hotel dining room style and timings and behind the scenes kitchen. The old terrazzo lounge was converted in a Spanish villa style, with a counter along the arches. There were infra-red grill units behind, and those who wanted to sit at the counter and eat could watch their steaks and chops and cutlets being cooked in front of them. This was 'The Hideout Grill', with a constant enticing sizzle and smell, and open from midday until late in the evening. Unusually for rural Ireland, there was a comprehensive wine and liqueurs inventory, the latter all lined up in a rainbow of exotic colours against the back-bar of the Grill.<br />
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Apart from those who stopped in on their way north or south, there developed a serious clientele from the Kildare horse racing fraternity, drawn by their own camaraderie. Company always brings more company, and very soon The Hideout was the place for them all to meet, before and after race meetings. Both from the local courses of Naas, Punchestown and The Curragh, and also as a rendezvous closer to their bases when coming home from Limerick, Waterford, Wexford, and Gowran Park.<br />
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Dad and mum were both gregarious people, and while they worked hard, they also enthusiastically involved themselves in the social fabric that was developing around their business. Their own personalities were as much part of the attraction of The Hideout and Grill as was the food and drink consumed. By the 1960s the small cross-roads pub was known throughout Ireland. <br />
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Its proximity to Dublin, during three decades where Ireland was enjoying growth and lifestyle every bit as busy as the more recent Celtic Tiger era, meant that it became a destination for an ever-widening set of regular customers. They ranged from the ordinary Dublin family out on a Sunday afternoon drive, to the very wealthy of racing and enterprise. Newspapers often followed those latter movers and shakers, and the fame of the quirky pub and restaurant made copy for many pages of newsprint down the years. <br />
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There used to be a phrase in death notices, 'American papers please copy', so that passings back home would be notified to emigrant families across the Atlantic. Well, the American and British newspapers also copied some of the stories about dad and his pub, and people from those countries put The Hideout on their must-visit list of places when they holidayed on the Emerald Isle.<br />
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If he hadn't been a publican, dad would certainly have been a success in the then unknown field of public relations. He turned out to be a master at developing publicity around his crossroads pub in Kilcullen. Many of his initiatives made The Hideout exceptionally well known, and, as he famously sloganed, the place itself 'put Kilcullen on the map'. On a global basis, before internet, social media, and celebrity achievable by almost anyone, were ever considered.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7156248.post-30616954324817751572014-12-13T18:04:00.002+00:002021-11-10T08:33:40.818+00:00Byrnes in Kilcullen, Part 1When my grandfather James J Byrne opened his Byrne's Hotel on Christmas Eve 1925, it was just a new chapter of the Byrne family in business in Kilcullen. His own father James had come up during the 1860s from Myshall in Co Carlow, a carpenter by trade, to help relatives who had a grocery and bar on Main Street. The details are indistinct, but he soon took over the business, and the name over the door became, simply, J Byrne. <br />
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He married Catherine Coogan, from Mullaghmast, Ballitore, and between 1872 and 1888 they had eight children, six of them girls, a boy Peter who 'died young', and their youngest, my grandfather James Joseph Byrne. Two of the daughters married, Katherine Agnes — the eldest — to Michael Shortall in Ballylinan, and Bridget (Birdie) to John J Byrne of Kilgowan, no relation. That both women married into grocery and bar businesses was probably no accident. As an aside, a daughter of Katherine Agnes, Katherine (Kitty), came back to Kilcullen and married 'Gee' Nolan, becoming parents of the late Andy Nolan and his siblings. Anyone who takes the trouble to look at pictures of Andy in his youth will see that the Byrne gene was very strong in that marriage. He looked just like me.<br />
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Birdie, on the other hand, died tragically a few days after the birth of her son Bernard (Barney), on December 29 1913. Her husband subsequently remarried, but it seems didn't have any more children. Barney went to Hong Kong, was made a prisoner of war when Japan invaded, and afterwards went back to the Crown Colony, became a very successful businessman, but died suddenly in 1952.<br />
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As a carpenter by trade, James Byrne used the time on his hands when things were quiet in the shop to make coffins out in the yard, which became the foundation of a funeral undertaking business that lasted through the generations until the death of my brother Des nine years ago. Des's own funeral was the last one I conducted. Though I had left the family business in 1977, whenever Des was on holidays or otherwise not available, I stood in as undertaker when needed. After Des's passing, his wife Josephine decided that she didn't want to keep the funeral business going.<br />
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In addition to his carpentry expertise, James Byrne conducted some property development and building in Kilcullen, notably being responsible for the construction of the premises that the Nolans moved into for their current business — they had previously operated from a small butcher stall where the Hair Emporium is now. He also built the old Post Office beside it which is now part of the enlarged Nolans of today, and for many years his daughter Margaret (Peg) was the Postmistress there. It's an interesting aside that Nolans leased the premises until the mid-50s, when Andy bought it outright for something like £5,000. This was against the advice of his own Uncle Andy from Usk, who told him it would be folly to spend such money when they had such a small outlay on a very long lease that couldn't be increased by any significant amount. As it happened, the legislation on leasehold was changed soon afterwards, in favour of landlords, and Andy's investment turned out to be very shrewd indeed. <br />
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James Byrne seems to have also been a very shrewd man himself, and over the years he built up a complex of businesses that included a general merchants, auctioneering, and farming, in addition to the original grocery, bar, and funeral undertaking. When he died at the age of 65 in 1904, just three years after the passing of his wife, my Grandad had to take responsibility for an extensive network of enterprises at a relatively young age. <br />
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His father's businesses then included 'Grocer, Spirit, Provision & Hardware Merchant, Timber, Iron & Coal Yard', according to documents from the time. I can only assume that he was helped much by his older maiden sisters, Honora (Nora), Annie, Sarah, and Peg. Nora and Peg seem to have been provided for with the original shop and bar — there are records of invoices from the 1930s which show the 'Grocer, Spirits, Provision and Italian Warehouse' being operated under the title of N. M. Byrne — Nora and Peg, both of whom I well remember as running the grocery and bar when I was young. They never changed the 'J Byrne' name of their father over the shop though, and I have a photograph of Peg standing in the doorway with that name still there. Both of the sisters lived, and died, in the residential area beside the shop. Again, I have a strong memory of their front parlour with a very interesting curved mirror over the fireplace, and the kitchen behind with a range and a high skylight roof. Nora was the first dead person I ever saw, laid out in her small bedroom in 1958. Peg died two years later.<br />
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On those invoices, it was the practice of the time that a supplier would provide the invoice books and in return have their advertisement on the top of each slip. In 1933, the sponsor was 'Redfern's Heels, Soles & Tips' for shoe repairs, while by 1936, 'Denny's Star Brand' hams had the franchise. Prior to that, Grandad had inherited a business for which the invoice book was sponsored by 'W & A Gilbey Limited, Wines & Sprits'. One of his invoices on 15 March 1910, to R Pearson Esq, was obviously for a wake and funeral. It totalled £5-14s-11d which included supplying a half gallon of malt (whiskey) for 11s, a dozen loaves of bread for 3/6d, and an 'Elm Coffin, lined and mountings in brass' for £2-5s-0d.<br />
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Moving back to where we started, Grandad clearly wanted to expand further once he had his own family. My dad — also James Joseph, so he became 'Junior Byrne' eventually — had been born in 1916 and was followed by Maureen and Tom, so space in their rented home over what was then Dowling's Garage at the crossroads was getting tight. Diagonally across that crossroads was Flanagan's Motor Bar, which had better accommodation upstairs. Grandad made an offer, and bought it for £450 — of which, according to family lore, he had to borrow £250. He moved the family over, renamed the premises Byrne's Hotel, and on the opening Christmas Eve, the takings were £17. I don't think it was ever a hotel in the sense of taking in guests, as there were only three bedrooms upstairs along with a kitchen and large parlour, but it did give Grandad and his wife Mary the space to have another child, Katherine, born in 1927.<br />
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When they moved in, Grandad had a new bar counter built by local carpenter Bill Hogan, and the floor was tiled by one John Keogh. The first barman was Pat Quinn — who later became the barman and shop assistant in the aunts Nora and Peg grocery and bar. I remember him very well in that shop when I was growing up. In particular he kept a brass pole, that seemed to have a function in holding up the ceiling, polished, and we kids delighted in swinging around it and leaving our fingerprints so that he'd come out and polish it again. He was also a whiz at the red Berkel slicer, spinning out rashers of bacon to order in whatever required thickness, scaring the heck out of me when his fingers would come within perilously close distance of the spinning circular blade.<br />
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Some prices from the time of the establishment of Byrne's Hotel are interesting. A bottle of stout was 6d, 20 cigarettes were 11d and a ha'pence, while you could buy five Woodbine cigarettes (even then known as 'coffin nails') for 2d. A measure of whiskey, gin and rum cost 1/10d a measure, with brandy a seriously costly tipple at 2/6d a tot. On December 23 1970, to celebrate 45 years since Grandad opened, we sold whatever drink had been available then at those prices for the night. I remember so many drinkers in Kilcullen went wild ... but lager and vodka drinkers didn't have the option.<br />
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But I'm getting ahead of things again. More to come.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7156248.post-44691750637530286402014-10-05T17:31:00.000+01:002014-10-05T21:51:57.425+01:00In Bilbao, back in the pub<img align="left" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_9Owj0lfW9eDJfVCEyjFHc3u3_8j3RB9CzymC1TmOihHoDcnbEh4BG65P_ytCDoa33303PMgpxHzITxA46Bzn7c58rX41wNQ_FG6esa4nfmcdpKFne8zcj-4W0fDfJcfBV7opdw/s1024-no/IMAGE_1481.jpg" target="_blank" width="400" /><br />
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The idea was that I'd rent a bike and take to Bilbao on wheels. Now instead, I'm in the pub this Sunday afternoon.<br />
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It isn't as bad as it sounds <i>('it sounds just typical', comes voice from offstage).</i> This is research. On how the Bilbaoians spend their Sundays. And it's very similar to how we do. Except that, joy of joys, there isn't a single TV screen in the pub. It's how we used to do it ...<br />
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But back up. To the bicycle. Turned out that the two local places to rent don't open today, even the one that was supposed to. 'Sorry for the inconvenience', or words in Basque and Spanish to that effect on the door. So instead I took a tram across the city, and before getting here I've done the culture thing, and been to two museums. <br />
