This blog is a personal take on Listowel, Co. Kerry. I am writing for anyone anywhere with a Listowel connection but especially for sons and daughters of Listowel who find themselves far from home. Contact me at listowelconnection@gmail.com
This year’s Tralee 10K (14th Sept) will honour the great Jerry Kiernan, every participant will receive a commemorative Jerry Kiernan medal. Jerry was born in Listowel. At the 1984 LA Olympics Jerry finished 9th in the Marathon he also won the Dublin Marathon in 1982 and 1992.
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A Family Milestone
I have no sister and only one sister-in-law, so Breeda is an important part of the Ahern Cogan family. Here are the Cogan cousins at Breeda’s big birthday recently.
Me and my children on our night out
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A Poem to Ponder
If you didn’t get the roses, the chocolates, the champagne or even a card yesterday, listen to this from U A Fanthorpe.
Atlas
There is a kind of love called maintenance Which stores the WD40 and knows when to use it;
Which checks the insurance, and doesn’t forget The milkman; which remembers to plant bulbs;
Which answers letters; which knows the way The money goes; which deals with dentists
And Road Fund Tax and meeting trains, And postcards to the lonely; which upholds
The permanently rickety elaborate Structures of living, which is Atlas.
And maintenance is the sensible side of love, Which knows what time and weather are doing To my brickwork; insulates my faulty wiring; Laughs at my dryrotten jokes; remembers My need for gloss and grouting; which keeps My suspect edifice upright in air, As Atlas did the sky.
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Dating a Postbox
I photographed this postbox in Ballincollig and my Ballincollig based daughter found the era of this particular logo on the An Post website
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A Fact
Last month’s statistics to assure you that you are in good company
Pat Nolan’s Corner, Charles Street in February 2024
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A Poem
Mick O’Callaghan muses on the little trials of life when one shares space with a cat or dog
Feline and canine indiscretions
I must say I love gardening.
I get such mental and stress relief
From my regular communing with nature
Gardening is a very relaxing exercise.
When I am planting and weeding,
While pruning roses with my sharp secateurs
Digging up the fresh earth to the delight of birds
As they forage for any worms around
Which are silly enough to stick a head above ground,
In my raking, hoeing, and forking in fertiliser.
In bending, stretching, and pulling,
Pushing the wheelbarrow along
My muscles are stretched on a regular basis.
Relaxing too as I sit on my garden bench
Sipping coffee, nibbling fruit or scoffing biscuits
Soaking up the lovely perfumed natural aromas around
From carnations, azaleas, dahlias, and roses
It is all sheer heavenly bliss.
But occasionally I am taken aback.
While on my knees weeding
I touch some offending matter
In the form of feline indiscretion
The scent and aroma are rather foul .
Disgusting, stomach wrenching stuff
I curse the cats with expletives most foul.
Their owners too,
Who allow them to relieve their bowels
Onto my hallowed lawns edge
And on my manicured flower beds
I arise from my knees, cursing internally.
I scramble indoors to clean off the offending matter.
Scrubbing my fingers and hands with soap and hot water
With annoyance and anger bubbling up inside me
I now just abandon my gardening for a wee while.
And decide to head for a walk in the Town Park instead
To becalm my rising feline aroused anger.
I don my runners and progress out the front door
I pass by Sean Lios Houses and arrive in The Park
To begin my circuits before it gets dark
While strolling, I scent a strange smell
Which follows me around and lingers like hell
In the air around my personal space.
I bring it home to the hall in my head.
As I cross the threshold, I get a strange feeling
Senior house management greets me strangely,
Commenting on the stinking smell now pervading the house
I am quickly banished outside the front door
To take off my runners and examine them more
Whereupon I note some foreign matter
In the form of stinking rotten dog poo most foul
All clogged between the ridges of my runners.
I take them off and I was banished to the yard.
And am ordered to do some immediate de-fumigation
So, I take out garden hose, brush, and disinfectant
To clean doggie poo matter
From the parts of my runners that were canine infected
So now disinfected I’m allowed back into the hall.
I reflect on my day, and I curse humans who have the gall
To let their darling four-legged friends
Deposit their excrement in public at their will.
I don’t own a cat or dog, never did, never will.
And still here I am, inconvenienced, discommoded.
