When I was a child, people often told me they were off to ‘The land of Nod’ when it came to bedtime. Nod was obviously a place where a good nights’ sleep was guaranteed so I should have paid more attention. I should have asked for directions because I could do with a trip there now, but nobody seems to know where it is.
I’ve checked Google Maps, but they only directed me to a sleepy East Yorkshire hamlet called “The Land of Nod” which is near Holme upon Spalding Moor, wherever that is. According to the Internet, there isn’t a lot going on there which is probably a good thing if sleep is what you’re after, but it’s not the place I’m looking for.
There is another spot by the same name mentioned in the Bible and they reckon it might have been located to the East of The Garden of Eden but again, I drew a blank with Google Maps. History tells us it’s where Cain was sent after being cast out by God after killing his brother, Abel.
‘Nod’ means ‘to wander’ in Hebrew so the implication is that Cain, being in disgrace, was sent to wander aimlessly. I’m not sure how this relates to having a peaceful sleep though, because you would think that killing his brother might have given him a few sleepless nights but, there you go.
We all need sleep. We can’t function without it but the amount we need varies with age. Babies require about fifteen hours on average while your normal teenager needs about eight. That surprised me a bit because in my experience, teenagers need more sleep than the babies, and it’s a lot harder to get them out of bed too.
That’s not the only anomaly either. The experts tell us that a disruptive bedroom environment can prevent us from receiving enough sleep. Well, I can’t recall my children having any difficulty sleeping when they were teenagers, and their bedrooms could easily have been classified as disruptive environments.
It was impossible at times to find the bed, or anything else for that matter, because of clutter. Dirty washing and organisms that would be comfortable in a Wuhan laboratory, hardly made ideal sleeping conditions but they managed fine.
As you get older you need less sleep apparently and I can appreciate that. I wake most days at 6am and it doesn’t seem to matter what time I go to bed, and I’m usually fresh enough to tackle the day, but I’ve noticed over the last year or so, I’ve been dreaming a lot.
Most of the dreams have the same theme. I’m at work in my uniform, surrounded by my former colleagues and having conversations that seem real. We are all working away when somebody discovers I shouldn’t be there because I had retired the previous year. That comes as a shock to us all and I gather up all my bits and pieces and leave. Again!!
Experts tell us there are lots of things going on in our brains while we’re asleep. Just because our eyes are closed doesn’t mean that our systems shut down. The brain is still active, and it could be that it’s trying to make sense of everything it has consumed during the day. But before that happens, we have to get to sleep and that can be hard to come by at times.
Being over tired, going to bed on a full stomach or having a lumpy mattress can make it difficult to drop off but there’s another cause too – Bedbugs!
According to the Mayo Clinic, bedbugs are small, reddish-brown parasitic insects that bite the exposed skin of sleeping humans and animals to feed on their blood. Although bedbugs aren’t known to spread disease, they can cause other public health and economic issues.
About the size of an apple seed, bedbugs hide in the cracks and crevices of beds, springs, headboards, bed frames and any other objects around a bed especially in places with high turnovers of night-time guests such as hotels, hospitals, or homeless shelters.
It can be difficult to distinguish bedbug bites from other insect bites or rashes. In general, the sites of bedbug bites are red, often with a darker red spot in the middle, itchy, arranged in a rough line or in a cluster, located on the face, neck, arms and hands. Some people experience an allergic reaction that can include severe itching, blisters or hives.
Bedbugs can crawl about as fast as a ladybird and can easily move around. If you’d like to know if you have these creatures or not, just look for bed bugs’ skeletons after moulting, bugs in the fold of mattresses and sheets, rusty–coloured blood spots due to their blood-filled faecal material that they excrete on the mattress or nearby furniture, and a sweet musty odour.
If that’s not enough to keep you awake, consider yourself lucky. As for me, I’m never going to bed again. If you should find signs of these bugs in your home though, there are ways of getting rid of them but don’t do what the man from Detroit in America did.
This guy lived in an apartment complex and became overwhelmed with an infestation of bedbugs. They were obviously getting to him so to solve the problem, he sprayed his couch and himself with alcohol. He then sat on the couch and had a cigarette. While waiting for the alcohol to dry, he spotted one of the creatures and tried setting fire to it.