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Before Sunday lunch, note. Lunch in this event being samples of some seriously delicious tapas that are part of the city's pub scene. With the local <i>vino del mes,</i> of course. <i>(Travel writer's research, guys.)</i><br />
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It's my first time in Bilbao, though not in this part of Spain. And already, despite arriving in very dull and rainy weather after a delayed flight last night, I'm smitten with the place. It's got culture, architecture, a maritime history that has spanned the globe, wonderful river promenades, lots of people with big smiles and ready to burst into song in the pub at the drop of an A Major. Which is probably why they don't need TVs. <br />
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I'm in the old city just now. But a 10-minute tram ride this morning took me to the Maritime Museum to start my history and culture indoctrination. It's typical of how well the Bilbao tourist business does its thing that the museums are open on Sundays. <i>(And in fairness, so normally is the bicycle rent shop.)</i> The Maritime Museum offers a jaunt through Bilbao's seafaring and maritime industrial history through video, artefacts, navigational equipment, recreations and models.<br />
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It has a shipwreck rescue history too, being where it lies just in from the Bay of Biscay, and if you never knew just what a hotshot lifesaving invention the breeches buoy was before there were helicopter winches, there's one here. It's scary, but I'd take my chances when there were no others.<br />
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That done, and done well, it was off to the big one, a ten-minute walk further along the river. The Guggenheim Bilbao. Not just the cultural <i>piece de resistance </i>in a city of a lot of culture, but also an architectural one. To which we in Dublin have a link. Because the architect was Frank Gehry, also the architect of Dublin's landmark Conference Centre.<br />
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His Bilbao creation was opened in 1997, fully funded by the Basque authorities here, and operated by the Guggenheim Foundation. As a piece of art in itself, the building is a blast. Wild metal and stone shapes outside, sweeping lofty interiors, a sculpture piece in architecture. But then, there are many artists who trained first as architects, and who feel there's little difference between the two.<br />
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Guggenheim Bilbao has a mix of permanent and moving exhibitions, including a regularly changing selection of the great art that's part of the Guggenheim Foundation's extraordinary and very eclectic collection. In the permanent art, just after the entrance there's a whole wing devoted to an installation in steel (above) by the artist Richard Serra. Entitled 'A Matter of Time', it's a series of massive steel whirls and swirls, which don't appear particularly interesting. Until you go inside them. Then there's a hit.<br />
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Some just have an entrance and then you're inside, others wind round and round in narrow passages until you eventually reach the centre. Because the walls of each piece keep changing attitude and tilt, it's dizzying, and like all those science fiction writings and cinematic depictions of time travel, you wonder how and where it will end. Maybe it's even what we don't remember, travelling out of the womb, or what we don't know yet, travelling to whatever is beyond the moment of death. Whatever, it's certainlty more than it seems at first sight.<br />
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<i>From Ragna Kjartansson's 'The Visitors'. Picture courtesy Guggenheim Bilbao Museoa.</i><br />
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Next on the same floor is a video installation of a performance by the Icelandic artist Ragna Kjartansson, with nine screens, each showing one of the performers playing or singing in different rooms simultaneously. The music is based on Abba, the title 'The Visitors' taken from the last Abba album.<br />
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Again, it's how it hits you, you can see four or five screens at a time, the individual performer's music coming from his or her's own screen, merging and mixing in different strengths depending on where you are in the room. It's also worth watching the reactions of those who come in. Some sit against a wall, heads bowed, lost in the music. Others gaze around, their faces as myriad in expression as there are musical notes in the piece. One woman watches curiously to see if the water protecting the modesty of the guy playing a guitar in the bathtub will swish revealingly as he shifts to finger a new chord? Art, but not as we have known it, perhaps.<br />
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There's an exhibition being put in place on the second floor at the moment, but the third floor has a number of rooms with contemporary modern art. One is devoted to three pieces by Robert Morris, including a set of five baulks of timber placed partly on each other in the same plane, the bottom one holding it all together. Another is a square of 16 steel open-ended cubes, neatly cut and bolted together. The third is a trampoline in the shape and size of a boxing ring. I'm not sure whether there's supposed to be an overall effect, but it didn't really have one on me.<br />
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On the other hand, next door there were two pieces. Richard Long's is a large circle, filled in, of blocks and shards of slate from a quarry in England. It's called the Bilbao Circle. It strongly impacts on the senses, especially when viewed against the background of two walls of pieces from Greek artist Janis Kournellis involving similar sets of steel uprights and six bags of coal at a time. On the circle, I felt it had the same almost spiritual power as Stonehenge, except that it did son on the flat. There's something about circles, and pyramids ...<br />
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<i>Jorge Oteiza's 'Metaphysical Box by Conjunction of Two Trihedrons'. Homage to Leonardo, 1958; picture courtesy Guggenheim Bilbao Museoa.</i><br />
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A space devoted to Jorge Oteiza, (1908-2003) is a set of small sculptures in steel, a couple of them cuboid, others with a sense of movement in circular swirling shapes. Described as a homage to Leonardo, they remind me in a way of the models of Leonardo da Vinci's inventions at his last home in France, which I visited a few years ago. Again, if you look at them from an angle that allows you to see them all at once, they create an overall impact far beyond their size and individuality. Oteiza is considered one of the most important Basque artists of the 20th century, though he exhibited very little outside his own area.<br />
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<img align="left" src="http://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-EerMRVTIG9w/VDFs3dJHmJI/AAAAAAAAi5Y/LbWfPA6A-FE/s1024-no/IMAGE_1501.jpg" target="_blank" width="400" /><br />
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<i>Eduardo Chillida's 'How Profound Is the Air', 1996, Alabaster; picture courtesy Guggenheim Bilbao Museoa.</i><br />
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Eduardo Chillide was a trained architect from the Basque country who went to Paris and became an artist in painting and sculpture. He returned to Spain in the 1950s and at the end of his life he had concentrated on iron, wood and steel and concepts of space. His exhibits here at the moment are in pink granite, 'Space for the Spirit', alabaster, 'How Profound is the Air?', and a couple of pieces in steel that tower upwards, looking like a search for spirituality with extablished religion themes in gothic style.<br />
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<img align="left" src="http://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-LxlDgyY-6U8/VDFtB0eAafI/AAAAAAAAi6A/XO8qdttY-Zc/s1024-no/IMAGE_1506.jpg" target="_blank" width="400" /><br />
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And so, after all that, it was time for lunch and the old city. Which is where we came in. As I finish this, in the Xukela pub, established in 1982, a lot of the locals have now departed, for their siesta, one presumes. The tourists — there are still some even in early October, like this writer — are taking up some of their places.<br />
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Intrigued, as I am, by the decor of this simple place, the walls covered in old posters, paintings and photographs. A collection of beer mugs from all over the world. Drinks too from the strangest of places, not for drinking, but displayed as their own form of cultural and museum exhibits. It's the kind of pub that my father would have liked to run if he lived here, I think.<br />
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But of course, it's the same kind of pub that he <i>did </i>run as the Hideout of the 50s through the 70s particularly, and which my late brother Des did subsequently. It's the kind of pub that attracts me, for some reason, no matter where I might find it.<br />
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Viva Bilbao. Viva Guggenheim. Viva Frank Gehry. Viva Xukela. That's it, I've run out of excuses for more toasts. Next time, with a bicycle, I can spread the net wider ...Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7156248.post-84741869793278663172014-06-02T10:16:00.002+01:002014-06-02T10:21:33.789+01:00Everybody should read Dr Piëch's biography<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpVWyGCfbXdio-AAwX6RvPu6qIW8XeLyaDiXrNMMDGEwU8PqNmV90qiBHmyb94Pj4FAOHzIZUvo0IuDF9d9RIqhRzKmAZcQHgPMFgIz5NdOnf7KscNuKz41HkOZ43ebw29U0VFQQ/s1600/Police_cars_GER_CZE.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpVWyGCfbXdio-AAwX6RvPu6qIW8XeLyaDiXrNMMDGEwU8PqNmV90qiBHmyb94Pj4FAOHzIZUvo0IuDF9d9RIqhRzKmAZcQHgPMFgIz5NdOnf7KscNuKz41HkOZ43ebw29U0VFQQ/s1600/Police_cars_GER_CZE.jpg" height="241" width="400" /></a></div>"Herr Dr Piëch, a great man. Have you read his biography?"<br />
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"No."<br />
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The policeman shook his head, went back to his writing. "A great man. Everybody should read his biography." He paused again. He had put down maybe two more words. "He brought Audi to where they are. He is Ferdinand Porsche's grandson, you know?"<br />
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I nodded. Hoping not to prolong things with words. He concentrated again at the job in hand. Stopped again. "Yes, Herr Dr Piëch. What he managed to do, bringing all those brands together. All the same pieces, so many different cars."<br />
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A nod wouldn't be enough this time. "Sure. And so many different prices for cars much the same underneath." I was trying to keep it simple. The policeman's English was excellent — he had even gotten the pronunciation of my name, Byrne, correct — but I didn't want to get into any interpretational difficulties. We were, after all, in an understanding ...<br />
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Half an hour before in the Frankfurt suburb, I had driven down a hill and around a bend. Into a complex of cones, police cars, and policemen. It took a minute or two for my van to get to the head of the line. The policeman in charge looked to a colleague, who nodded. I was waved to the curb. Beside an Mercedes-Benz S-Class, nobody in or near it.<br />
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I wound down the window. Figured this as a random breath test operation, which wouldn't be any problem as I hadn't even had a beer for several days. A policeman came up and spoke, rather sharply, as I switched off the engine. "I'm sorry, I don't speak German," I apologised.<br />
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He grunted, turned, beckoned. In moments a colleague was at the window. Much less brusque, but still a policeman. "English?"<br />
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"Irish," I said. You never know just how much that single word currency is appreciated, but it's always worth spending. "I speak English."<br />
<br />
"Driving licence?"<br />
<br />