By the indiscriminate depositing actions
Of purring feline and barking canine household pets
Whose owners are not fully aware just yet
Of the toileting habits of their darling pets
And certainly, need more training
In poo bagging and binning
To avoid poo litter sinning.
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Trust
Look mom, no hands,
Look mom, no lock.
I was delighted, if a little surprised, to see a young visitor park their bike without a thought to its safety.
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Trying to Make a Connection
Here is an email from the postbag. Maybe someone is researching the same family and would like to get in touch.
Hi Mary,
I have done some research on my family name and have traced my great-great grandfather and he had come from Listowel.
I am come from Australia to play in the Over 70 football World Cup in Cardiff Wales in August, and looking at coming to Listowel as well.
His name was William Joseph Pierse born 1815 maybe 1819, died 1861 aged 42 or 47? There are 2 death ages on the same document.
His father may have been a surgeons tool maker in Listowel maybe David Pierse?
There is one search at says William was born in 1829? But this made him too young and David Pierse father born 1810 which makes him too young.
Maybe there was two William Pierse from Listowel born 10 years apart.
He, William, became a surgeon, studying at LAC Dublin and came to Australia as a ships surgeon in 1852.
The ship sank in Port Phillip bay and he stayed and married a passenger Elissa Newman.
From here I can follow the family history and how our name changed to the spelling Pierce in the late 1890’s
Told the Pierse with S was Catholic and getting work for Irish Catholic’s was hard in Australia then.
I have seen that you have had other enquires about the same name maybe you have some more info for me before I come.
Keith Pierce. Sydney Aust.
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An Spideog concluded
David Kissane
Post Torun
The weeks after Torun brought some challenging stories for some who had been involved in those championships. The story of our Kerry walking colleague Pat Murphy and his severe stroke was among the more unfortunate ones. Pat’s courage has seen him walking again at Christmas.
When the British Masters walk championships got underway in Derby on a warm September Saturday, my opponent from Torun, Ian Torode was not at the starting line. Hopefully he will be in London in February for the indoors.
And there were more sad stories also. We know we are not getting any younger, but surely we should be allowed to get a bit luckier. This scribbler can account himself among the lucky ones this summer. After a day that began at 6am in July at the national juvenile championships in Tullamore coaching and doing photography, I fell asleep in my van on the way home. No one injured. Luckily. My beloved van wasn’t so lucky and is now recycled. Information suggests that the neck pain and PT playbacks will fade but my advice to any driver is…do not drive when weary. One in five fatal road accidents are due to tiredness.
Dancing in the dark
But the post-Torun period brought some new departures. My walking colleague Serena analysed a missing ingredient to my training. She has a keen eye for such things. She got the bright idea that early morning runs would suit her lifestyle. Would I like to join her? I thought it was some kind of joke, because Serena can be very funny. At times!
Anyway, why not, I says. So began a series of dawn walks/jogs/runs. Up at 6am, in the Ardfert Recreation Centre at 6.30am and watch the sun rise. Serena’s friend Sharon started the sessions also, and she was becoming quite a walker/runner when fate led her in another direction. Then Denis joined in for a while, then Martina, then Marian, then Lisa and a few more on occasion. My cynical neighbour called us the ARC Angels!
But I was hooked. Even when Serena couldn’t attend, especially if she was after getting her hair done or such like, the dawn runs/walks became obligatory in my schedule. It was indeed one of the missing links in my previous training regime.
And then April became May and the mornings got brighter and the birds sang for us and June became July and I was able to celebrate my 70th birthday with a morning walk. And August became September and mornings had broken like the first mornings, to quote the song. October morphed into November and the mornings became so dark that we couldn’t see each other. Serena said that was no bad thing! It became a Mick Molloy/Martin McEvilly situation. Running in the dark. Dancing in the dark.
It carried us through the national outdoors, the British Masters, the Dublin Marathon, the cross country season and the 10K national walks. Then December brought some wet pre-dawns as well morning starry skies – the plough in the stars was so near once that I could have ploughed a furrow with it. Now I am instructed to be at the ARC in the morning at 6.30 for the first 2024 session.
It’s been some journey from crossing the Wisla in March to crossing the Spideog today on January 1st. 2024
Let the magic and the madness continue.