The couch caught fire and so did the man who was badly burned and by the time the fire was extinguished, four apartments had been destroyed by flames, and two dozen more were damaged by water.
I took my father to see Auschwitz, the infamous WWII concentration camp in Poland, shortly before he died. It was on his bucket list. He had a huge interest in all things associated with the second world war, so it was no surprise to me that he wanted to see the place.
I wasn’t as invested as he was, but I was still looking forward to the visit. I didn’t expect it to have such an impact on me, but the significance of that camp is so immense, you can’t avoid being affected. Just standing under the sign “Arbeit Macht Frei” is enough to send shivers down the spine but what really got me was the sight of miles and miles of barbed wire fencing with the ominous skull and crossbones signs warning of danger.
This was the first thing all those unfortunate people saw when they arrived at the camp. They must have been worried, but they had no idea of the real horror that lay ahead.
Auschwitz still exists today for anyone wishing to visit and to pay their respects. It’s a trip well worth making but it’s difficult to describe the experience to someone who hasn’t been there. It’s informative, shocking, fascinating, horrifying and depressing all at once, but it’s something everyone should go through. As time passes, there are fewer witnesses left to tell their stories of what happened in those camps, but those victims must never be forgotten.
A Nazi hunter was interviewed on the radio recently and he was describing how his organisation remains dedicated to chasing down war criminals responsible for the murder and mayhem that took place in concentration camps. They are determined to bring them to justice, regardless of their age. Most would be in their nineties now at least but the men who carried out these atrocities were young and fit at the time and that is what drives them on.
It’s difficult for us to understand what life was like under the regime that prevailed during those times but reading the accounts of the survivors gives us a little insight. Listening to the stories of the suffering would make you want to take up the hunt yourself.
There were many brave souls who risked their lives to inform the world of what was happening in Auschwitz, and it was thanks to them that the horror was revealed as early as it was. Rudolf Vrba and Witold Pilecki were two of those.
The Holocaust Research Project has documented the story of Rudolf Vrba who was born in Czechoslovakia and was sent to Auschwitz in 1942. He was involved in “Farm Work” which consisted of excavating the bodies (for later burning), of over 100,000 prisoners that had already been murdered and buried. When the SS, discovered he could speak German he was transferred to a storeroom, where the clothing and belongings of the dead were sorted.
He later became a camp registrar, and it was in this role that he saw first-hand, the horrors of the gas chambers and the crematoria. He began to calculate and “mentally record” the figures of those transported to, and later murdered, in the camp. Vrba met a fellow prisoner, Alfred Wetzler, who was 24 years old at the time and the two men became extremely close friends. They were from the same locality so they knew they could trust each other implicitly.
They hatched a plan to escape together and two weeks after escaping from Auschwitz, Vrba and Wetzler met up with members of the Slovakian underground Working Group and began telling their stories. The reports were sent to the US and British governments, the Vatican, the Red Cross, and Hungarian Jewish leaders.
The horror that was unfolding in Auschwitz soon reached the ears of the Polish resistance who decided to send someone to the camp to gather information. Witold Pilecki volunteered. He was a 39-year-old Polish war veteran who fought against the Nazis and later joined the Polish resistance. Pilecki is probably the only person to ever volunteer to go to a concentration camp.
He set himself up for an arrest in 1940 and was eventually sent to Auschwitz where he remained for three years. He gathered information and secretly composed reports about life in the camp, including its transition from a prison to an extermination camp.
By April 1943, Pilecki had all the evidence he required and decided it was time to leave. He escaped with two others and made his way back to Warsaw where he described the horrors of the camp but failed to convince the Polish resistance to launch an attack on Auschwitz.
There were others too who called for the camp to be bombed by the allies according to Michael Berenbaum who wrote, “Why wasn’t Auschwitz bombed?” Some said it would be an ease to the people imprisoned there who were almost certainly going to face death anyway and it would also put the camp out of action, thereby preventing future exterminations.
One former inmate of Auschwitz recalled hearing bombing taking place close by and said they got comfort from it and would have been happy to have the camp bombed regardless of the outcome. He later wrote of that event, “We were no longer afraid of death, at any rate, not of that death. Every bomb filled us with joy and gave us new confidence in life.”
