Blog

We had a couple of days of frosty weather this week and, right on cue, came our friends the fieldfares.   They come from Scandinavia in their winter wanderings and usually remain on higher ground of the Wicklow hills until cold weather brings them down to us in Kildare. They come in flocks sometimes mixed up […]

Getting and Giving               Word on the Week             30th November 2019. Black Friday has been successfully negotiated this week with many accounts in the retail sector safely in the black.   This import from the US (it is reputed to have started in Philadelphia) comes without the prior Thanksgiving Thursday where Americans celebrated the success of […]

The Arba’een is not only Shia Islam’s largest gathering, at 15,339,955 this year, it is the largest gathering on earth!    Held annually in the Iraq city of Karbala it now caters for a broad range of nationalities with a large contingent taking advantage of the new roads and cheap visas for Iranians. Arba’een means 40 […]

Aphrodite Rules?                Word on the Week                    9th November 2019. “Our lives are destroyed by what happened to Ana”.   So read Geraldine Kriegel in the victim impact statement as she recorded the effect Ana’s brutalised death on her parents.  Her husband was terser.  Referring to the lengthy sentencing both boys received he said “Forever is not […]

Fear stalks the land                          Word on the Week              2nd November 2019. The question was attributed to the youthful Admiral Nelson, “What is fear Daddy?” However unlikely that it was ever asked the answer would have presented itself to Nelson many times in his life until his mutilated body breathed his last at the battle […]

Trailer Tomb             Word on the Week                                  26th October 2019. “I’m sorry Mum. My journey abroad hasn’t succeeded. Mum, I love you so much! I’m dying because I can’t breathe . . . I’m from Nghèn, Can Loc, Hà Tinh, Vietnam . . . I am sorry, Mum.”   So translates the mobile phone message which came […]

On the 13th October Newman was made a Saint of Rome.   The 19th century man who led the way out of Protestantism into Catholicism in 1845 wrote up his conversion in his Apologia whose title translates “Defence of His Own Life”.    This was in 1864.   He had become a Catholic Priest in 1847. Prior to […]

World Cup Rugby                 Word on the Week              12th October 2019 It was a good idea to hold the competition in Japan.  It would popularise the game in the Far East.    The world cup would be an opportunity to showcase the best teams in action.   After all southern hemisphere rugby is the best and geographically Japan […]

Unplanned                            Word on the Week                          5th October 2019. It was with considerable distress that I read this week the largest cause of death globally is not any disease but is abortion.    The film ‘Unplanned’ which was showing in a few cinemas this week has not received much publicity as ironically cinemas would fear to […]