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He Did It
When a contestant wins at Countdown for 8 consecutive weeks he is declared an octochamp and he is retired from competition until the finals in June.
Jack Harvey, with the very tenuous Listowel connection (see previous post), has achieved that honour. And he didn’t need a conundrum to get him there.
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A Fact
During WW2 a complete blackout was observed in the cities and towns of Britain so that German bombers could not easily find their targets in the dark.
However, furnaces from steam trains glowed brightly and could be spotted by enemy navigators. If a train driver heard a plane overhead, he knew that the plan would be to follow the line of light and be led straight to a town or airfield. So train drivers were instructed , if they heard an aircraft, to pull into the nearest siding and leg it away from the train.
These were, of course, goods trains, so no passengers to evacuate.
The year 2022 was a bad year for Martin (McEvilly), health-wise. Cancer entered his life and hard training was ruled out. “You need hard work for the world championships and there was no way that could be done” he says. “I had neither the speed nor strength for the course in Torun”. The two hills on the course were the worst! You would want to be doing twenty mile runs to run decent on that!
Martin rates Danny McDaid, Donie Walsh and a young Jerry Kiernan highly in his thoughts of running in days gone by. John Treacy and Eamonn Coghlan are up there in a great era. He remembers the late Pat O’Shea from Kerry as a great man over the track and the road. Martin beat him only once on the road in Adare, “but Pat probably had a bad day that day!” A solid Kerry man was Pat O’Shea and Martin could handle him ok in cross country. They shared many masters international trips together. “We were good friends” he says sadly on the loss of a fellow-athlete.
Martin’s plans are to get fully fit again and compete for the Irish masters as often as possible. He will be 75 in July so he moves up to the next bracket. He can do the long runs on his own but he hopes to do more speed work and he can only do this with groups. It’s easy to get the people to run with “but it’s not too easy for me to keep up with them!” Of course some of his speedy partners are much younger than him.
Age Is Only a Number
“My ambition is to run as fast as I can for as long as I can!”
If he can do it injury-free, it will be a bonus. Age doesn’t matter anymore. “Why can’t we do it if we want to do it.” Age is only a number, he jokes and adds with respect “The Irish women showed that in Torun. They were super”.
And they were too.
And then Martin McEvilly was off into the plane on his way to Dublin and Galway to continue for a new beginning. Adversity overcome. Secret to life tucked in his heart.
I made a note to try to run in the dark.
To be continued
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A Memory from the 1986 Yearbook
July 13 1985 is a date I’ll never forget for on that day I gave birth to my younger daughter.
The world and his mother was glued to the TV as a massive concert on both sides of the Atlantic was raising funds to save starving babies in Africa. My little mite came in at just under 2 lbs but she was had the benefit of first world medical care and lived to tell the tale.
I was cruelly aware of the difference location makes in your chances of survival.
Here is an account of that day from girls for whom the concert was the highlight of the day.
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Shrove Tuesday; Skelliging Night
Today is Shrove Tuesday, the day before Lent begins. Traditionally households feast on pancakes, in an effort to use up all the eggs and flour in the house before the austerities of Lent.
Another tradition dates back to the time of the monks on Skellig. When the method of calculating Easter was changed, Ireland stuck with the old method initially but eventually came into line with the rest of the christian world. That is, all of Ireland except Skellig Michael.
Mariages were not celebrated for the 40 days of Lent so anyone who wasn’t married would have to wait until after Easter Sunday to get hitched.
That began this grotesque custom, whereby men and boys were allowed to chase unmarried women, tie them up and pretend to transport them to the remote Kerry Island which was the only place they could marry them.
It was all a bizarre pantomime but a fairly cruel one. I’m told Skelliging, as this custom was called, was practiced in Listowel up to the 1950s.
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A postbox in Ballincollig
I looked up the An Post website but I couldn’t find any account of when this branding with the “An” left out came in.
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A Fact
Catherine Moylan started this by gifting me a bo0k of facts. Now other blog followers are helping out with this little end piece that has become a popular feature of Listowel Connection, despite having little or no Listowel connection.
Today it’s the turn of Helen Mitchell, formerly Helen Gore of this parish.