That's when he got my name right. Impressive — most Continentals have trouble with it. He examined it, looked at me. "Mr Byrne, the reason we have detained you is that you were speeding." He paused, conferred with his colleague, then, "You were driving at 72km/h in a 60km/h zone."<br />
<br />
"Just here?" I asked. I'm generally good at keeping to speed limits. He pointed back the way we had come. Must have been on the hill, I thought. Maybe a remote camera linked to this 'pop-up' enforcement location. I'd been chatting with my colleague and friend Austin, going with the local traffic flow. Always a risk. "Umm ... OK, I suppose I must have been. I'm sorry." I don't argue with policemen, especially when not in my own country. Or even when I am.<br />
<br />
"Do you live here, Mr Byrne?" The van was a brand new Ford Transit Courier, German registration. So new, in fact, that it hadn't even gone on sale yet. I shook my head. "No. Just here for the day. I'm flying back to Ireland tonight."<br />
<br />
That kind of stopped him. He pursed his lips, then asked for the keys. "We'll leave them here," he said, dropping them on the scuttle in front of the windscreen. "Please wait."<br />
<br />
"Missed that one," I said to Austin during the following hiatus in proceedings. "And I'm the one who's so careful about speed."<br />
<br />
"Yep. You pulled me up a couple of times when I was driving. Should have been watching out for you."<br />
<br />
The policeman came back, with an air of decision. Memories flashed of speeding fine levels in other countries where I've been. In Australia, hundreds of dollars at time. Always enough of a worry to keep me in the limits. "Mr Byrne, I can make you an offer." <br />
<br />
Unexpected. "Yes?" I said after a couple of seconds.<br />
<br />
"Yes, Mr Byrne — and this is only an offer, you understand?" <br />
<br />
I nodded. <br />
<br />
"You pay a fine of thirty-five euro and then this—" he gestured across the situation "—this goes away. Nothing more. Do you understand?"<br />
<br />
"Yes. Yes, I understand."<br />
<br />
He wasn't finished. "The alternative is that we go to the Public Prosecutor's office." He waved again, this time somewhere beyond the S-Class. "That could take two hours. And the fine would be a hundred fifty euro."<br />
<br />
There was only one sensible answer. "Yes, OK. Sure," I said. Then, because I had the princely sum of five euro in my wallet, "Do you take credit cards?" But this was Germany. He shook his head. "No, we need cash." <br />
<br />
Austin interjected. "I have cash." He took money from his wallet. "I'll pay you back at the airport," I promised.<br />
<br />
"Right, Mr Byrne. We are agreed. Come." <br />
<br />
The policemen and I walked up the footpath towards a combi van, through the door of which I could see it outfitted as a mobile office. "You work for Ford?" he asked. The registration had shown the van as belonging to the carmaker.<br />
<br />
"No. I write about cars. I'm here to drive this new van."<br />
<br />
"Ah, a journalist. What are good cars, here in Germany, do you think?" Everyone asks that. Even policemen in Germany, it seems. We reached the combi, and he climbed in. I stood outside, my head in through the doorway. "Well, the Fords are very good." I was there with Ford, after all. Anyway, it's true.<br />
<br />
He nodded, pulling a book on the combi's table towards him. "Yes, they're good. And Mercedes-Benz, they weren't excellent some years ago, but now ..." He stopped in mid flow, flicked open a page, began transcribing details from the registration document and my licence. The conversation might have been over already, but then I said, "And you have Volkswagen here, who make very good cars."<br />
<br />
He paused, looked up, halfway through an entry. Shook his head. "No. Volkswagen are not very good," he said, almost sternly. Another pause, then, "Volkswagen are ... brilliant." Pen poised, his eyes held me directly. "Herr Dr Piëch, a great man. Have you read his biography?"<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
It took another fifteen minutes to complete the transaction. By then we had discussed more cars, then, at his instigation, Ireland's previous colonial problems — of which he was surprisingly aware. He even brought in Germany and its wartime difficulties. "I wonder what we each would have been in those times," he mused, then grinned, "here, today, I'm just doing my job." He finally handed me the receipt and my documents. We shook hands. <br />
<br />
"I enjoyed talking with you," I said. And I had. Despite the circumstances. Our conversation would have been entirely appropriate if we had struck up acquaintance as two strangers beside each other at a bar. Punctuated by sips of beer instead of writing words on a receipt. The bar tab would likely have been more than the speeding fine.<br />
<br />
Austin was standing in the sun beside the van. "I thought they'd taken you to court," he said. I looked at the S-Class, still parked, guessed that the owner hadn't had an 'offer'. He was probably somewhere in a queue at the Public Prosecutor's office. Court for the speeders.<br />
<br />
It's the first time I've ever been fined for speeding in my many decades of driving, which have taken me from downtown Kilcullen to the high Andes in Bolivia and Argentina and many, many places and continents in between. In retrospect, the encounter was well worth the money involved.<br />
<br />
The world is still fascinated by cars. Even policemen in Frankfurt are.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7156248.post-67484157339683799932014-04-20T07:19:00.001+01:002014-04-20T07:19:30.003+01:00Showdown with the Sheriff<img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNB2V7phDydJ4in2zuLGHhMRCncR1ptqezotaw8hSMLHj56Nryz2lBo6xDt0MXW5vN9OgF2K8hGNMqcxVtwsJX9QH87G-wk8XvamkgIIQrVLIpXz-f8jThqx_TnRIxvr9aMJFjcw/s1024-no/IMAGE_832.jpg" width="400"><br />
<br />
<i>The clipping above from the Daily Sketch shows the scene at an attempted sale of seized cattle at Dublin Cattle Market in the early 1930s. The bare-headed man in the middle was trying to bid, and according to the headline was 'manhandled by farmers'. The man in the hat at the top of the picture is my grandfather, James J Byrne.</i><br />
<br />
Everybody later agreed that the Thursday morning of April 19 1934 was 'a quiet one' in Naas. Not least because it was the day after the annual Punchestown Races, and most of the town — indeed the county — probably felt somewhat depleted. As certainly was the local complement of Civic Guards, which had been on duty in force to manage the traffic and the goings on at the racecourse over the previous two days. It was a day to rest.<br />
<br />
But around lunchtime, and 'like a bolt from the blue' according to contemporary reports, hundreds of people arrived 'by motor, trap and bicycle'. Later estimates would suggest that '70 or 80' cars parked on the streets of the county town in a short time. A count offered in subsequent court hearings figured that some 700 farmers had come to Naas in a well-organised and 'conspired' fashion. What then happened excited headlines of 'Wild Scenes In Naas' and 'Police Cordons Broken' and similar.<br />
<br />
My grandfather, James J Byrne, was one of those farmers. He was also among the first to be arrested and brought to trial in a consequent series of court sessions. The record of evidence in those hearings is sometimes hilarious, but also reflects very serious political and economic issues across a nation which hadn't yet reached its age of reason, yet alone any maturity.<br />
<br />
The whole episode echoed similar events which were happening all around the country, where farmers were refusing to pay controversial land annuities which dated back to the late 1800s when the British Government had issued loans to tenant farmers to buy out land. The new Irish state had negotiated a deal with Britain to honour payment of the annuities, but the de Valera government reneged on that, precipitating an 'Economic War' with Britain which crippled an Irish economy very much based on farming exports. At the same time, the government insisted on collecting the annuities for itself. Farmers resisted, and in turn were served with Sheriff's seizure warrants.<br />
<br />
Back in Naas on that post-Punchestown April afternoon, the farmers streamed into the confined area of Basin Street and crowded up to the Pound behind the Courthouse, in which were five head of cattle. Sheriff's assistant James Walsh waited somewhat anxiously. With the street full, later arrivals climbed on walls and roofs, lamp-posts and any other street furniture they could find. By all subsequent accounts, they were in quite jovial mood, with lots of banter and wisecracking. My grandfather — at the time a councillor as well as a farmer and businessman — was among those who had come early.<br />
<br />
A number of Civic Guards under the direction of one Superintendent Heron came to deal with the situation at the Pound. It seems that they came in for some good-natured heckling, but nobody was in threatening or fighting frame of mind. At two o'clock, Mr Walsh announced the opening of the auction for the five cattle, seized from a farmer named Farrell of Ballinagappa for non-payment of £12 land annuities to the Land Commission. He asked for opening bids in what he acknowledged was an 'unpleasant duty'. No bids were offered. When he repeated his request there were a few comments, such as 'put blue shirts on them and you'll get a sale', and 'there's no John Browns here' ... a reference to an abortive sale of cattle in Dublin some months before in similar circumstances.<br />
<br />
In the end, Mr Walsh declared the proceedings closed, with no buyer. The reporter for the 'Leinster Leader' described how 'excitement then reached its highest pitch' and a section of the crowd broke through the police cordon and released the cattle. 'In less than a minute, the five animals were free' he wrote, then described how a 'wild excited crowd' drove the cattle through another police cordon, out of Basin Street and onto North Main Street, then were headed down the Sallins Road. The crowd, fired up by their success in blocking the sale, ran on with them, whooping and cheering, while the police who had been caught off guard tried to catch up. At Oldtown, the stampede was stopped by a line of police who had caught up, their batons drawn, under the command of Chief Superintendent Murphy.<br />
<br />
For a time 'matters looked threatening' and 'opprobrious epithets' were flung at a plain clothes detective-sergeant, who was armed with his service revolver. These insults included a claim that the detective was a 'Broy Harrier' — a reference to the former anti-Treaty IRA men inducted to a 'Special Branch' by Fianna Fail-appointed Garda Commissioner Ned Broy. They were much disliked by the general populace, but especially by those who had supported the pro-Treaty side in the Civil War.<br />
<br />
The detective, named James Kinsella, said later that he was on the point of drawing his gun when the crowd were admonished by some of their own, that 'we have nothing to say to the police'. These included my grandfather. Later in evidence, it was revealed by the Guards that he had been asked to intervene, as he was a 'very influential man in the county'. James J Byrne stressed the fact that the Guards were 'the custodians of the public peace, and should not be molested'. The crowd then turned, and headed back to town, bearing the Mr Farrell whose cattle had been seized, on their shoulders at the head of the procession.<br />
<br />
During the melee, the cattle disappeared down Mill Lane, driven by a 'small party' of the protesters. Three were later recovered by Chief Superintendent Murphy at Digby Bridge, and the others at Osberstown. All were returned to the Sheriff's Pound, where they were to await a further attempt at sale over the weekend. Before everyone dispersed, names were taken by the guards of all those they recognised during what was to become known as 'The Naas Cattle Drive'.<br />
<br />
The following Wednesday, James J Byrne, county councillor and proprietor of 'The Hotel' in Kilcullen, was one of nine farmers in the district who were roused from their beds at five in the morning, and taken to the cells in Naas. They appeared in the District Court later that morning on a charge of unlawful assembly, and were later released on bail. But not before their solicitor upbraided Superintendent Heron strongly for his actions in arresting the nine in the early hours and incarcerating them in advance of the court hearing. Mr R Coonan complained to the court that his clients were respectable farmers and all men 'with a stake in the country, and certainly not of the class that is likely to run away'. "They were taken out as if they were condemned criminals, and treated in a way that certainly is not in keeping with how they should have been in accordance with the law," he told Mr Justice Reddin.<br />