Bombing a concentration camp was a difficult call to make and posed a moral dilemma for the Allies. According to Berenbaum, Americans cited several reasons for not doing so such as lack of resources, the possibility of failure, and a fear it might provoke even more vindictive German action.
It’s easy to be wise after the event but in hindsight, bombing Auschwitz might have been a blessing.
Green Party Leader and Minister for Transport, Eamon Ryan is no stranger to dreaming up unusual schemes. Growing lettuce on our windowsills, reintroducing wolves, and village car-pooling are just a few examples and now he’s at it again.
His latest idea in relation to housing is a little confusing though. “We need to get the balance right, we do need to provide housing for our young people, and it does need to be close to the centre and high quality, and at the same time numbers. We do need large numbers of new housing, and they do need to be high quality,” he said. But to keep the prices down, he has suggested scrapping car parking facilities to cut costs of building new apartments.
Ryan reckons not everyone needs a car space, and the cost of the apartments could be reduced by not having to include expensive car parking. I think he might finally be onto something. He can’t eliminate car parking completely, but we could tweak his idea and save some money.
Parking spaces in apartment blocks, shopping centres and industrial estates are usually marked out with paint. They’re professionally lined to designate individual parking bays, with spots for disabled drivers and parents with toddlers. There is a cost associated with painting those lines and that gave me an idea. Don’t bother with them because nobody pays the slightest bit of attention to them anyway.
I meet my buddy every week for a coffee and because of the Covid restrictions we usually get the coffee and take it outside to the car and have a chat. Lots of people have the same idea and wherever we go, it’s always busy with cars constantly coming and going and it’s amazing the number of drivers who insist on doing things their own way with no consideration for anyone else.
It’s common to see drivers abandoning their cars, with the wheels on either side of the white line, taking up two spaces and lone drivers parking in parent and toddler spots and leaving it there while they go for a walk.
The worst offender of all though, is the cuckoo in the disabled bay. The one who parks the car and then trots off to the shop. I know not all disabilities are obvious or visible, but I reckon if you can give Sonia O’Sullivan a run for her money, then maybe you should save the disabled spot for someone who really needs it.
According to the Irish Wheelchair Association, many of their members find simple tasks such as going shopping or meeting a friend for a coffee is an ongoing challenge because too often these spaces are occupied by people who do not have a disability and many of them can often be very aggressive towards people who attempt to highlight their inappropriate parking.
I’m not exaggerating when I say that sometimes the parking is so bad, I expect the driver to realise it when they get out of the car and dash back to fix it, but they never do. They just lock it up and walk away. It’s lazy, thoughtless, careless and very annoying but unfortunately, it’s typical of the way modern driving standards are deteriorating. A little consideration for other road users would go a long way.
I was parked near the City Hall recently waiting to collect my wife after getting her vaccination. I reversed as closely as I could to the footpath behind me to make room for others. A lady pulled up in front of me and reversed up to my bumper. She turned off her engine, got out of the car with a shopping bag and was heading off about her business when I opened my window to call her.
I explained to her that my life was going to get very complicated if I tried to move. She looked at me and threw her eyes up to heaven, jumped back into the car and moved it forward. Then she got out again and stormed off as if I had stood on her corns. If she understood what she had done, she gave no indication of it.
I had to go to my daughter’s house recently at half eight in the morning and it was an eye opener. They were stuck at home thanks to some bug they picked up, so I ran to the shop to pick up a few things for them. Because I’m not used to being out at that hour of the morning, I had forgotten what it was like.
The traffic was manic. When I pulled into the supermarket car park, it was like being in the dodgems at a fairground. There were cars whizzing about in all directions and everyone seemed to be in a rush. The narrow roads were full of children walking to school, and in some places, there were no footpaths, but drivers weren’t slowing down. They were oblivious to any danger.
Passing the school was a nightmare. Cars were abandoned everywhere, including the very areas that are marked out to prevent parking. Those markings are designed to make the place safer for THEIR OWN children, but some people either didn’t understand or just didn’t care. Others were driving at a speed that was totally inappropriate for the location, given that there were children everywhere. By the time I got home, my nerves were frayed.