Arachibutyrophobia (Fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of your mouth)
Arachibutyrophobia is the fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of your mouth. While the phenomenon has happened to everyone at one point or another, people with arachibutyrophobia are extremely afraid of it. The severity of arachibutyrophobia varies from person to person. Some with this condition may be able to eat small amounts of peanut butter, but others will completely avoid eating peanut butter.
I’ve already told the story of Torun 2023 and my 11th place finish which still hurts (in the ego).
A long taxi-drive to Bydgoszcz airport and arrived at my most unfavourite place on a return journey. Especially with no medal. The waiting area. If purgatory exists, it is a waiting area in an airport on the return journey. Time moves like my legs on a Monday run. Treacle on the surface of mars. The queue for the Empire State Building. Tuesday morning traffic on the M50. The traffic to Banna on a July Sunday.
Luckily, some of the Irish athletes were returning from Torun on that flight and when they gathered, the clock picked up. One of them was after running in the cross country a few days before and had an interesting tale to tell.
Martin McEvilly had competed in the M70 cross country. He didn’t look stirred or shaken.
Martin started his athletics career in October 1968, inspired by a relative. His first cousin ran in the Olympic Games in Mexico in 1968. He was Mick Molloy who was a hardy man who lived on his own. The nearest house was about a mile away. Mick never did any team sports…always kept to the individual ones.
He had four brothers who were all into running. He represented Ireland in the marathon in 1968 in the high altitude of Mexico. His training in the build-up included 120 miles per week on the road. And he was a nocturnal runner. Rarely trained before 11 o’clock at night. He worked on the farm during the day, all day and so darkness was his companion.
Hallo darkness, my old friend.
Mick Molloy was happy enough with his performance in Mexico but it was the altitude that got to him mostly. He wore a new pair of Tiger Cubs for the big day but threw them off with about 10 miles to go and ran the rest in his bare feet. Different days.
After that he ran in the 1969 Athens marathon and had a respectable finish in that. Then he broke the world record for 130 miles on the track a few years later in Walton Track in Surrey in London. That’s an unusual one. He had already won quite a few cross country titles in Ireland but once he got hooked on the marathon he never went back to cross country.
Martin McEvilly started running around the age of 21. If not a late starter, a mid-term starter, he says! He joined Galway City Harriers at the request of one of his friends and there was lift-off.
His first big break in the marathon was when he ran 2:16.4 in London in the mid 1970s. He had been living there for a while by then. He had gone to London for a weekend and met a few lads from a running club there and joined them. He stayed for fifteen years. “That was a long weekend!” Martin quips.
Like his cousin Mick Molloy, he could train only at night after a long day’s work in London. He became a nocturnal runner like his cousin. There was no other option and even London could be a pleasant place to train at night. Ten million people sleeping and dreaming their dreams around you. The sound of your own footsteps on the pavement. A few people wandering home after a night out. A cat scurrying over a wall. Quiet streets where old ghosts meet.
When he returned from London in 1986, he joined the masters ranks at the O40 stage. That went “all right”. Got on teams and trained a bit harder. Onward and upwards. In 2015, the GCH athlete won silver in the M65 2000m steeplechase in the World Masters in Lyon in France. Other successes followed.
(to be continued)
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Sunday Mass in Kanturk
The Church of the Immaculate Conception in Kanturk is where I received my First Holy Communion and Confirmation. I was married in Castlemagner but that’s a story for another day.
I was back there lately on a visit home.
This beautiful window is behind the altar. I must make enquiries about it but it seems to me to depict maybe the annunciation and the assumption.
I associate this custom with Protestant churches. In Kanturk, the celebrant priest exits first and stands at the door greeting the massgoers.
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From the Presentation Yearbook 1086
And they are still going strong..a great service!
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A Fact
Ireland’s national symbol is not a shamrock. It’s a harp.
Recycling Centre, Nolan’s Carpark in February 2024
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My St. Brigid’s Weekend
I spent St. Brigid’s weekend with a Brigid, known as Breeda.
Here I am in The Vintage with some of my Kanturk friends, Breeda, Lil and Margaret.
The Vintage is a lovely bar and restaurant beloved by Kerry people passing through Kanturk on their way to or from the Munster capital.
Our next stop was The Glen Theatre in Banteer. Breeda had given me a ticket to Seán Keane for Christmas.