<br />
The Superintendent responded emphatically that he was simply carrying out lawful warrants, and that more serious charges would be preferred against the nine at the next Sessions, and that others who 'were not available' that morning would also be charged. Justice Reddin remanded the defendants on personal bail of £100 each with two independent sureties of £50.<br />
<br />
At the next hearing there were a total of 24 farmers in the dock. In addition to James J Byrne, they were R Brophy, Jigginstown; T Lawlor, Halverstown; C Corrigan, Clane; P Murphy, Carbury; P Cox, Windgates; M Higgins, Orielstown; Wm Ennis, Goganswood; J McDonald, Monread; E Robinson, Coolrearey; FB Barton, Straffan; PJ Kavanagh, Timolin; G O'Toole, Carbury; Jas Jackson, Kilcullen; P Daly, Naas; W McDonald, Ballitore; F & G Carter, Kilmeague; T Flood, Maynooth; H Fisher, Dunlavin; H Cogan, Ballitire; Ml Brien, Grangemore; Edwd Carter, Kilmeague; and N Kelly, Staplestown. <br />
<br />
New charges were preferred involving 'conspiracy' to obstruct the Under-Sheriff in performance of his duty, and intimidation of those who had come to the auction to bid. The barrister employed by the prosecution, Mr W Black, described the scenes as 'a miniature rebellion with all the circumstances of terror and violence that constituted such in the eyes of the law'. <br />
<br />
During the hearing, the Under-Sheriff made it clear that at no time had the crowd been hostile to him and that those in it had been 'in good humour' throughout. The Chief Superintendent, however, deposed that to his men those involved had 'adopted an independent attitude of hostility' to attempts to make them come down from their vantage points. He also claimed that when he and his men intercepted the crowd at Oldtown, they seemed to be 'possessed with hysteria' and were 'maddened and infuriated' and he saw some who were 'frothing at the mouth'. He added that it was 'the worst demonstration of malice and hatred I have witnessed for 20 years'.<br />
<br />
The case was adjourned for two weeks. At the next hearing, the defendants had secured the services of Mr Fitzgerald Kenney, Senior Counsel and serving member of the Dail and a former Minister for Justice. Counsel subjected Superintendent Heron to a 'gruelling' cross-examination, including the following exchange.<br />
<br />
<blockquote><i>Mr Kenney — Was this a terrible riot?<br />
Supt Heron — I certainly say it was.<br />
Mr Kenney — In this terrible riot, how many Guards were injured?<br />
Supt Heron — None.<br />
Mr Kenney — How many were struck? <br />
Supt Heron — None.<br />
Mr Kenney — How many stones flung?<br />
Supt Heron — None.<br />
Mr Kenney — Was there any act of violence?<br />
Supt Heron — There was an unlawful act.<br />
Mr Kenney — Answer my question. Was there a r-i-o-t?<br />
Supt Heron — I was not there the whole time.</i></blockquote><br />
Other evidences were given and cross-examined skillfully by Counsel for the defence during that hearing, which was eventually adjourned. The newspaper accounts of the time show that, generally, the statements of the Guards were shown to be very much exaggerated when compared with other descriptions of the happenings of the day. <br />
<br />
There were a number of further hearings in that summer of 1934 <i>(during which my grandfather was re-elected to Kildare County Council, as a Fine Gael councillor; he had previously been elected in 1928 under the Farmers & Ratepayers League banner.)</i>, culminating with the judge's decision in late August to send the 24 men for a full trial at the Circuit Court, on charges of unlawful assembly. Among the details revealed in those hearings was the fact that the cattle seized had not belonged to the person on whom the Sheriff's warrant had been served, but to a relation. So the original seizure itself had been unlawful.<br />
<br />
The trial came up for mention twice during the autumn and winter, in each case being adjourned at the request of the prosecution. In the spring of 1935, the State entered a 'nolle prosequi' and the case was finished. The court reporter for the 'Kildare Observer' noted that it was 'understood' that the fact the county was 'quiet' contributed to the decision to drop the case. The truth more likely was the realisation by the authorities that there was no viable case.<br />
<br />
While the 'Naas Cattle Drive' provided fun on the day, and some real entertainment during the subsequent hearings, these affairs didn't always turn out bloodless. A similar confrontation in Cork on 13 August 1934 resulted in the the killing of a protester and the wounding of several others, by the Special Branch. It might well be that it was the intervention of James J Byrne and his friends at the moments when Detective-Sergeant Kinsella felt threatened enough to almost draw his own weapon which helped the Naas affair from turning into something much more serious.<br />
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7156248.post-35122340402396184812013-12-27T19:50:00.002+00:002013-12-27T21:58:48.705+00:00Recalling the 'factory'We Byrne kids knew it as the 'factory'. <br />
<br />
It was in the building at the back of the yard in the family pub, over which was the 'loft' where coffins were stored, and the Boxing Club had space for training and a ring to spar in. At the far end of the loft was the book-keeper Miss Dowling's office. A lonely kind of a location, but she seemed reasonably happy there. Later the position was taken by Miss Young, who had worked similarly over in the hardware office for Grandad, for decades it seemed. She was eventually moved to a more observational spot in the street corner room of the family home, Moyola, where originally had been the forge around which the house was built.<br />
<br />
But to us the 'factory' was the most curious and interesting place when it was in action. That was sporadic, but when the machinery was running it became a different environment to being merely a store and a sorting space for crates and bottles.<br />
<br />
I can't remember when the Leinster Beverage enterprise was set up by my Dad, Jim Byrne Jr, though there's a fragment of home movie in existence showing all of us kids drinking some of the lemonade product, from bottles with straws (I'm still at the age there of playing with toy guns). Dad was always willing to take a punt on an idea that had a potential to make the family rich. Though none did, he had a lot of fun trying. In this case, he'd established a mineral water business, making the various drinks from syrups, bottling them, and shipping them to customer pubs all through Kildare, Carlow and west Wicklow. The logistics involved running a couple of Bedford lorries, which I also remember being used in the summers to ship the family requirements for a month or more to Poulshone and Ardamine near Courtown. I loved going in the lorry, rather than with the rest of us in the family car. <br />
<br />
I don't know where Dad sourced the equipment for the factory, but I can still see it in my memory as an assembly line in galvanised steel which took up much of the building's floor space. At the right end was a big trough with rotating containers for bottles. When working, it was full of steaming hot water into which the bottles would be immersed, coming back up the other side sterilised and draining. It was an operation of clank, rattle and hiss, and probably very dangerous for Billy Dowling and Joe O'Halloran, otherwise the barmen, who managed the whole effort. Certainly, health and safety today wouldn't allow little people like ourselves to be anywhere as close to the action as we got in those times.<br />
<br />
From the sterilising bath the bottles were manually put on a travelling metal band to the filling section, where they were topped off with whatever was the drink in production. The next section racked them into a space from which they would be crown capped and, afterwards, labelled. It was altogether fascinating, and when — as it was most of the time that I remember — the factory was not in operation, the place had a dead sense to it.<br />
<br />
I was too young to notice when that part of the family business was wound down, unviable against the major national mineral water manufacturers like Cantrell & Cochrane. But the lorries were eventually disposed of, and some unsold stock was for a long time stored upstairs in the loft. I gathered much later that it hadn't been a financial success, but if there was anything characteristic about my Dad, he never stopped trying something new. He also knew when to stop. Mostly when book-keeper Miss Young told him to, in her uncompromising blunt fashion.<br />
<br />
The factory space has other memories. It was a time when most pubs in Ireland bottled their own Guinness, from barrels delivered by the company. Each pub had its own supply of Guinness labels, with the 'bottled in house by—' name of the establishment on them. I have strong memories of Billy Dowling filling the bottles from a multiple syphon setup which could handle half a dozen units at a time. The trick was to keep it going left to right, so that by the time the last empty bottle was put under its spout, the first one was just brimming off. <br />
<br />
To watch Billy do it was dazzle in motion, with so little waste going into the tray underneath that it was of little consequence. He would ambidextrously lift the empty bottles from cases on his left and on the right plonk the filled ones into their tray of two dozen, never taking his eyes from the siphons. After a filling session they'd be stoppered. Originally with corks, but later with a crown cap machine which was the highest tech of its time. The Guinness had to be stored in bottle for a couple of weeks before it could be served, so there was also a well-developed system of producing enough to meet demand ahead without having too much in stock. The labels were coded to help each pub rotate the bottles to their best sell-by date.<br />
<br />
All that had changed by the time I was, years later, running the pub myself. As far as Guinness was concerned — and by then they owned not just their own black product, but most other Irish beers as well — everything was centralised production so that they could control absolutely the quality of what was served across the counter. It certainly made the running of a pub that bit easier, although it involved a much more critical system of sorting bottles and crating empties for return, because of the very important credit against the account. Today none of the various brands of beers and mineral waters served over our pub counters involve the return of empty bottles. They're just dumped into bins for overall broken glass recycle.<br />
<br />
It's all probably all much more efficient. Maybe even much more green, if the inputs and costs are factored into the equations. But it doesn't have any potential to generate the kind of memories I have of the 'factory'.<br />
<br />
I'm glad I do have them.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7156248.post-61423510740728186912013-06-29T13:44:00.003+01:002013-06-29T14:24:35.897+01:00Cycle rides around Kilcullen: Heritage 1<iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="https://maps.google.com/maps/ms?msa=0&msid=214203083389549602986.0004dfaa6dee522694faf&hl=en&ie=UTF8&t=m&ll=53.119272,-6.74612&spn=0.036058,0.068836&z=13&output=embed" width="400" height="400"></iframe><br />
<small>View <a href="https://maps.google.com/maps/ms?msa=0&msid=214203083389549602986.0004dfaa6dee522694faf&hl=en&ie=UTF8&t=m&ll=53.119272,-6.74612&spn=0.036058,0.068836&z=13&source=embed" style="color: blue; text-align: left;">Heritage Ride 1</a> in a larger map</small><br />
<br />
Just for interest sake, this is a short cycle ride from and back to Kilcullen taking in some of the heritage sites around the town. I have begun linking them to further information on the net about the sites, and intend to extend this idea to other rides and walks around the village. They might be of use to visitors.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7156248.post-71399468095046710482013-06-07T13:01:00.001+01:002013-06-07T23:37:00.006+01:00To where no one has yet goneShoeboxes were important to us youngsters in Kilcullen growing up in the early 50s. Of course, for their original purpose they had no interest to us at all. It was what they could become.<br />
<br />
It was before television, at least in Kilcullen. Radio was where we got our serial programmes, and DC comics and the weekly 'follyer-uppers' in the cinema our visual inputs from stuff that was only dreamed of, like space travel.<br />
<br />
