Yesterday . . . when all our troubles seemed so far away

Country Living with Francis Farragher

It’s part two of the alphabet for what passed last year and for what’s to come in 2022, with an emphasis on trying not to take this whole business of living too seriously. To borrow from the philosophy of Oliver Burkeman in ‘Four Thousand Weeks’, once we learn to expect our own finitude (really a nice word for ‘the end’), then it can bring a certain peace of mind.

N is one close to my heart namely the world of newspapers and whether they will survive over the coming years as the world of technology and instant access to information grows more powerful. I’m probably in the ‘old-fogey’ category – and there’s also the issue of having a vested interest in the business – but I’d find a world without newspapers quite a strange one. They are important sources of record, and hopefully here and there, just a little bit entertaining too.

O is for . . . well I cannot stay in denial about it . . . the dreaded omicron word that most of us here in Ireland had never even heard of up until a few weeks back. Now it dominates nearly all our headlines and news bulletins but it’s not all bad. While it is highly transmissible, it seems to be very mild in terms of symptoms. Let’s just hope it’s the last big storm before some calm returns to our normal lives as human beings.

P is for the pursuit of all those things in life that we think will make us happy such as loads of money, new tractors, lashings of money and fancy cars. Well, they won’t! P is for the practicality in accepting our lot in this life for better or worse and maybe, even just here and there, doing a little bit for those worse off than us.

Q is a query for National Lotto and the limbo that we’re all left in as jackpot after jackpot passes by without any winner and they [Lotto] keep reassuring us that we’re helping good causes and that some day the €19 million will be won. I’m inclined to agree with the simple assertion by Kildare TD Bernard Durkan that there’s just too many balls in the drum, for the jackpots to be won regularly. We could sum it up a bit more crudely . . . just a load of balls!

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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