Archive News
Imelda sheds her old image – and half her body weight
Date Published: {J}
It’s like having an 11-stone person on your back when you weigh 22 stone,” says Imelda Kirwan, who in the space of less than a year, has lost more than half her body weight.
Imelda, who was born and reared in Galway, now lives in Waterford, where she is a primary teacher.
Her struggle with her weight began in adulthood and continued until last year, when plagued by ill health, she realised she needed to act.
She grew up in Lenaboy Park in Salthill, one of two siblings in a family where healthy eating and exercise were the norm. Her father owned the well known Kirwan’s Butchers on Mainguard Street, which was subsequently run by her brother, Michael, who died in 2001.
“We wouldn’t have known what fizzy drinks or crisps were when we were children,” she says. “Because we didn’t get pocket money, we didn’t buy ourselves sweets. Whatever we got was doled out by our parents, so it was all very restrained.”
The family were all involved in sport, with golf being a big hobby. And she recalls that every Sunday, they would go on a mega walk, up Taylors Hill, down Threadneedle Road and onto the Prom. Later, Imelda went to UCG to study Arts, and her active lifestyle continued, as she walked to and from college three times daily.
After graduation, she went to Mary Immaculate Training College in Limerick and did a transition course to primary teaching, eventually moving to Waterford, where she has lived since.
It was then that the battle with her weight began. She got her first car and gradually stopped exercising. In addition, her diet went downhill.
“I lived alone and I couldn’t see the point in cooking dinner for one person,” she explains. So indifferent was she to the idea of cooking that she had been in her house for eight years before learning how to turn on the cooker.
“It wasn’t that I wasn’t able, I just didn’t want to.”
Imelda would buy readymade chilled dinners that could be heated in the microwave as well as sandwiches and rolls.
“I literally embraced convenience food. The problem is that you have no control of what’s in them. And then I’d add even more butter and cream. I went to the fair!”
That was in addition to huge amounts of chocolate, crisps and fizzy drinks.
“I could buy six bars of chocolate a day and I’m not talking your average size bar. I’d buy the family size and would lorry through them in a day. If I was watching television I’d be like a robot, going through a tube of Pringles and wanting a second one.”
Imelda, who used to bulk buy these items, says that she never thought about what she was doing and why.
“I ended up being 22 stone, and size 30-32. I’m five foot nine inches and I used all the excuses, like saying I was big boned. I’m not big boned!”
Through the years, she tried various weight loss programmes and went so far as to get a gastric band fitted in the early 2000s, at a time when getting this procedure done meant travelling to London. It didn’t work, she says, mostly because she learned how to get around it by making herself sick and then eating all over again. Liquidising food was another technique she used.
But this time last year, Imelda’s health started giving her serious problems and finally, she realised she had to act.
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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