The following day I was walking through town when I saw a guy returning to his car to find he was blocked in. A car had parked to within six inches of his front bumper and another one had done the same thing behind him. He was scratching his head in amazement but there really was no mystery. Too many drivers simply can’t drive properly.
Tennis has always been a popular sport in our family. My wife and I both play it and my son Colin, has played since he was about six years old. He is now a professional tennis coach and plays to a high standard as well. We spent a lot of time driving him to various tournaments around Munster as a child, but it was worth it because he loved to play.
It became obvious at an early age that he was competitive. He was normally a quiet, reserved character but turned into something else when he was on court. So much so, that I often wondered if he was somehow related to John McEnroe. I threatened to quit as his chauffeur unless he behaved himself and told him if he ever broke a racquet, he wouldn’t get another one but now I’m wondering if I made a mistake.
It takes a lot to become a top-class tennis player and it begins at an early age. If you look at the background stories of how Andre Agassi, John McEnroe and more recently, Andy Murray, reached the pinnacle of their careers, you’ll find a few common denominators. Determined parents, a competitive spirit, talent, dedication to hard work and a belief in their ability.
Poor Colin was born into the wrong family because I was anything but determined. I remember on one occasion when he was about ten, he entered a tournament in Sundays Well Tennis Club around the time we were getting ready to go on holidays. The caravan was packed and ready for the off, but Colin won his first-round match, and had to return for the second round the following day. We weren’t expecting that.
The caravan was unhitched and back we went to Sundays Well. Standing behind the court, I cheered and clapped like the rest of the anxious parents while secretly hoping Colin would lose so we could get away. That wasn’t the best attitude for an ambitious dad so it’s partly my fault Colin never won Wimbledon and why I don’t have a beach house in the Bahamas today.
I’m fairly certain those thoughts never entered the minds of Mr. John McEnroe senior, Mr. Agassi or Judy Murray. I remember reading Agassi’s autobiography many years ago and I was shocked to learn what he went through. His father was a tough man and drove his son hard. He even moved to a bigger house just so he could build a private court for Andre to practice on. His father was a hard taskmaster and so tough on Andre that he eventually grew to hate tennis.
He suffered for his sport and told a story of a match he played against Greg Rusedski. It was a long gruelling five-setter and after the game he ended up on the floor in the changing room and had to be lifted onto the table. His muscles were seizing up and he needed a massage before he could move.
Towards the end of his career, he used to get out of bed in the morning on all fours until he stretched himself out so he could eventually stand up. His back was giving him serious trouble.
John McEnroe had his trials and tribulations too. He grew up in New York City, but his paternal grandparents came from Ireland. He was a tough kid, and even though he wasn’t tall, he had a flair for any sport with a ball. His exceptional hand eye co-ordination was spotted at an early age, and he soon came to the notice of some good tennis coaches.
What he lacked in height, he made up for with speed and talent. He also learned that he hated to lose and in the early years whenever he lost, he just cried. That changed as he got older, and he made a name for himself with his tantrums on court. His most famous outburst was in Wimbledon when his ball was called out, he shouted at the umpire, ‘You cannot be serious.’
That behaviour was unheard of in Wimbledon and McEnroe was considered uncouth and unsuited to the All-England Club. The suits didn’t like him, but the fans loved him. The BBC weren’t overly fond of him either but ironically, he now works as a sports commentator and regularly covers Wimbledon for that broadcaster.
Andy Murray is another guy who has proven his worth through hard work and dedication and even though he has been laid low several times with injuries, he keeps bouncing back. He recently had a good run at Wimbledon after a break of a couple of years and now has a metal plate in his hip, but his love of the game keeps him going.
Attitude is everything to these guys except maybe for Benoît Paire. The Frenchman is controversial to say the least and has been in trouble with officials over his antics. In his first-round match at Wimbledon this year, the umpire cautioned him to do his best after he appeared to have no interest in the game and didn’t seem to be trying.
The crowd got on his back and booed him with one spectator abusing him for wasting everybody’s time. In an interview afterwards he said he didn’t care what fans thought of him. He wasn’t selected for the Tokyo Olympics either for what the French authorities called ‘inappropriate behaviour’ and in the Argentina Open he was cautioned for spitting on court.
In Rome recently he got into an argument with the umpire who called his ball out, and he responded by photographing the mark with his phone. He has spent lots of money on fines but couldn’t care less.
