Archive News
Why going grey is no longer quite so black and white
Date Published: {J}
By complete accident it seems that I might finally be coming into fashion for the very first time in my life – because it appears that nature has provided a head of greying hair at a time when supermodels are paying small fortunes for that exact same look.
Obviously it’s not exactly the same look because they spend considerably more than the twelve euro it costs me to have a trim that is the barber’s equivalent of mowing an ever balding lawn – but at least we’re on common colours.
Just when blonde and brunette became yesterday’s look is of course completely lost on me, but the news that grey is the new black will come as good news to tens of thousands of Irishmen who never previously saw themselves at the cutting edge of hair fashion.
Of course there was that trend of shaved heads for a while – and many Irish males managed that look with little or no razor work at all – but this is a whole new phenomenon.
Kate Moss favours the grey look and other ‘household names’ such as Pixie Geldof, Pink and Lady Gaga have all dyed their manes a shade of grey.
Some call it silver but there’s no mistaking what it really is; it’s the moment when the bright you things want to look just like their nanas.
And it’s only a wet week ago that women in particular went into convulsions at the sight of a solitary grey hair.
If you pulled out the single strand, the legend has it that ten more would grow in its place and before you knew it you’d look like Grandma Moses.
But now the trendy young things are no longer running away from those grey days – they’re embracing them, running up to greet them, moving onto grey years ahead of nature’s schedule.
The irony of course is that not one of these new silver foxes is actually grey at all – they’re all dyeing their hair to look like old people while old people are still opting for shades of blonde or mahogany that wouldn’t look natural on a polished sideboard, let alone the top of your head.
The fashionistas say that the trend of grey hair first became popular in Asia as a break from basic black – and with all due respect, blonde Asians would, quite frankly, look utterly ridiculous.
Apparently the trick is to not go all grey. They suggest streaks of grey through a darker hair colour which is a style adopted by stars like Kate Moss and Nicole Kidman.
A man could get silver highlights in his hair – some of us are lucky enough to have them for free. The other option is to stop dying your hair and celebrate your natural grey – this can be liberating…just ask Marty Whelan.
Bizarrely, stylists say grey hair can actually make you look younger, cool and rebellious – which means that ad for the dad, going for a job interview and dyeing out his grey roots to ensure he looks younger, is now aimed in the totally wrong direction.
It also means that your average granddad is no longer an arthritic bag of brittle bones; they’re now the new cool generation which will take some time to adjust to.
Apparently this is all some sort of backlash to the eternal quest for anti-ageing techniques that have seen women inject botulism straight into their forehead to get rid of their lines to a point where they can no longer frown.
They’re injecting collagen into their lips until they look like particularly hungry trout; they’ve been nipped and tucked within an inch of their lives, removing the bags under their eyes to the point that they appear to have descended from some ancient masters of the Orient – but now their blonde tresses are turning to grey.
All of this should be greeted with a degree or bemusement by those of us who never put a drop of dye within an ass’s roar of our heads because the last thing we ever thought we’d be was trendy.
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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