Relaunch of look back at history of ‘Sickeen’ in Galway City

From this week’s Galway City Tribune – If there was a sweepstake or lotto draw in somewhere like Hughes Bar, the late city native Durcan Forde always used to enter using the pseudonym ‘Six Queens and the King’.

That’s how he referred to his children, six daughters and one son, and it’s how everyone knew him.

Now, more than two years after his death, those adult children are re-launching Durcan’s book to honour their dad and to raise funds for charities close to his heart.

The Forde family Valerie, Jean, Aishling, Amanda, Olivia, Peter, Josie and mother Della have issued an open invite to Durcan’s former friends and neighbours to the official re-launch of ‘Sickeen in the Rare Auld Times’ on June 5 at Galway Rowing Club.

Durcan had acute myeloma leukaemia, a bone marrow cancer, and died on February 6, 2020. He would have been 80 last October.

His youngest daughter, Josie, said demand for his book, penned and published in 2011, had “gone through the roof” since Durcan died.

Places like Charlie Byrne’s bookshop had been in touch to source more copies and there was interest from Australia and America.

“That was more of a reason for me to say, ‘this could be a good thing to do for charity’. Since he passed, I thought we would re-launch the book and give all proceeds to charity. So, the book is staying the same and is being re-launched. Any money raised will go to the Oncology Day Ward and Comfort Fund at UHG, who were so good to dad when he was so sick,” said Josie.

It’s being reprinted by Atlantic Print and Design in Liosbán Industrial Estate, and will be re-launched at Galway Rowing Club on Bank Holiday Sunday, June 5, from 3pm.

PHOTO: Durcan Forde (centre) at the Galway Rowing Club in December 2011 for the launch of his book, ‘Sickeen in the Rare Auld Times’, with his wife Della, and from left, Sarah Small and Siobhan Small, both from Castlegar, Aishling Forde, Headford Road, and Sean and Bernie Stakem, Bohermore.

This is a shortened preview version of this article. To read the rest of the story, see this week’s Galway City Tribune. You can buy a digital edition HERE.