TWO EMINENT MEN

I was sorry to hear of the deaths of two eminent 74 year olds at the weekend.

Firstly the poet laureate of Ireland and Nobel Prize winner of Literature 
Seamus Heaney.

A short quote from RTE:
A master poet and family man, a Nobel laureate and friend, a guest of royalty and farmer's son: Seamus Heaney had a life which was a smooth blend of the ordinary and extraordinary.
Reaching the headiest heights of literary genius, the ever-modest everyman insisted his poetry was just part of a chain.
"A written chain; we'll call it a human chain," he said when he gifted his manuscripts and notes to the National Library of Ireland.
Heaney's glistening career won him global recognition and a place among Ireland's literary heroes like WB Yeats, Samuel Beckett, James Joyce and George Bernard Shaw.
But talked about in the same company, the unassuming teacher from the 50-acre Mossbawn farm in Co Derry would liken himself to "a little foothill at the bottom of a mountain range".
Both a major talent and a decent, down-to-earth individual, the affable Heaney could smoothly move from dining with the political elite to playful weekends at his Dublin home with his grandchildren.
Born into a nation divided, some of his work was heavily influenced by The Troubles. Yet he never allowed his need to write about political violence to colour his patriotism.



Second eminent gentleman being Sir David Frost.

Short quote from The Guardian Newspaper:
At the outset, the very success of this man in a stupendous hurry proved somewhat alarming to some – as the author and translator Kitty Muggeridge said of him in 1967: "He has risen without a trace." Worse than that, he was nicknamed the "bubonic plagiarist", for allegedly appropriating Peter Cook's gags and sketches from Beyond the Fringe for his television show That Was the Week That Was, and so piggybacking on the achievements of others.

No matter. In the decades that followed, Frost became a media personality and comedian, as comfortable cross-examining the most heavyweight political figures of the day as hosting Through the Keyhole, the show typifying the fatuousness of celebrity culture, in which panellists were given a video tour of a mystery famous guest's property and asked to identify the owner from the evidence.

Frost could never be accused of being a stuck-up or patrician broadcaster. He was a bon vivant, smoker of big cigars, dapper dresser, chum of the rich and famous, and so much of a jet-setter that, for a while, he was Concorde's most frequent flier, travelling from London and New York an average of 20 times a year for 20 years. No wonder he told one interviewer that he was "not driven, but flown".

May they both rest in peace

A CONUNDRUM

Mystified

I spend time in contemplation studying various aspects of life. One aspect in particular has recently caught my attention and it is I think something that we all practice, in varying degrees. Although that phrase ‘varying degrees’  might not be the ideal, perhaps frequently would be better. How frequent is frequent? What about twice a day, once a day, every day, three times a week, twice a month? Perhaps once a month or once every two months - who is to decide?
I suppose that it actually comes down to need or desire. 
I told this to Mrs H and she asked if by desire did I mean pleasure?
Then she said that she didn’t actually believe that it was pleasurable each time. 
To which I retorted that it rarely seems anything but pleasurable to me.
Yes, I do think that the need to do so answers an inner desire in all most every case and in only a few rare cases do I feel that it comes from a negative source.
That to which I am referring can be practiced while alone, yet I mainly do it in the company of herself. Others that I know have absolutely no qualms about doing it in front of several people. I have to say though that I am not that brave.

If you would like to find out more about this particular aspect of my life you will need to visit
my other blog  wordsofaramblingmind.blogspot.com

English! which English ?

English speakers and those who are domiciled in England come to Ireland often under the mis-apprehension that they will understand completely the English language that is spoken to them during their visit; allowing of course that it will be spoken in a different dialect and at a different speed.

Nonetheless they can make themselves understood without resorting to a phrase book. Unless of course it is their intention to speak As Gaeilge (Irish Gaelic).

So when I moved to live permanently on this island of Saints and Scholars. I bought a local newspaper to acquaint myself with what was going on in my neighbourhood and I came upon an article which sadly stated 'Man killed while cutting a ditch'. Further on it gave the dreadful details saying that 'he was knocked off his ladder by a passing vehicle'

After reading that I was very confused! As to why he needed a ladder to cut a ditch, unless it was perhaps a deep ditch and the top of the ladder was some how over hanging the road… ?

Sometime later a friend asked me if I was going to cut my ditch, perplexed again I came home looked at all of my boundaries and saw no ditch. I mentioned this business of the ditch when talking to another friend, who explained to me that a ditch in Ireland is a hedge in England. I asked "so you don't use the word hedge then? " "Yes, we do" he said and then explained that an Irish hedge consists of trees or shrubs of a single variety and that a ditch contains a mixed variety.

I was caught again by the use of the word 'bold' in a sentence. "John is a very bold

at times", to which I replied "Bold was not what I would describe him as, more of a wicked old devil ". My friend said "Exactly ! So why do you argue?"

Ah' the penny dropped. Bold in Ireland does not mean courageous.

In similar fashion I was caught again when at a fuel suppliers I asked for a couple of bags of coal. "How many do you want ?" said the man, to which I replied "Two of course".

The retort was "Then why didn't you say two in the first instance, I'm not a mind reader". We then had a quiet discussion and I discovered that colloquially "a couple" in Ireland can be any number and not the specific two as in England.

I was on a learning curve. The Barracks is where the Garda works from and rarely lives in and I would know it as a Police Station.

The towpath is not just a pathway alongside a canal, it can also be a roadside path.

Many are the differences in meaning that exist and therefore I will not remove a visitors' own pleasure be disclosing all.

Before signing off though I will relate a bit of boldness that I played on an Irish companion when we visited England. I had met a friend who invited us to come and have a cup of tea at 3.30pm. On the way I suggested that we had something to eat before visiting Kenneth, to which I was told " Sure, he has invited us to tea we'll get a bite with him" and so we arrived. Ken gave us two cups of tea and two biscuits each, we had a chat then Ken told us that he was due somewhere at 5pm to do some work. So we left, with my companion complaining to me that he was hungry and where the "F****** was the tea?"

The difference being that an invite to have a cup of tea over here is always accompanied by either a pile of ham sandwiches or a plate of fried rashers, eggs, sausages, black and white pudding with bread and butter and cups of tea or coffee!