Galway in Days Gone By
A peep at life through an old set of drawers
Country Living with Francis Farragher
A bit like moving house, an impending change in workplace location seems to bring its own pressures, mostly emotional. I never realised that poring through old files, pictures, letters, CDs and books could transport the mind and spirit into a place that only seems to have been a day away . . . and yet in cases it’s been 30 years ago.
Most of us probably harbour some degree of a hoarding instinct. Little did I realise that I had stored up documentation about a new tractor model, the layers of the atmosphere, a trip to Italia ’90 or a printed weather forecast from a week in May, 2004.
Here and there on random TV viewing treks, I’ve come across programmes about ‘professional hoarders’ – the people who just cannot rid of anything in their houses.
The result of the fanatical hoarders tends to be pretty catastrophic with barely enough route space to access the rooms in the house. Junk takes up space – an awful lot of space.
And yet, I don’t how many times maybe around the garden shed or the farmyard when I’ve made a decision that a plant, piece of iron or rusty tool is of no use any more, only to curse aloud a few days later when the discarded item is just what I needed to plug some gap or hole.
I’ll invent a word for the practice – ‘hoardaphilia’ – and it’s not the easiest of conditions to shake off, even if strongly armed with a determined initial resolve to end up with a clean sheet in terms of both materials and emotion.
Going through old stuff for the purpose of discarding is in a way a bit like looking back on your life with all its little ups-and-downs . . . the parties, the retirements, the work colleagues we knew for years who are no longer with us.
It works in much the same way as a song or piece of music from the past that transports your mind back into a time and place now long gone from your life.
Years back, I had an old uncle blessed with a photographic memory but as the years rolled by and he slipped into his 80s, we would find it hilarious how he sometimes would miss out completely on a generation. Instead of the son or daughter, he’d actually be meaning the grandfather or grandmother. Over the past week, I kind of tuned into what was happening with him.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
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1923
Gloom after war
The special correspondent of the “Independent”, who has been writing of the aftermath of civil war in the West, notes that a feeling of apathy, due to the uncertainty of events, exists amongst the sorely-tried people of Connemara; that politics are referred to only with disgust and that not more than fifty per cent. of the people would vote at a general election; that poverty and unemployment are rife, and there is a growing tendency towards emigration; and that there are bitter complaints of the huge impost of rates and taxes.
It is only too true that there is enough of material for the pessimist to brood over, and that a feeling of gloom permeates country towns. But it is a poor tribute to patriotism that has survived such horrors to encourage this gloom.
It is the duty of all of us to get this pessimism out of the national body and to rid ourselves of the notion that we have not enough Christianity and moral sense left to restore our people to cheerful and ordered progress and industry.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
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1923
Peace negotiations
As we go to press, An Dáil is discussing the Peace negotiations between the Government and Mr. de Valera. It was announced on Wednesday for the first time that such negotiations were begun following Mr. de Valera’s “cease fire” proclamation of April 27, and that by the 30th of the month Senators Andrew Jameson and James Douglas were asked by him to discuss proposals.
They said it was for the Government to discuss; they could only confer. Into the ensuring conferences the Government declined to enter personally, but on May 3 the senators placed before Mr. de Valera the Cabinet’s terms, which were that future issues should be decided by the majority vote of the elected representatives of the people, and that as a corollary and a preliminary to the release of prisoners, all lethal weapons should be in the custody and control of the Executive Government.
Mr. de Valera relied to this on May 7 with a document in which he agreed to majority rule and control of arms, but added that arms should be stored in a suitable building in each province under armed Republican guard until after the elections in September, that the oath should not be made a test in the councils of the nation, and that all political prisoners should be released immediately on the signing of this agreement.
“You have brought back to us,” wrote President Cosgrave, “not an acceptance of our conditions, but a long and wordy document inviting debate where none is possible”.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App
Download the Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App to access to Galway’s best-selling newspaper.
Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
Or purchase the Digital Edition for PC, Mac or Laptop from Pagesuite HERE.
Get the Connacht Tribune Live app
The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
1923
State of the parties
Speculation as to parties after the next Irish elections is exceedingly interesting, especially in view of the enlarged franchise.
In Dublin, the view appears to be held by a number of people that Labour will make a great bid for power.
Dublin, however, has a curiously insular habit of thought where matters that concern all Ireland and in which Ireland has a say are concerned. We hope this insularity will rapidly disappear under the new conditions.
The country as a whole is backing the Farmers’ Party, and has not the smallest doubt that it will be the strongest combination in the next Dáil, and that it will oust the purely political parties, the one because it has resorted to force, the other because it has been compelled to use force to supress force, and the Labour Party because Ireland feels that at the back of its policy lurks the danger of Communism.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App
Download the Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App to access to Galway’s best-selling newspaper.
Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
Or purchase the Digital Edition for PC, Mac or Laptop from Pagesuite HERE.
Get the Connacht Tribune Live app
The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
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