He sang all the old favourites. He was suffering from some lurgy but he was determined to power through. We helped him out. It was a great night in a lovely intimate venue among my own people.
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An Spideog
David Kissane’s story of running and musing continued…
Cork poet Seán Ó Ríordáin declared in on of his inimitable works “Ba mhaith liom breith ar eirbeall spideoige”…that he wanted to catch a robin’s tail, a metaphor for attaining spiritual insight.
The robin worked for me today and before long, somebody was putting a medal around my neck and a small bottle of milk was in my hand in the district of Lios an Phúca (the fort of the ghost) which is the Irish for Beaufort.
But that’s another story!
Leaving Torun
Which brings me back to the day I was leaving Poland last March after the World Masters Indoor Championships.
On the taxi across the Wisla (the river I had crossed many times during the days in Torun) we passed the statue of Pope John Paul 2nd. For some strange reason, as I looked more closely at the statue, the peace and knowingness captured by the sculptor on the face of the last most popular pope reminded me of a painting we have on our hall wall in Ardfert. Bought in Blackrock Market in Dublin some twenty years ago. It is an oil painting by an unknown artist called Gunney.
It depicts an apparently retired man, painted from behind him, sitting in a wicker chair with legs crossed in a neatly kept garden. He is well dressed in a pale blue suit and wearing a straw hat in the heat of a summer day. He is calmly reading a book and his body-language suggests a life well-lived and all battles won. His garden gate is open, suggesting a freedom to come and go as you please. In the near distance there is a blue lake with a green island rising into a azure sky.
When I first saw the painting in the art and crafts section of Blackrock market coming up to my own retirement as a teacher in Tarbert Comprehensive, I wished that man could be myself a few years after retiring. Reading a book in the afternoon sun. Beside a blue sea. Spirit-free. But here I was thirteen years after retiring, and well, yes I have a reasonable garden and I do live reasonably near the sea, and yes, I see islands under a blue sky not far away, and I do have loads of books to read…but I cannot recall too many days sitting down on a wicker chair or any other type of chair reading a book in the heat of the afternoon. I’d prefer to go for a run! In fact, as my friendly Polish taxi driver pulled up beside the stadium, there was no place on earth I’d rather be on the anything-but-mundane-Monday in March 2023 than where I was. Ready to compete in the world masters indoor championships.
In fact, I had a crazy imagino-insight on the way into the stadium: that after the man in the painting had sat for the artist for a few hours, and the painting was complete, that he whipped off his pale blue suit and threw his straw hat into the blue water and slung his book and let out a barbarous roar and ran naked through the garden, jumped the well-kept hedge and headed off to the island and wasn’t seen till supper.
Way to go, man. Motion is lotion. Rest is rust.
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Another Gem from the old Yearbook
Aine Dillon on Paddy Drury
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+Mary O’Halloran R.I.P. +
Lovely, elegant, sylish, gentle, energetic Mary O’Halloran passed away peacefully on February 3 2024.
When Mary set up her Facebook page she called it Mary’s Classic Style. That was Mary, clasically stylish yet down-to earth and practical.
I got to know Mary through meeting her with my old neighbour Anne Leneghan and her Listowel friends every year on The Island. I photographed her many times, the last time with her beautiful daughter, Louise.
Mary had all the style and confidence of a successful city businesswoman but she never forgot her Kerry roots.
She loved every racecourse she visited and she loved all their Ladies Days but I think Listowel held a special place in her heart.
Mary’s warm nature won her many friends among the ladies of the Best Dressed circuit. She stayed apart from any of the cattiness that inevitably ensues when you put people in competitiion with one another. She was supportive of her fellow contestants and, in the true spirit of competition, she loved taking part.
Mary was dealt the cruellest of blows with the diagnosis of MND. She was the epitome of resilience as she got up, dressed up and showed up for as long as humanly possible. Mary had just retired and had launched into a great third age doing the things she loved with the people she loved when the dreadful news broke. I’m glad she got to travel and enjoy a few items on her bucket list.
In the courageous way she dealt with her illness, Mary evoked admiration in everyone who knew her.
Mary will be missed by her grieving family, by her many many friends and by all of us who came within her stylish orbit on the racecourses of Ireland.
Guím leaba i measc na naomh is na naingeal duit, a Mhary dhíl.