But because they were in the realm of dreams, we could dream big. And when we kids and our friends weren't doing the cowboys and indians thing, we were star-travelling in the garden shed at the back of our house. That it had trellised 'windows' looking out on a decent expanse of lawn meant we had direction to travel and space to fly. And inside, places for the crew members. Generally, the younger you were, the further back was your position in the shed ... sorry, space-ship. I was most times the eldest.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUfLwpOcz_hTN1nqPGe4Zetg1v2sPDPsGmWPkma2vrbhN_8LuIUlf7KJL6GlPElh6i_1udWZK_B1mQBUDGqEfRvHAQq6xJiEYb7viPqB5yBdipykvB18FCCuyIpEe9DPeXsGEB1Q/s1600/astronaut_space_background.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUfLwpOcz_hTN1nqPGe4Zetg1v2sPDPsGmWPkma2vrbhN_8LuIUlf7KJL6GlPElh6i_1udWZK_B1mQBUDGqEfRvHAQq6xJiEYb7viPqB5yBdipykvB18FCCuyIpEe9DPeXsGEB1Q/s320/astronaut_space_background.jpg" width="175" /></a></div>Decades before the warp speed capability of Star Trek was to cross our radar, we had imagination speed, which could take us to the other side of the galaxy in less than a thought. And to deal with the aliens we might encounter, we didn't have Captain Kirk's phasers, but we did have 'ray guns' invented for Dan Dare and Flash Gordon's adventures. Usually replicated from cast-off bits of wood found in the shed or the 'loft' attached to our family's pub. A carelessly left brush handle, along with access to a saw, could make the business ends of three or four of them, with screwed-on handles. The beauty of ray-guns, compared to the six-shooters cowboys used, was that they never ran out of killing power.<br />
<br />
Our trips across the galaxy from time to time required leaving the ship for a space-walk, again generations before EVAs from shuttles or the International Space Station. We had to be properly equipped for these, or of course we couldn't survive. This is where the shoeboxes came in.<br />
<br />
There was fairly reasonable access to the boxes, as at least six shops in Kilcullen sold shoes and drapery in those days. Not everybody who bought footwear brought the boxes home. Again, there was such a shop in our family. Almost invariably white, the cardboard was of a thickness that could be bent to shapes and was also easy to cut with the standard home scissors.<br />
<br />
With the lid put aside, and suitable openings cut in the bottom and one for the neck at an end, they became space helmets, usually held on by a string though occasional pilfered elastic was a high-tech version. Another box would be carried on the back, with some kind of connection to the helmet to carry oxygen (it didn't have to be a real hose, but sometimes old rubber garden hoses could be cut for the purpose). The back box doubled as a jet pack, very important for maneuvering in gravity-less space.<br />
<br />
No spaceman could leave the ship without a 'control box'. The oxygen flow and the jet packs had to be managed, and maintaining communications with the ship was imperative. For this we used a full box, its lid sellotaped on to maintain structural strength. It had numerous dials drawn in, and knobs to manage the various functions. The knobs were typically old Cork Dry Gin bottle stoppers, of which again there was a good supply in the yard of the pub. A hole made under the relevant dial, a mark scratched on the top of the cork, and we had all the controls we needed. A stick coming out of the top was the radio aerial — a classier one was a filched knitting needle from my mother's collection. Hung around our necks with a suitable cord, this completed our equipment for out of ship excursions.<br />
<br />
For days, weeks, and through special years of childhood, we went to places still undreamed of with the help of that magic shed and the shoeboxes. They are places I'll never forget, even though I have been able to, and still do, visit so many parts of our shrunken planet of today.<br />
<br />
Sitting in my own garden, enjoying the sudden and welcome arrival of Summer 2013, I can't help thinking of that garden shed in what was my parents' house, only a hedge or two away. And the shoeboxes, and the Cork Dry Gin bottle stoppers. Innocent times, yes. But times when imagination was the primary driver of our play. Play which, perhaps, helped to form us as inventive and resourceful.<br />
<br />
Today, the CDC cork stoppers are now metal screwtops, which wouldn't do the knobs job at all. But the shoeboxes are still around, and knitting needles getting plentiful again.<br />
<br />
Now we have iPads, which can bring us around the world and even into the International Space Station via video, and keep us in communication with our children and grand-children far away. Those same grand-children of the age I was back then are comfortable users of iPhones and Skype and computers. They can watch movies about places far far away, and even the recent exit of the Voyager spacecraft to beyond our own known solar system is something they probably didn't take much notice of. Not surprising, I suppose, as it was launched nearly 36 years ago. It still hasn't gone as far as we did in the garden shed.<br />
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Our grandchildren don't need shoeboxes. In a funny way, I kind of think that's a pity.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7156248.post-10452882713829999872013-06-02T09:06:00.001+01:002013-06-02T09:49:42.805+01:00A little tourist anarchy in ViennaThere's a wonderful anarchy about cycling around a city. Especially one like Vienna, in a group with a guide.<br />
<br />
Actually, the city makes it relatively easy with lots of cycle lanes and priorities at lights and intersections. But you still have to be seriously alert, because there's a busy mix of pedallers and pedestrians, not to mind the motor traffic.<br />
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Cycling is my favourite way of getting to know a city in a hurry. I used Vienna Explorer, based on Franz Josef Kai, close to the S-Bahn station of Schwedenplatz. Booked online, cost €24 (I got €2 off as a Senior). Various cycle tours offered include a Wine Tour through the villages in the lower Alps outside the city. Another time.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-iYmKK34oKcA/Uamsd2kao7I/AAAAAAAAPiA/xXL8I5rb_Wg/w860-h645-no/vienna13.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-iYmKK34oKcA/Uamsd2kao7I/AAAAAAAAPiA/xXL8I5rb_Wg/w860-h645-no/vienna13.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>There were five of us, Billy and Kimberly from Utah, Jerry and Robin from Toronto. Me on my own. Kimberly had backpacked for a month, had been to the south of Ireland. The other two had trained through Europe, were just now in from Budapest. Information our guide, Horst, gleaned while waiting for the start time. I just listened. I'm a journalist, it's what I do.<br />
<br />
We went out to our bikes. Continental high bars, tough as farm barns. Three simple speeds. Perfect for city work, and a long way from the nice hybrid I use at home. Saddles adjusted, Horst led us off at a strong clip. The group stretched, but pauses at traffic lights allowed us tighten up.<br />
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Over the next while we stopped at the University, the City Hall, the Parliament, the Natural History Museum and the Hofburg imperial palaces, all conveniently on the Ringstrasse around central Vienna. Horst told a story or two about each spot. The first was a church at the place where somebody had tried to assassinate Emperor Franz-Josef, erected in thanks by his brother Maximilian, Emperor of Mexico.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ox7SkRUbyvY/UamtL0iGP2I/AAAAAAAAPkY/2vTBE7tzIok/w484-h645-no/vienna20.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ox7SkRUbyvY/UamtL0iGP2I/AAAAAAAAPkY/2vTBE7tzIok/w484-h645-no/vienna20.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>A rifle shot sound while pedalling away from the Natural History Museum was Jerry's rear tyre blown. Before mobile phones this could have been a disaster, but a call to base and Horst assured a replacement bike. We made our way more slowly to the People's Gardens beside the Imperial Palace. Hung out at the statue of Mozart. "He had a tragic life," Horst said. "Died young. Made as much money as Michael Jackson, but he was a gambler. Skipped from apartment to apartment because he couldn't pay the rent." Which maybe accounts for the number of buildings claiming Mozart connection. Probably still trying to recoup the rent.<br />
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While waiting, we learned that Billy and Kimberly had gotten engaged the previous week. In Berlin, where Billy had gone to meet her on her backpacking trip. Kimberly hadn't been expecting it. That explained why they were so obviously into each other.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-QtP-nAg1zYE/Uamt5lpitYI/AAAAAAAAPm4/SumdMzgpGuA/w860-h645-no/vienna23.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-QtP-nAg1zYE/Uamt5lpitYI/AAAAAAAAPm4/SumdMzgpGuA/w860-h645-no/vienna23.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>The fresh bike came, the delivery guy having to walk the punctured one home. Horst set up a time-recovering pace that straggled out the group along by the river before our next stop at St Charles Church on Karlsplatz. We're not just at the biggest baroque church in Austria, but also the area which hosted the biggest black market in Vienna in the decade after WW2. "It's still a black market, but for drugs like marijuana — it's close to the technical university."<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-AdwIiJU_2qc/UamtBvg17wI/AAAAAAAAPkA/v4827i2tzjI/w860-h645-no/vienna26.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-AdwIiJU_2qc/UamtBvg17wI/AAAAAAAAPkA/v4827i2tzjI/w860-h645-no/vienna26.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>We rolled on to the Stadtpark, looking down on a small river in a concrete retainer gully. "Four or five times a year, when the snows melt or from heavy rain, people ride the torrent on their surfboards."<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRV2KU5slyN41NApkufW8vj1vlp_JRPqN73x8VKQfBOO-8hyRKp68ywPtBmAiI_Ebp8IXO5MtDLV0pWcaa_zwaY6p0Udciba5GAomvXbP7C3Rft3Ca4C29SqwqSNZGsK5F_IiX/w859-h645-no/vienna28.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRV2KU5slyN41NApkufW8vj1vlp_JRPqN73x8VKQfBOO-8hyRKp68ywPtBmAiI_Ebp8IXO5MtDLV0pWcaa_zwaY6p0Udciba5GAomvXbP7C3Rft3Ca4C29SqwqSNZGsK5F_IiX/w859-h645-no/vienna28.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>More twists and turns, ringing our bicycle bells with gusto at intersections, and then we were at an unusual apartment block, the Hundertwasserhaus. Gaudy-ish, it was a social housing project designed by a local artist heavily influenced by the Barcelona architect's originals. Lots of organic curves and embellishments, no right angles or straight walls. "He believed we need to recover our natural senses, that there are no regularities in nature. He wanted hills and curves on the floors too, but they would have made getting up in the night very dangerous."<br />
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The next area was the once private hunting grounds of the Hapsburgs nobility, now the Prater Park. Where Empress Sisi, an accomplished rider, amused herself. "She also loved mountain hiking, and could go for eight hours, leaving her servants behind. Because every day she smoked a pipe of cocaine. A medicine because she was depressed over deaths of her children, a daughter aged two and a son who shot himself."<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAB6-3-GVgrUPMAy6Lp7xgCg9kyTgyMMVbtD2E9BowAXSHGY4M2eJzqJXKewqVfFs1EI6R0g9hln9fUmFxzikKfowfV-zmmJ3ZdJzBzEBDicOQUPAAkv3j5DkHzItM-RuUC5D3/w860-h645-no/vienna29.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAB6-3-GVgrUPMAy6Lp7xgCg9kyTgyMMVbtD2E9BowAXSHGY4M2eJzqJXKewqVfFs1EI6R0g9hln9fUmFxzikKfowfV-zmmJ3ZdJzBzEBDicOQUPAAkv3j5DkHzItM-RuUC5D3/w860-h645-no/vienna29.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>The park also has one of Europe's oldest fun parks, with Vienna's famous giant Ferris Wheel, the Riesenrad, built in 1897 to celebrate the Golden Jubilee of Emperor Franz Josef I. It has survived two world wars. "Young couples of today like it. It takes 15 minutes to go around ... and for seven minutes they can't be seen."<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-tw9ZpkyQkdA/UamtlgV5BZI/AAAAAAAAPlw/-Zpsz_legEs/w861-h645-no/vienna52.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="298" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-tw9ZpkyQkdA/UamtlgV5BZI/AAAAAAAAPlw/-Zpsz_legEs/w861-h645-no/vienna52.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>Which is a similar theme to the origin of the busiest of today's tourist attractions in Vienna, the horse-drawn carriages encountered in convoys everywhere. These days they're open carriages so the tourists can see the sights. It wasn't always the case. "A hundred years ago brothels were clamped down on. The ladies then met men in the carriages, usually from churches where the women felt safe from the authorities. An address that didn't exist was a signal to the driver to keep going until the customers were finished and the lady was paid."<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-CrZL02i0yCQ/UamruE7W6cI/AAAAAAAAPfo/xMKNmZqDALM/w483-h645-no/vienna33.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-CrZL02i0yCQ/UamruE7W6cI/AAAAAAAAPfo/xMKNmZqDALM/w483-h645-no/vienna33.JPG" width="149" /></a></div>From easy riding in the pastoral environment of the park we headed back to the more hectic pace of the old city. It got personal there. Horst had told us earlier that he had been a banker, but had changed his life to become a tour guide. I'm a writer, also changed life a couple of times. Guessed there was a more interesting expansion, and there was. "You don't come here with anybody else. A building that's hundreds of years old, but it's special to me. I lived here for seven years, and now my ex-wife does, without me." There's a mythology about the building. A monster in a well who turns people to stone if they draw her up from her lair — Vienna's own version of the Greek tale of the Gorgon. Horst doesn't imply that about his wife. "But she's a lawyer, and when we divorced I didn't have a chance." <br />