On second thoughts, maybe I was right not to push Colin – it might have been expensive.
Like everyone else, I was shocked to see the recent newspaper headlines in relation to gardai not responding to 999 emergency calls. It’s been reported that around 3,000 of these calls were related to domestic abuse. In one instance, a woman who was assaulted by her partner, rang 999 three times in one hour but gardaí never arrived.
An internal computer system designed to track and record 999 calls revealed that thousands of calls were being “cancelled” by gardaí. This means the caller did not get a police response and it has been reported that hundreds of frontline gardaí are thought to be implicated in the cancellation of thousands of these calls to avoid follow-up inquiries and lessen their workloads. The figure of 10,000 has been mentioned.
The Garda Commissioner has apologised and said a new system had been put in place to ensure that 999 calls could now only be cancelled under supervision. This confused me a little because in my time in An Garda Siochana, the response to 999 calls was always supervised. I know this because from 2001 until around 2005, I was a supervisor in the garda command and control centre in Cork city which dealt with these calls.
That centre is located in Anglesea Street and is the communications hub for gardai but also deals with calls from the general public, including 999 emergency calls. In those days, when someone dialled 999, they were connected to a call centre based in Limerick, where an operator asked them what service they required ie. gardai, fire service or ambulance. Their call was then transferred to the relevant service. For garda emergencies in Cork, those calls came to Anglesea St. where a despatcher recorded the details and sent a garda to the scene.
The system for recording those calls and the action taken was very basic. Each call taker used small index cards. When they received a phone call, they noted the details on one of these cards and in the case of an emergency call, they wrote 999 in the corner of the card to distinguish it from an ordinary call.
The details of the member going to the scene were also recorded and they retained those cards until they received a result from the investigating member. At that stage the cards were passed to me, and it was my job to check the results to ensure every call was dealt with satisfactorily before filing the cards in sequence for future reference. All noteworthy incidents were highlighted for the information of the various superintendent across the garda division.
It wasn’t a very high-tech system, but it was effective and during my time there, I never had an issue with members refusing to respond to an emergency call. Mistakes were made occasionally, and some calls fell through the cracks, but they were few and far between and certainly nothing on the scale of what is currently being reported. It wasn’t always easy though.
The call takers didn’t always get clear information. Language difficulties, bad connections and lack of correct addresses were common and made things difficult. It’s also worth noting that the 999 system was regularly abused, particularly on weekend nights. People used the emergency line for all sorts of nonsense. It wasn’t unusual to receive calls complaining about the lack of taxis and even requests for spins home. Complaints about being refused entry into nightclubs were commonplace.
Drunks thought it was amusing to tie up the emergency line talking rubbish or to make spurious complaints against neighbours, friends, family members and gardai or just to complain about the weather. We regularly received calls to addresses that didn’t exist and to incidents that never happened. The system received lots of abuse and it was wearying at times.
I knew what it was like to be on the other end too. In my younger days I responded to many of those calls. One guy in particular was a regular caller. He lived on his own in a dingy little flat and he obviously had his own issues to deal with. The only reason he used the emergency line was to talk to someone. We advised him on numerous occasions not to abuse the service, but it was hard not to feel sorry for the guy so we still responded.
I was sent to a call about a domestic dispute one time in the early hours of the morning. It was about 2am and I had difficulty finding the address. I drove around for ages until I eventually found it but when I got to the front door there was no sign of life, but I rang the bell anyway.
A lady opened the door and apologised for calling me out and assured me that everything was ok. I had no reason to think otherwise so I left and thought no more about it. She wasn’t ok though and she was subsequently assaulted and reported the incident the following morning when her partner left the house.
There was no intention on my part to avoid dealing with the incident. The lady looked OK and sounded genuine but that story being told by someone else might look completely different. Statistics don’t always tell the full story.
In my day, emergency calls were taken seriously and always took priority. Most of the people making these did so out of a real sense of fear and the vast majority were genuine. They wanted help and the reason we joined the Force in the first place was to provide that service. If that’s different now, then it represents a complete change in policing attitudes here and that would be very troubling.
I think we should keep our powder dry for a while though until we hear the full story.
