Photo; Chris Grayson…stag resting in Killarney National Park
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Predicting the Future
This observer of trends in 1953 was spot on with his predictions.
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Local Success Story
This story (text and photos) came from The Irish Times and Dunnes Stores
A bond has long existed between Ireland and France, and the two countries have cooperated on many ventures over the years. The 1982 TV serial, The Year of The French, for example, was a unique co-production between RTÉ, Channel 4 and the French broadcaster FR3. Over six one-hour episodes, the show depicted the historical events of 1798, when a small flotilla of French troops sailed to Ireland to support a rebellion against Crown forces marshalled under command of Lord Cornwallis.
Around the time that the show first aired, a fresh-faced young Irishman John O’Connor (now of Prestige Foods) had just graduated from culinary college and was planning on setting off on an epic journey to France from his home in Listowel, Co Kerry.
I had written to around 10 top hotels in France, looking for work. One of them wrote back offering me a job and, of course, I was delighted. The brother Tom, thanks be to God, decided to go along with me,” John says.
In anticipation of their big trip, the brothers’ heads were filled with visions of sipping vin rouge in sophisticated French cafés, when disaster struck. John received a telegram with disturbing news.
“There were no phones in those days. The only phone was in the village three miles away. A telegram arrived cancelling my job, three days before I was due to leave.”
Faced with the prospect of abandoning his dream trip, John made a quick executive decision.
“I was home alone at the time. I picked up the telegram and threw it into the fire. I didn’t tell the mother and father but I told Tom. The two of us went over to France anyway, and I went up to the hotel and said ‘I’m John O’Connor and I’m here to start my job.’”
The somewhat bemused French hoteliers replied that they had sent a telegram informing John that the position was sadly no longer available, to which he simply replied that, “there are no telegrams in Ireland”.
The hotel in question didn’t give him a job, but — either out of guilt about their last-minute cancellation or admiration for the brothers’ get-up-and-go attitude — they gave the pair free room and board for a week. Within three weeks, the enterprising duo had found jobs.
“It was either go home or stay and take our chances. Tom was a qualified baker and I had trained as a chef,” John says.
And so they stayed, honing their respective crafts and picking up tips about how the French do things. By the end of their sojourn, John would “go down into Paris as if I was strolling into Listowel town — you got so used to it. I enjoyed every minute of it,” he says.
Having accumulated experience working in a high-end French kitchen, John eventually returned to his native Listowel and, with a small loan, set up a delicatessen where he could bring that knowledge to bear for his local community. He was known locally as ‘John the deli’ for “18 or 19 years” and thoroughly enjoyed the experience. Eventually, however, he decided to take the plunge into food production.
“I went to a local man, Xavier McAuliffe, and asked him for some money to invest in a business. That day, we shook hands on a deal and we have spent 21 years working in partnership since.”
The business in question, Prestige Foods, has built up a reputation for its delicious desserts, made in-house with locally sourced ingredients.
Previously, when running the deli, John would be waiting for suppliers to deliver goods for his customers. Now, as a supplier, he was suddenly the one people were relying on to arrive on time with their food. It was a shift of focus and a steep learning curve.
“My goodness me, it was a different journey, totally. The first year was tough enough. We had about eight employees. Today, we have 65,” John says.
It’s a group effort at Prestige. “The team members are all equally important, each one of them, no matter what they do here, in production or in management. There’s no one above the other or below.”
The success of the business has meant that products by Prestige Foods have been enjoyed far beyond the company’s roots in its native Listowel. “We export to the UK, France and Switzerland and, of course, we serve our own home market in both food service and retail, with people such as the team at Simply Better for Dunnes Stores,” John adds.
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A Poem to Ponder
A loyal fan, Sue, enjoys the poems I share here. She sent us this one.
The Facts of Life
BY PÁDRAIG Ó TUAMA
That you were born
and you will die.
That you will sometimes love enough
and sometimes not.
That you will lie
if only to yourself.
That you will get tired.
That you will learn most from the situations
you did not choose.
That there will be some things that move you
more than you can say.
That you will live
that you must be loved.
That you will avoid questions most urgently in need of
your attention.
That you began as the fusion of a sperm and an egg
of two people who once were strangers
and may well still be.
That life isn’t fair.
That life is sometimes good
and sometimes better than good.
That life is often not so good.
That life is real
and if you can survive it, well,
survive it well
with love
and art
and meaning given
where meaning’s scarce.
That you will learn to live with regret.
That you will learn to live with respect.
That the structures that constrict you
may not be permanently constraining.
That you will probably be okay.
That you must accept change
before you die
but you will die anyway.
So you might as well live
and you might as well love.
You might as well love.
You might as well love.
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From 2014 to 2019, Ó Tuama was the leader of the Corrymeela Community, Ireland’s oldest peace and reconciliation organization, which works with over ten thousand people a year to transform division through human encounters, with focuses on sectarianism, marginalization, public theology, and the legacies of conflict.
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A Fact
The vicious faction fight at Ballyeigh in 1834 caused the deaths of 20 people. Some were killed in the fighting and some drowned trying to make their escape.
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