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Horst is still good with his ex-father in law. They recently explored the cellars under the buildings in the area, going all the way to the city's Opera House. "The cellars are deeper than the buildings themselves, wine stores from the Romans two thousand years ago when the soldiers were kept calm with wine on paydays, in the face of invading German tribes. In a year or two I hope to have permission from maybe 20 private buildings to do tours through the connected cellars." Jerry suggests an arrangement with the owners, of a drop-box in each cellar into which every tour participant will give a donation as they pass through. Horst likes the idea.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgroBwQDCzvmP9XM0xsCT7vsEq5fNdlFKDkthWMlSlvkBnNJvpGTxH9DrF1BkbAkd6wdyjtlPMC6AnrWXAGIlZmprXRISyyGEHYQWZGzQjig5W_eEMAf1K7PYpG9jTw1JOx4zsG/w860-h645-no/vienna34.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgroBwQDCzvmP9XM0xsCT7vsEq5fNdlFKDkthWMlSlvkBnNJvpGTxH9DrF1BkbAkd6wdyjtlPMC6AnrWXAGIlZmprXRISyyGEHYQWZGzQjig5W_eEMAf1K7PYpG9jTw1JOx4zsG/w860-h645-no/vienna34.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>Around the corner there's what our guide describes as the most authentic and best value restaurant in Vienna, The Old Vienna Coffee House. "This is where I'd go when I lived around here. Half the price of the tourist traps for a real Weiner Schnitzel."<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNeCkkiduCQpnDOItafGeTSwMh2vHNC0PrHXeURX0y2a9uvE-qyJAfqW3Ih4URXle6yOD-aZVX05eKp9VdpvFhWK8UShNaUB3wWsP0YNn4eR1pyNSwur86f9_47-rJ8R3SjyTx/w860-h645-no/vienna38.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNeCkkiduCQpnDOItafGeTSwMh2vHNC0PrHXeURX0y2a9uvE-qyJAfqW3Ih4URXle6yOD-aZVX05eKp9VdpvFhWK8UShNaUB3wWsP0YNn4eR1pyNSwur86f9_47-rJ8R3SjyTx/w860-h645-no/vienna38.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>The last historic stop was at the original university building in the city, established by the Jesuits. The church at the site, externally plain but wonderfully baroque inside. The false dome is particularly impressive.<br />
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Three hours had seemed quite a trip at the start. But we were already close to the end of the ride. Horst brought us across the river for choice views of the main city. And of the lower Alps not too far away. "We are famous for white wine, but there are good reds also. You can reach the wine villages by bicycle along the river in 20 minutes, or take the train to the last stop in half an hour."<br />
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Back at the offices of Vienna Explorer, Horst got his 'thank you's in euros-kind. He'd earned them. We had Vienna in a perspective which many tourists don't get. And maybe, because he was feeling good in his current career, we felt we had a perspective on him too.<br />
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But the real gig was being on the bicycle. The anarchy bit is exhilarating.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7156248.post-86839349841639148432013-05-26T08:55:00.002+01:002013-05-26T08:57:46.921+01:00Night train from Vienna<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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The train is late. It started out on time, in the efficient and modernly beautiful Westbahn station in Vienna. But somewhere, still in Austria, it lost an hour.<br />
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The compartment has filled. I can no longer stretch across the three seats on my side. I struggle to find space for legs that doesn't intrude on someone else's.<br />
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The girl in the denim suit was the first in after me. Two hours out I'm sleeping, stretched. Crash of the door sliding back. 'Bitte', she says, settles her bag overhead. Dark haired, strong features, in her thirties I figure. She takes the centre seat on the other side. I nod, smile, sit back up in the window seat I reserved online but didn't get. Took it anyway when whoever booked it hadn't shown after we left the Westbahn. We don't converse, I sense this is the manners of the night train. She reads. I sleep.<br />
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I wake and she is sleeping, her feet stretched to the middle seat on my side. The next time I wake she is lying across the three seats on her side. I do the same on mine, and we sleep, together but apart. Like the tracks on which our train rides.<br />
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The door bangs. A young couple, she blonde, he sallow, glasses. They upload luggage, take their seats opposite on the corridor side. I sleep, wake, sleep. Wake again in a silent empty station. The train is late. I sleep, and it leaves the station in its silent electric manner and I don't notice.<br />
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Crash of the opening door. A couple with suitcases bulldozes in. He stocky square, she shimmering top and ruby streaked in her dark hair. He moves bags like Ryanair cabin crew, lifting, shifting, squashing. But their largest case is still on the floor. <br />
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I don't understand the words, but his handwaving wants me to put my bag on top of the denim girl's. I move it across, not sure if it's safe. I watch as the train picks up quiet electric speed. My labels swing, but the bag seems OK. I think they should have gone Ryanair, checked their luggage through.<br />
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I look at my phone. One in the morning. Five hours gone, we should be halfway. But the train is late, and I don't know. The girl in denim turns towards the window, pulls her knees up to her chest, fetally protecting her space. I wonder is she rushing to a boyfriend, or from one? I decide it's neither. The boyfriend would do the rushing.<br />
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The couples in the compartment can stretch, interlink legs. Mine cramp and wake me. I try to move them without intruding, on the denim girl, the man beside me or his wife across from him. I know she's his wife, because he did all the shifting and moving and she didn't try to help. A wife who takes more for granted than a partner. <br />
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The younger ones are recently together, I suspect. We get to know what she's like in bed. She snores. Loudly. He doesn't nudge her, smiles indulgently. I sleep. I wake. I shift in place again, the arthritis in my shoulders wanting to twist and turn me as it does in my own bed. Or any bed, anywhere other than this upright train seat makes impossible. <br />
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We pause at stations not on the timetable. I guess to allow for trains which went ahead when we stopped for an hour instead of two minutes all that time ago. Now there are people on platforms. Ones, couples, groups as we go from stop to stop. Early commuters used to the morning chill.<br />
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The country wakes slowly in mist. Impressionist fields fleet by. An outlined sun pushes through diminishing fog. Railside buildings and businesses ghost past. The train is late, I don't know where we are. But it's now becoming my time of day, and I'm comfortable.<br />
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A sign sprints by. Suggests I'm a bit over an hour from my Hannover destination. My head is back on track. I feel the slowing, watch sidings with waiting rolling stock. I stand eventually, nod to the denim girl. She bobs her head back. Two singles passing in bubbles in the night train acknowledging differences from their coupled fellow travellers. I take down my bag, happy it can no longer fall on her.<br />
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The others say nothing, nor catch my eye as I leave the compartment. Like an elevator in a building where all in it are together, but are not. The train eases to a stop. I step down, click out the handle of my roller bag and trundle towards the exit. Resurrection after eleven hours in a travelling tomb.<br />
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The train is late. But it doesn't matter now.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7156248.post-40058137710287368262013-05-13T11:03:00.000+01:002013-06-02T11:04:46.576+01:00A city of good life<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIbCCDGvKRwX7a_f_0lHYQFIlF7gwfx5WhyphenhyphenOI4GAsucdY9YyTEz_Te4JvH-7Dn6wcvQYPIxioNyCnBg_zkbapoAbB3WNw6t_Hcj0lyNrnP-EXPRFrx81RZeDCwtf4AJRI_dM-A/w354-h531-no/dusseldorf12.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIbCCDGvKRwX7a_f_0lHYQFIlF7gwfx5WhyphenhyphenOI4GAsucdY9YyTEz_Te4JvH-7Dn6wcvQYPIxioNyCnBg_zkbapoAbB3WNw6t_Hcj0lyNrnP-EXPRFrx81RZeDCwtf4AJRI_dM-A/w354-h531-no/dusseldorf12.JPG" width="132" /></a>There's a vibrant, and very clearly wealthy, centre to Dusseldorf in Germany, even on a somewhat chilly early May afternoon.<br />
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If you're there with a couple of hours to spend between planes or trains, and maybe have already done the lunch or drinks and stupendous view from the top of the <a href="http://irishcarman.blogspot.ie/2013/05/a-view-from-top.html" target="_blank">Günnewig Rheinturm</a> (right), a stroll through the Königsalee (King's Road) in the town's shopping heart will tempt your credit cards. <br />
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But window shopping costs nothing except maybe a little envy. All the names are there — Bulgari, Prada, Cartier et al. There are, of course, many 'ordinary' shops too along the street, affectionally known as the 'Kö'. The shops and the big bank buildings opposite are separated by a grass-banked canal, with the whole area commissioned by no less a person than Napoleon.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXm6EYC2vZclRKD_kGMpCcdSdvenNZgPKW3m2OA6N-BGsJ4bBS1yDytfxr9cqeStApOoCJudBcBDgrLKkJ_ZqQZ0LpCzoBcWeFwgKRgUXEbPka46_tHTJLS1doYKeI3sqKDP0g/w286-h532-no/dusseldorf8.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXm6EYC2vZclRKD_kGMpCcdSdvenNZgPKW3m2OA6N-BGsJ4bBS1yDytfxr9cqeStApOoCJudBcBDgrLKkJ_ZqQZ0LpCzoBcWeFwgKRgUXEbPka46_tHTJLS1doYKeI3sqKDP0g/w286-h532-no/dusseldorf8.JPG" width="106" /></a>A couple of 'galerie' shopping malls are also good places to watch the locals snack and sit to sip coffee or an apertif in between their browsing. That's the least expensive part of it ... in Barolos in the Kö Centre an excellent bruschetta and coffee is more than ample to recharge energy, at a reasonable €7.70.<br />
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Walk back down towards the river and you'll find a bunch of art galleries and boutique fashion stores along Bastionstrasse and its neighbourhood, probably a lot less expensive than you've been studiously avoiding temptation from along the 'Kö.<br />
