Archive News
Re-invention proves the perfect vehicle for success
Date Published: 05-Dec-2012
The first car I ever owned by a Toyota Starlet which, before it came my way, had one careful collection of owners – the good Sisters at the Convent on Mercy in Galway city.
I was only learning to drive at the time, and as my old, long departed friend Francie Higgins once told me, relying on kangaroo fuel to get me from A to B – in other words, I was rather jumpy when it came to changing gears.
But the upside of purchasing a red Starlet previously owned by the nuns was that I was regularly saluted by members of the clergy on my trips in second gear around the city.
Unfortunately this was at a time where taking my hands off the steering wheel wasn’t an option, so belated apologies 25 years on are all that I can offer now.
I was once stopped by one of Galway’s nicest Guards – for a chat, I hasten to add, as opposed to a checkpoint – and that legend of local football Art Friel asked me where I got the car, so I told him the story to which he replied: “Well there’s one Starlet that has seen both sides of life now.”
What brought all of this to mind was a recent story which revealed that you could now hire out the Popemobile for stag parties or to get you to the Debs in something other than a stretch Hummer.
Never mind that this tarnishes one of the great abiding images of the seventies – of the Pope leading the field up the final furlong in front of the main stand in Ballybrit – it’s the notion that drunken bowsies will be waving at bewildered passers-by and shouting ‘Young people of Ireland, I love you’.
So if the Popemobile is no longer sacred, what else could we revamp and rent out – perhaps with a view to making inroads on our national debt?
What about the armoured car that Michael Collins was standing beside in Beal na mBlath when he was shot? Surely that would have a resonance for Fine Gaelers on their way to a wedding?
Could we lease out the Dail bar in Leinster House for stag parties – or would that raise the tone just a little too high for the current incumbents?
Is there a case to be made for digging out those e-voting machines so revellers could have a poll to decide who has to buy the next round at the bar?
What about turning Bertie’s old St Luke’s headquarters in Drumcondra into a theme park or party venue, where you hide wads of cash, held together with elastic bands, around the place and invite partygoers to find it and then open their own ‘bank account’?
Or best of all, couldn’t we rent out the Dail for three months of the summer, two months around Christmas and Easter and every weekend so that slobbery men in ill-fitting suits could shout insults at each other that make no sense to anyone, before heading off in a huff for a few drinks?
We could call it Oireachtas Report.
So there are loads of iconic buildings, vehicles and facilities that we could make money out of if we were only just as clever as businessman Paddy Dunning.
He acquired the Popemobile when he bought the Wax Museum some years ago from former Fianna Fail TD Donie Cassidy. Given the quality of the works in the Wax Museum, one might suggest Donie sold him a pup…or is that pup supposed to be Fungi?
But in any event, Paddy has given the iconic vehicle a €60,000 makeover and added a Mercedes chassis. The vehicle now has 15 seats, including the original “Pope’s chair” and he plans to charge up to €300 an hour plus VAT for use of it.
But Paddy is not confining himself to hen parties or stag dos either because he’s looking for a sponsor so that he can take it around the country as a ‘hopemobile’ – whatever the hell that is.
A sign of how far we’ve fallen since those halcyon days of 1979 in Ballybrit is that the recent showcase of the revamped, souped up Popemobile didn’t feature the Pope at all – instead it was paired with wax statues of those new Gods, Jedward, admired by no one more than the troublesome twosome themselves last week.
Now if only they were actually waxworks…….
For more, read this week’s Connacht 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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