January 2008 – For the fainthearted . . .

Egg money

There is a conversation during Brian Friel’s Philadelphia, Here I Come! that raised smiles at the theatre back in November. Gar O’Donnell who works for his father, the village shopkeeper in the early 1960s, aspires to marry the affluent, middle class Kate Doogan, daughter of a member of the Irish Senate. Kate is anxious that Gar have an income sufficient to support them

“You’ll have to see about getting more money.”

“Of course I’ll see about getting more money! Haven’t I told you I’m going to ask for a rise?”

…

Straddling history

On a bitterly cold January day, I called at an old people’s home in Co Down. An elderly bachelor farmer from the parish, in his late 80s, had finally accepted that he was no longer able to cope by himself and had agreed to go to the home because it was barely more than a mile from his land. I was glad to be calling at the home and not at his cottage on such a day, the cottage had few comforts and was rarely warm.

“Are you well, Jack?”…

Which God?

Exchanges yesterday about God of the south Dublin schools’ Rugby XVs made me think about our images of God.

Across the north of my home county of Somerset there is a range of hills called the Mendips. They rise steeply from the lowlands to the south and they are cut by a number of deep gorges. The most famous of the gorges is Cheddar, home of the cheese that takes its name. On the north side of the Mendips there is another much less spectacular cut in the rocks called …

Oval balls at lunchtime

Shane Hegarty of the Irish Times writes this morning criticizing the idea of schools holding a Mass before a rugby match. Pondering the question over tea and toast, there seem much more fundamental questions that might have been asked about schools’ rugby in Ireland. No other rugby playing nation seems to get so fixated about the performances of teams of fifteen schoolboys. All four Irish provinces hold a tournament, but the Dublin-centric Irish Times focuses upon the Leinster schools.

I enjoy rugby. I particularly enjoy French rugby; but maybe …

A long view

The Beatles were banned from Israel 43 years ago because it was thought that they might corrupt the morals of young people. News today of Israel’s decision to invite the surviving members of The Beatles to its Sixtieth Anniversary celebrations reinforces the belief that the 1960s were the years of social revolution that brought us to where we are now.

Did one pop group really provide the catalyst for a social revolution, or should the real question be as to what produced that pop group? The world changed not in …

The Last Tag

Baino (this is a link to her blog) tagged me for one of the meme things. Being an old grouch who finds even Facebook an insufferable bore, I was going to ignore it, but she might swear at me in Australian.

It was to list six unimportant things about oneself (that’s not hard):

1. I go to watch Bray Wanderers AFC fairly infrequently

2. I once got £2 from the Daily Mirror in 1979 for a letter I wrote, the only time I have been paid for writing anything.

3. …