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There's a compact but really nice market not too far away at Kasernanstrasse, and from there a stroll through the pedestrian shopping area of Hunsrukenstrasse will bring you down to the old city, with the dozens of cafes on Bolkerstrasse and then on to the park walks along the Rhine to work off lunch.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7156248.post-50829738658017643212013-03-02T08:25:00.002+00:002013-03-09T09:31:54.206+00:00Saying goodbye to GillThere's a small basket with yellow roses on the front step of the altar, and in it is a sod of grass from Moyola in Kilcullen, where Gill and the rest of us grew up.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuqh6s64Cl-cqjJiNB64Fo5IThtVKEdy7rT2fbOyQuatoUZGUJwPcn0_707yLOsKvCicSwrfx_xv9Fm3QsBdeTyugzj7Zl-SpYI3Fv17QGbpOZ1JIV81BLzkckOXe30qcyo64Vyw/s1600/gill2011.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuqh6s64Cl-cqjJiNB64Fo5IThtVKEdy7rT2fbOyQuatoUZGUJwPcn0_707yLOsKvCicSwrfx_xv9Fm3QsBdeTyugzj7Zl-SpYI3Fv17QGbpOZ1JIV81BLzkckOXe30qcyo64Vyw/s200/gill2011.JPG" width="149" /></a></div>As children we all played on that grass, and when, at the age of nine or ten, I was playing cowboys and indians with my brothers and our friends, Gill was the little one with a yellow ribbon in her hair who always wanted to join in.<br />
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She wanted to play because she loved us, but also because she was determined not to be left out of the gang. When she did join in, she played with loyalty to whichever side she was picked, and a commitment to keep up, no matter what.<br />
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So, for a few minutes I'd like to look a little more into those characteristics that were key to the makeup of our sister. Love, loyalty, commitment, determination.<br />
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<i>Love</i><br />
Everybody loved Gill, and she had a wondrous capacity to be able to love everybody back. But especially her family. I have never known any couple so fiercely, yet so tenderly in love as Gill and Frank. And there's the ultimate reflection of that love in their children and grandchildren, which will be a strength and a solace to each other for all of their own lives.<br />
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<i>Loyalty</i><br />
Gill was fiercely loyal, to her family, and to her friends. There are no doubt many instances of that which I would not be aware of, but those of you here who were close to her in your own different ways will be very aware. A childhood friend recalled the other day how her sister was having trouble with another girl trying to muscle in on a boyfriend. Gill made a point of meeting up with that other girl and telling her in no uncertain terms to back off. I suspect they were all about 14 at the time.<br />
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<i>Commitment</i><br />
Whatever Gill took on, she did so wholeheartedly and without compromise. Whether it was about raising a family, rowing into the complexities of nurturing often struggling businesses back to health, or simply taking up golf rather later in life, she just dived in and gave it her all.<br />
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<i>Determination</i><br />
When Gill put her mind to something, it was a given that it would happen. Whatever the circumstances. I believe that within a couple of days, maybe even less, after her major heart operation, she was out to the shops during visitor hours rather than sit there in her hospital bed. In these more recent and fraught times, she fought and won battles in her war against her illness, and even when she knew it was the final and losing battle, it seems that she very much made her own decisions about how and when it would end.<br />
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<i>Her spirit</i><br />
Whether we call it the soul, the spark of life, life force or whatever, Gill had an enormous inner energy. It's a law of physics that energy cannot be destroyed, it simply changes into another form. Gill no longer has need of her life force, and has now shared it out amongst those of us she leaves behind. It's an energy from just one person that could conceivably power the sun for a thousand years, and we and those who follow in Gill's line will be powered by it for as long as those generations endure.<br />
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Most of all, Gill was sister to myself, Fergus, Gary and the late Des. She was wife to Frank, mother to Rory and Sandy and grandmother to Mollie, Danny, Rose and Jenny, and she welcomed with unstinted love Anne and Michael into her family. Her decades long friendship with Katy was also as close as family, while Des's Josephine and she were like sisters.<br />
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We will all miss her terribly. But we are so much stronger for having had her in our lives, in whatever way. And so it is with deep sadness, but also an enormous amount of gratitude and love that we now say farewell to Gill.<br />
<br />
Good night, sunshine sister. Sleep well in our hearts.<br />
<br />
<i>(Delivered at the funeral mass for Gillian Becker, nee Byrne, March 1 2013)</i>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7156248.post-65721139096783891352013-02-16T09:50:00.001+00:002013-02-16T09:56:37.083+00:00'Where's the WiFi?''Where's the wifi?' is the first question any journalist asks today when arriving at where they have to work up their next story in the field. It almost comes before the story, because without connectivity the copy won't get out. Or doesn't get out immediately, which is the same thing in this instant communications socially networked age.<br />
<br />
It wasn't alway like that. Back in the late 70s I was getting on with a new career as a freelance journalist. There weren't word processors then, nor mobile phones. The CIE bus service was the internet of the day. Buses? Yep. This is how it worked.<br />
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Journalism didn't pay that well then. Still doesn't, but I made it work by getting two or three outlets for each story. The two local newspapers took news, and quite often I'd develop a local item into a national papers feature.<br />
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I had a big, old, but very capable office Ollivetti 75 typewriter, bought secondhand. After a meeting in Kilcullen or something else local on which I'd be reporting, the first job was to develop the film from my camera, and hang it in the bathroom-converted-to-darkroom. While it was drying I'd work up the story on the typewriter, sub the result and then retype final versions for their various destinations. I'd check the film, make contact sheets and print out the relevant pictures, and stick captions on the back. Generally past midnight, sometimes well past, it was bedtime at last.<br />
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The next morning I'd meet the buses going respectively to Carlow and Naas. The local newspapers had arrangements with the drivers to drop off envelopes with journalist copy in the shop or pub that was the bus stop, and from there the material would be collected each day. A similar arrangement was operated nationwide for the national papers. When I'd have a feature for the Irish Independent or Evening Press, it'd be given to the driver of the early bus and left in the relevant box at Store Street bus station in Dublin, from where there were several collections by the newspapers each day.<br />
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Urgent news stories could be dictated by phone to copy takers in the nationals, and in RTE. But I did mostly features work for the papers, so they weren't as time sensitive to need that kind of fast delivery.<br />
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As a system it worked very well, and saved us impecunious hacks the costs of postage too. Technically the bus drivers should have charged us, but mostly didn't. Kind of like how we hunt out free wifi today.<br />
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In the early 80s I was doing regular work for the Sunday Journal, new then and since defunct. As part of the gig I used to travel around the country doing 'Down Your Way' features. That involved going into a town cold, ferreting out a bunch of local community stories and taking the accompanying pictures, then doing a spread in the following weekend's paper. I usually managed to dig out some extra features in each place, which might make a colour centre spread in subsequent issues.<br />
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On those trips, if my choice of town was further than an hour's journey and there was a train service to it or nearby, I'd take the train, and if necessary rent a car locally for the day. My equivalent of today's laptop was an Olivetti 35 Lettera portable typewriter, a lovely machine of which I was very fond. Always one to use downtime to get stuff done, on the way back up in the train I'd type out my stories. Because typewriters were noisy, I always stopped when the train was idle in a station, so as not to disturb the other passengers.<br />
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I used the same machine in 1981 when I was travelling across the US 'minding' a group of holidaymakers who had picked up on a promotional holiday in the paper. On an overnight flight from Las Vegas to New York, I decided to get a bit of work done instead of watching the inflight movie. I opened up the typewriter and began tapping away. The general noise of the plane was drowning me out.<br />
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Or so I thought until I got a tap on the shoulder. I looked up and a big guy said, "Buddy, we can all hear you on our headphones and we can't hear the movie." That was before electronic headphones, and the earpieces picked up the sound through a tube system built into the armrests. I had no earpieces plugged in, but the hole into which they would have gone had the movie channel selected and was picking up my clattering keys. A quick apology and I gave up. Turned out the movie was lousy too.<br />
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Later I was recruited to RTE, which brought its own communications challenges. I was working with the embryo Radio 2 News and we regularly had to get material back to the studio from the field. Doing a 'phoner' live was straightforward enough, but if we wanted to incorporate some recorded 'actuality' it often involved having to dismantle the handset in a public phone box and connect an output to the exposed bits via crocodile clips. Hook up the microphone to the recorder, line up the recorded piece, say your intro into the microphone and release the pause button at the appropriate time. Most times it worked. But the presenter at the other end always had to be ready to fill in for 'dead air' coming down the line.<br />
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During those RTE years I several times put into action a technique which I often passed on to radio journalism students. You don't always need to be where the news is happening, but you do have to be where you can gather the information and report it from.<br />
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One of these occasions was a hostage and car chase. I had finished my shift and had gone to have coffee with a colleague. Before going home I phoned in to see if anything was happening. And there was. A woman had been taken hostage during an abortive raid on a city centre post office, and there was a convoy of garda cars following the kidnappers up through Meath. There was a TV news crew in the convoy, and they had the station's only wireless phone, an antique affair by today's standards and with a limited range. But they were sending back reports. I decided to follow on, make sure there was cover for our still rather Cinderella part of the news division, especially where the TV guys were concerned.<br />
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From time to time I stopped at public phones, checking to see where things were. Just before the capital town of the Royal County I was told that the convoy was in County Cavan, and that the wireless phone was no longer functioning. I decided to call into Navan Garda Station and see if I could get an update there.<br />
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I was directed to their guy in the station's radio room. "He'll know," the garda on the desk said. "He's in communication with the cars following up."<br />
<br />
He was indeed. And he very kindly suggested I stay for the duration, so I could listen in to what was going on. They even gave me tea, and the use of a telephone to send updates on the chase back to the newsroom. I was the one who heard at first hand the end of the saga, with the kidnappers giving up, and got my report back in time for the evening TV news long before the crew up at the action could do so.<br />
