Archive News
Chocolate Trading is dangerous for my mental health!
Date Published: 14-Mar-2013
Haven’t seen me for a while? That’s because for the last three days I’ve been drying my hands. I’m standing in a public toilet, holding my hands under a machine called something like Storm-Eco-Hygi-Dry, which is emitting onto my wet palms a tepid breeze more minuscule than a butterfly’s fart.
I try to keep my hands clean, but it’s no easy task. Having pumped a portion of liquid resembling a minor marsupial’s ejaculate onto my hands from the soap dispenser, I pressed the hot tap in vain, eventually washing the soap off in cold water. Finally, knowing my hands are far from germ-free, I give up and act the boy, drying my hands on my jeans.
As I walk out, I wonder if we haven’t all gone bananas over health and hygiene.
I’m no Howard Hughes, but must confess that with the norovirus raging rampant, when visiting hospital loos I wash with hot water and soap, then antiseptic gel, and then, as I leave, wrap my coat sleeve around the door handle that everyone else has used, with all their varying levels of cleanliness.
In UK airports they have hands-free loos. Entry doors have been replaced by twisting hallways. Soap, hot water and strong blasts of warm drying air all turn themselves off and on with impressive efficiency.
Mind you, we are innovative types in the West of Ireland. Before watching a three hour long film at the Galway Omniplex, I visit the Gents, because missing any part of a film is like viewing a portrait with its eyes obscured.
Sometimes in public situations you just can’t get started. So I was very impressed that the good folk of the Omniplex had installed a motion sensor water jet that serves as some kind of Pavlovian flow accelerator: the sound and vision of gushing works a treat .
As society obsesses about clean hands, I’m reminded of what my next-door neighbour used to tell me when I was a little lad: “You have to eat a bag of dirt before you die!”
In a world where people are becoming allergic to everything from peanuts to plastic, it makes sense to keep our immune systems battling away. I have no doubt that today’s super-clean homes contribute more to immune disorders than they benefit our health.
Trouble is, we are bombarded with so much nonsense about health and hygiene, we don’t know if we’re coming or going, so it’s just as well that the Universe made them different colours.
We’re told to eat lots of carbs and then told carbs are terrible for us. We are mammals raised on milk yet now, apparently dairy products are no good for us. Lactose intolerance is on the up, so the food industry has come up with a new kind of milk. I saw it advertised in one of those red-top Sunday tabloid supplements.
“Milk intolerant? Digest this” runs the headline on the ad, but in the small print at the bottom of the page they say that this product is “not suitable for anyone medically diagnosed with galactosaemia, lactose intolerance, a milk allergy or other milk protein intolerances”.
For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.
People’s living conditions less than 100 years ago were frightening. We have come a long way. We talk about water charges today, but back then the local District Councils were erecting pumps for local communities and the lovely town of Mountbellew, according to Council minutes, had open sewers,” says Galway County Council archivist Patria McWalter.
Patria believes we “need to take pride in our history, and we should take the same pride in our historical records as we do in our built heritage”. When you see the wealth of material in her care, this belief makes sense.
She is in charge of caring for the rich collection of administrative records owned by Galway County Council and says “these records are as much part of our history as the Rock of Cashel is. They document our lives and our ancestors’ lives. And nobody can plan for the future unless you learn from the past, what worked and what didn’t”.
Archivists and librarians are often unfairly regarded as being dry, academic types, but that’s certainly not true of Patria. Her enthusiasm is infectious as she turns the pages of several minute books from Galway’s Rural District Councils, all of them at least 100 years old.
Part of her role involved cataloguing all the records of the Councils – Ballinasloe, Clifden, Galway, Gort, Loughrea, Mountbellew, Portumna and Tuam. These records mostly consisted of minutes of various meetings.
When she was cataloguing them she realised their worth to local historians and researchers, so she decided to compile a guide to their content. The result is For the Record: The Archives of Galway’s Rural District Councils, which will be a valuable asset to anybody with an interest in history.
Many representatives on these Councils were local personalities and several were arrested during the political upheaval of the era, she explains.
And, ushering in a new era in history, women were allowed to sit on these Rural District Councils – at the time they were not allowed to sit on County Councils.
All of this information is included in Patria’s introductory essay to the attractively produced A4 size guide, which gives a glimpse into how these Rural Councils operated and the way political thinking changed in Ireland during a short 26-year period. In the early 1900s, these Councils supported Home Rule, but by 1920, they were calling for full independence and refusing to recognise the British administration.
“I love the tone,” says Patria of the minutes from meetings. “The language was very emotive.”
That was certainly true of the Gort Rural District Council. At a meeting in 1907, following riots in Dublin at the premiere of JM Synge’s play, The Playboy of the Western World the councillors’ response was vehement. They recorded their decision to “protest most emphatically against the libellous comedy, The Playboy of the Western World, that was belched forth during the past week in the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, under the fostering care of Lady Gregory and Mr Yeats. We congratulate the good people of Dublin in howling down the gross buffoonery and immoral suggestions that are scattered throughout this scandalous performance.
For more from the archives see this week’s Tribunes here
Date Published: 23-Jan-2013
SLIGO 0-9
GALWAY 1-4
FRANK FARRAGHER IN ENNISCRONE
GALWAY’S first serious examination of the 2013 season rather disturbingly ended with a rating well below the 40% pass mark at the idyllic, if rather Siberian, seaside setting of Enniscrone on Sunday last.
The defeat cost Galway a place in the FBD League Final against Leitrim and also put a fair dent on their confidence shield for the bigger tests that lie ahead in February.
There was no fluke element in this success by an understrength Sligo side and by the time Leitrim referee, Frank Flynn, sounded the final whistle, there wasn’t a perished soul in the crowd of about 500 who could question the justice of the outcome.
It is only pre-season and last Sunday’s blast of dry polar winds did remind everyone that this is far from summer football, but make no mistake about it, the match did lay down some very worrying markers for Galway following a couple of victories over below par third level college teams.
Galway did start the game quite positively, leading by four points at the end of a first quarter when they missed as much more, but when Sligo stepped up the tempo of the game in the 10 minutes before half-time, the maroon resistance crumbled with frightening rapidity.
Some of the statistics of the match make for grim perusal. Over the course of the hour, Galway only scored two points from play and they went through a 52 minute period of the match, without raising a white flag – admittedly a late rally did bring them close to a draw but that would have been very rough justice on Sligo.
Sligo were backable at 9/4 coming into this match, the odds being stretched with the ‘missing list’ on Kevin Walsh’s team sheet – Adrian Marren, Stephen Coen, Tony Taylor, Ross Donovan, David Kelly, David Maye, Johnny Davey and Eamon O’Hara, were all marked absent for a variety of reasons.
Walsh has his Sligo side well schooled in the high intensity, close quarters type of football, and the harder Galway tried to go through the short game channels, the more the home side bottled them up.
Galway badly needed to find some variety in their attacking strategy and maybe there is a lot to be said for the traditional Meath style of giving long, quick ball to a full forward line with a big target man on the edge of the square – given Paul Conroy’s prowess close to goal last season, maybe it is time to ‘settle’ on a few basics.
Defensively, Galway were reasonably solid with Gary Sice at centre back probably their best player – he was one of the few men in maroon to deliver decent long ball deep into the attacking zone – while Finian Hanley, Conor Costello and Gary O’Donnell also kept things tight.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Date Published: 23-Jan-2013
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