Listowel Connection

In the wildflower meadow in Childers’ Park in August 2024

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In the Playground

Aoife brought a towel to the playground on Saturday, August 24 2024.In summer 2024 a girl has to be prepared for wet conditions.

Maybe it’s a combination of Kildare and Listowel influences but she loves a ride on anything resembling a horse.

She dried the slide before having a go.

She did her best with the swing but, by now, the towel was saturated.

She loved this musical instrument. Wet or dry this functioned.

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Best Dressed Lady

Maria Stack of Listowel took the title of Best Dressed at Limerick show at the weekend. Maria made her own hat.

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In the Paper

In Saturday’s Irish Examiner there is a section for readers’ photographs. In that section on last Saturday was a reader’s photograph of our own Matt Mooney whistling away, oblivious of the camera, at the recent fleadh in Wexford.

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Drunk

Last week I brought you 20 of the 30 words for drunk. When he read this, Mick O’Callaghan was inspired to write the following.

The Demon Drink

I was having a drink many moons ago in the IFI social club in Lamberton, Arklow and a man came in enquiring if his friend was on the premises. The barman told him that he was gone, and our man asked if was long gone. The barman’s response is still stored in my memory bank. Well, he said Johnny was nearly gone when he came in, but he went home before he was fully gone. That was his way of saying that Johnny was fairly drunk or ar meisce when he arrived but left before he was fully polluted.

Isn’t it absolutely amazing how many ways you can say that a person was drunk like maith go leor or he was stocious or legless or footless, langers, out of his/her skull, fluthered or just locked. In answer to questions about what state people were in after a few bevvies people could say s/he was three sheets in the wind, twisted, staggering, in the staggers, all over the place or legless.

These were moderate terms for peoples whose alcohol infused brains had upset their equilibrium a bit but then you can go up the scale and describe people as twisted, jarred, pissed, half cut, polluted, scuttered, ossified

Then you can go into the upper stratosphere of drink and drunk terminology when you say a person was paralytic, shit faced, rat arsed, bollixed.

I think I heard a lot of terms as I grew from boy to man. There was a certain bravado in saying you were drunk, buckled, locked, plastered, or whatever other endearing term was used for being maith go leor and that you didn’t remember anything from the night before. Little did we know what damage we were doing to our brains and general body health. There wasn’t the same awareness of health and the damaging relationship with alcohol. It was the rite of passage to go out for a night and get polluted.

Nowadays there is a much greater awareness of fitness and health and healthy living which are improving the quality of lives and living standards. Younger people are more attracted to gyms, sports arenas and the café culture preferring the skinny latte to the pint of beer.

The pub culture is no longer as popular as it was. I was listening to the radio today and they were speaking about the staggering fact that nearly 2000 pubs had closed in the past 20 years. They also referred to the statistic that alcohol consumption was at its lowest level in Ireland for 35 years and that we have turned into a wine consuming nation. There is also a far greater acceptance of zero alcohol drinks and drink driving is frowned upon. Worryingly there is an increase in the use of social drugs.

We are known all over the world for our love of the jar, and our pub culture but it sure seems to be changing. The takeaway is cheaper than the pub. Everything is getting more expensive from groceries, cars, fuel and housing. All these are putting pressure on people’s wallets and an increasing number of people are putting the demon drink well down the priorities on the shopping list. We will be a better off, healthier people because of this change in culture and lifestyle. Let’s hope it continues.

Mick O Callaghan

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A Fact

Between 1880 and 1916, the legal time in Dublin was set at Dunsink Observatory and called Dublin Mean Time. This time was 25 minutes 21 seconds behind Greenwich Mean Time (GMT).

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