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Another time was when paintings were stolen from the Beit Collection at Russborough House near Blessington. It was my day off, but I got an early morning tip-off about the robbery from a garda friend. I drove to Russborough, and along with the station's Crime Correspondent Tom McCaughren I hung around for a while, waiting for something to break. In the end I headed back into Blessington, went into Miley's Bar and phoned my contact to tell him where I was. I sat there for an hour or so, then he called me back, saying some of the paintings had been found a few miles outside the village. I knew the spot, drove there quickly, and got the details from the gardai on the spot. As I left, heading for the nearest public phone again, I waved to the arriving TV crew who were a good 40 minutes behind me getting their own report back.<br />
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When President Ronald Reagan visited Ireland, I was sent to Galway to cover the presentation of a doctorate to him at UCG. There were no passes for a lowly radio guy for the ceremony itself, but there was a Press facility set up in the city’s Post Office. I checked it out, didn't much like what was there, and decided to go to the Great Southern Hotel. My idea was to watch things on TV there and use a hotel phone to send in my reports. An assistant manager was very helpful, giving me a room to myself with a direct line. Then he said the White House Press Corps had taken over the ballroom in the hotel, and maybe I'd find some useful information there? Surprisingly, my RTE credentials got me in, and for the rest of the afternoon I watched the President’s arrival and the ceremony on the various American networks' live feeds, much more than I'd have seen on RTE TV in the room I'd been given. Every half hour or so I'd leave the American guys and do my phone report back for Radio 2 News, in the best of comfort and closer to what was going on than were many of my other colleagues.<br />
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Today it's all about tweeting, Facebooking, and blogging direct from whatever the event is. In my case now almost always related to motoring. There's no more seeking out public phones to dismantle, no clacketing away at noisy portable typewriters, or sitting in a pub waiting for the phone to ring. With mobile phones, iPads and wifi you can be, have to be, at the centre of things.<br />
<br />
So, guys, what's that wifi password again...?Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7156248.post-54642447213336784632012-03-10T22:45:00.004+00:002012-03-10T23:13:32.617+00:00A jolt to the family memory bankI have just been reading a little of my past from another’s perspective, and it excites a strange feeling. Good, if somewhat eerie.<br />
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It came about with Brendan O’Connell giving me copies of some memoirs written by a relation of the Nolan family. To put it into perspective, we Byrnes, O’Connells, and said Nolans are all related. That story is longtailed, but I might get to do it someday.<br />
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Anyhow, the memoirs I mention are written by a Phyllis Brugnolotti in New York. There are also a couple of ’fiction’ pieces written by a Joan Comiskey from Leonia, New Jersey, in which I recognise distant relations.<br />
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Phyllis is the one which is most in my mind at the moment. Her pieces are about her mother, her times and tribulations and how she went to America from her native Ballylinan. And also about her grandmother, who was my grandfather’s sister Katherine Agnes (Katie) and who left Kilcullen to marry a Michael Shortall in Ballylinan.<br />
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The details of what Phyllis has written I’ll leave to another article, but what has thrown me into a timeloop this evening are all the people she mentions who are in my own family folkmemory. Her remembrances add to my own in a way that makes them much more rounded.<br />
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So I now have more detail on how my grandfather was perceived by a considerably older sister (he was the last of seven, all the others girls), and how that same sister showed many of the same business traits that I remember from my own grandfather, and my own father too. Also that she had six children of her own (one of whom came 'home' and married a Nolan).<br />
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She writes about my ’Uncle’ Barney, who was a prisoner of war in Japan, and wonders about the details of his life before he died indirectly in the 50s of his wartime privations. And about Katie’s sisters Nora and Peg who raised him after their other sister ’Birdie’ died shortly after his birth. I have fairly recently worked out a few of these details for myself, but there’s a richer vein here.<br />
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My dad Jim Byrne is also mentioned in the piece. I have, of course, more direct memories than Phyllis has of him. But there are a few things she has that I didn’t.<br />
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I’m writing this as an immediate reaction to reading what Brendan gave me. I have also asked my son Carl in New York to try and make contact with Phyllis, who might still be able to give him, and his newborn son Gavin down the line, a little more insight into where they came from.<br />
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But just for now, I wanted to say that I feel very much closer to my forebears tonight. Thank you Phyllis, and Joan, for writing what you did. It is similar to what I’ve been doing for some years now, so that my grandchildren will know where they came from.<br />
<br />
And me too.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7156248.post-52502623880341783312012-03-01T19:08:00.004+00:002012-03-01T19:12:55.453+00:00Tommy Two ScoopsHe used to sell carpets. Then he opened a fastish-food place, concentrating on his ice-cream made on the premises. He called it Tommy Two Scoops.<br />
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It stuck. On him as well as the business. He doesn’t mind. Tommy is good on marketing, and he knows good marketing happening when he sees it.<br />
<br />
He opened a new place last fall. The Brightside Inn is a different place entirely. Not far from the original, but in a slightly more secluded area of Jersey City. Classy, so the Brightside is classy. Though not in any excluding way.<br />
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He gutted the original pub to make it the way he wants it. There’s a nice American bar. The usual sports-mad screens, but not as obtrusive as they often are. Music in the background of the restaurant area where you can go if you don’t want to eat in a bar environment.<br />
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The menu is good American. The house burger great, and all the other stuff equally so, especially the pastrami sandwich. Nothing is set in stone, so you can have your meals with or without any component and there’s no hassle.<br />
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Tommy knows the value of the personal touch. He turned up to say hello in both places at the times we were in each.<br />
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He collects people. Digitally. He gets your email, your birthday if you’re not fussed about it. He taps the details into his smartphone, and you know that someday you’ll get a message that might invite you in for a meal with a birthday surprise, or maybe a discount.<br />
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In the Brightside, he manages the music with an iPad. A party comes in, like us, with a Mother in Law, and he taps it for the classic 1961 hit of that name to celebrate the event. Or, learning we were Irish, what did we want to hear from home? So we had Christy Moore in the background for the duration of the meal.<br />
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Tommy reminds me a lot of my late Dad. He’s a goer. Tries things. Takes a flyer on a whim. Probably has had as many, or more, failures than successes. Failures aren’t the point. Having a go is. If you don’t, you’ll never know. If you don’t you never will. If you do, you might.<br />
<br />
Either way, Tommy’s the kind of guy who, once met, you figure as a friend. Like it was with my Dad, Jim Byrne, it’s personal.<br />
<br />
Jim Byrne of Kilcullen made himself, and his 'The Hideout' pub and restaurant, an internationally-known brand in the middle of the last century because he made it personal. Like Tommy Two Scoops is doing today in Jersey City.<br />
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Tommy’s real name? Doesn’t matter. Tommy Two Scoops works. Many of his customers in the original ice cream parlour are schoolkids from the nearby St Peter’s Prep School. Some of them, maybe even more than that, will eventually, years down, graduate to the Brightside.<br />
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In the meantime, their parents are going there. It’s probably called something like vertical marketing. For Tommy, it’s personal.<br />
<br />
He has the emails.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7156248.post-12132394004426376252012-02-15T07:33:00.002+00:002014-10-11T16:57:01.144+01:00The Little Shophouse, preserving dying craft<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjm4KYyhsCaHFuJb_xbEH7zIo7oc6D1tdMu3vFg9PwY1yOMWh7uEC10ccRkruYbv2R7_cstQOgsrW3l7dNOK2syFOn6T4hUY8nEz1fubQDG4L56ia_wfMs49yavc6KCmc6-bIuBlQ/s1600/singaporeshop1.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjm4KYyhsCaHFuJb_xbEH7zIo7oc6D1tdMu3vFg9PwY1yOMWh7uEC10ccRkruYbv2R7_cstQOgsrW3l7dNOK2syFOn6T4hUY8nEz1fubQDG4L56ia_wfMs49yavc6KCmc6-bIuBlQ/s400/singaporeshop1.JPG" width="400" /></a>It's a surprising little place in a street of mainly rather minor souvenir places and modest local cafes.<br />
<br />
The Little Shophouse at 43 Bussorah St in Singapore is run by gemstone carver Robert Sng and his sister Irene. What surprises is the quality and variety of mainly Chinese-based products on sale, which range from simple but tasteful carved pieces of semi-precious stone—including jade and agate—sold as pendants, through china sets to formal and not-so-formal items of Chinese dress clothing. Along with lots of other 'collectibles'.<br />
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But then there are the Peranakan beaded art shoes. Quite beautiful formal slippers, really, not much more. Until I saw the prices, which could range all the way up to the equivalent of six hundred euros ...<br />
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I had to ask. "What makes these worth so much?"<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiV3bHjVj5WQdU10T2otwVsBSLeJtE83ZJmrkBwaaoLu9E3ROlCeC1AhnQPZgGUVhaSVcugGZmIoS0JnIndOqhrYIXUxf3ESi1DnB8RPtPzESbO5jbPuXw4b1kRMOQtEEQo1vi9GQ/s1600/singaporeshop2.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiV3bHjVj5WQdU10T2otwVsBSLeJtE83ZJmrkBwaaoLu9E3ROlCeC1AhnQPZgGUVhaSVcugGZmIoS0JnIndOqhrYIXUxf3ESi1DnB8RPtPzESbO5jbPuXw4b1kRMOQtEEQo1vi9GQ/s400/singaporeshop2.JPG" width="400" /></a>Irene Sng is pleasant, soft-spoken. Easy with English. "Because they can take up to two months to make," she said.<br />
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She brought me to a tiny area in her shop, no more than a chair in front of a frame, where she had some work in progress. The shoes are intricately decorated using hundreds, maybe thousands, of tiny coloured beads hand-sewn onto a light textile backing. The smaller the beads, the more time it takes. And the higher the eventual price.<br />
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"It's a dying trade. Some of the designs go back to the 18th century when Chinese traders came down to Singapore and intermarried with the locals to become the Peranakan ethnic group.<br />
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"My brother actually gives classes in the craft, but it is too slow for the young people of today. They want everything immediately, like on television. Most of his students are young Japanese ladies, the wives of Japanese men working here in Singapore."<br />
<br />
Irene and Robert—"he's the artistic one in the family, and he has come up with some modern designs"—haven't always had the skills to make the shoes. Irene has actually been doing it for about eight years. "When we were young, we had neighbours who did it for a living. Eventually one of them married my sister and so the skills were brought into the family."Unknownnoreply@blogger.com