Back when mobile phones first came onto the market in Ireland, my friend got one. It was the size of a brick. I told him he was wasting his money and I predicted they would never catch on. Not one of my finest moments but I take comfort from the fact that I wasn’t the only one lacking vision.
Twenty years ago, Professor John Sutherland of Modern English Literature at University College London, called texting “penmanship for illiterates” and referred to emojis as “face symbols.” He said texting was just a phase that would pass in “a year or two.”
Well, we were both wrong. Texting is still with us and has changed how we use the English language and not in a good way as far as I’m concerned. If you don’t believe me, just look at some comments on Facebook and Whatsapp. Lots of that stuff could have been written by people who attended school for a few weeks but got fed up and left again.
There are no rules. It’s a free-for-all as far as spelling is concerned and grammar is irrelevant. Sentences are usually constructed using abbreviations, combined with a collection of emojis, GIFs and other symbols and even these can be confusing for those not up to speed with the new lingo.
I heard a conversation recently about the use of emojis, and apparently the smiley face and the thumbs up symbols are already considered to be old fashioned. You can only use those if you were born in the fifties. The clapping hands symbol is also out of date, I’m told. I’ve just discovered where to find these things and already they’re old hat so I’m behind the times before I even start.
This new-fangled shorthand is convenient for messaging each other, especially when you’re trying to do it with one hand, but it is having a detrimental effect on the English language. On the other hand, some will argue that the English language is continually evolving anyway and now it’s the turn of the current generation to have a go. Maybe, but I still don’t like it.
For some people, incorrect use of language is not important but for others, mainly the older generation, it is a source of annoyance. If reading or hearing the words ‘I seen’ or ‘I done’ doesn’t bother you, then consider yourself lucky because it’s becoming more common.
Youngsters would probably accuse me of being snobbish, but I would argue that it’s just as easy to write correctly as it is to use bad grammar and incorrect spelling. It’s easier on the eye too, and if you don’t believe me, then have a go at reading a book called ‘A Pickle for the Knowing Ones’ without getting frustrated.
Written by Lord Timothy Dexter, this book is a collection of anything and everything that came into his head. The title made no sense and neither did the book. He made up words and spelled them as he wished, and if that wasn’t bad enough, he left out punctuation. He put all the punctuation marks in the last page and suggested the reader should place them wherever they pleased.
According to Samuel Knapp, who wrote about his life, Dexter was a strange character. In the first instance, he was no more of a Lord than I am. That was a title he bestowed upon himself because he decided he deserved it. In reality, he was born in Boston in 1748 to a family of farm labourers and at sixteen he got an apprenticeship with a Boston leather craftsman. He later met and married a wealthy, widow and lived in Boston’s well-to-do Charlestown neighbourhood.
His neighbours didn’t like him though. They considered him to be crude, uncouth, uneducated and loud. He couldn’t keep his mouth shut either, but he wasn’t stupid and knew how to make money.
Continental dollars were printed during the American Civil War and became worthless within a few years which led to the phrase ‘not worth a continental’. Dexter bought up as many Continental dollars as he could get with his wife’s money and got them for little or nothing. His neighbours sniggered at his stupidity but in 1790, Congress declared these dollars could be traded in for treasury bonds resulting in Dexter becoming instantly wealthy.
He built a massive house overlooking the sea to impress everyone but went completely overboard and turned it into a monstrosity instead. He had 40 giant carved wooden statues erected around the property, each depicting a great character in American history, including one of himself.
The neighbours wanted to get rid of him so they gave him some bad advice in the hope that he’d end up broke and would have to sell up. They told him there was a shortage of coal in Newcastle and advised him to start shipping anthracite there. He didn’t even know there were coalmines there already but took their advice anyway. The arrival of his coal coincided with a miner’s strike, and he ended up making a fortune from the venture.
But he still wasn’t winning any favour with the neighbours and felt that most of them were only pretending to respect him, so he decided to test them. Dexter faked his death so he could find out what they really thought.
He built a lavish tomb and a fancy coffin and engaged the help of a few of his trusted employees to arrange the funeral. Dexter watched from a hiding place as three thousand people turned up to eat and drink their fill and everything was going well until he left his hideout to join in the festivities as if nothing had happened, much to the surprise of the mourners.
A few years ago, I was about to get into my car outside the front door, when a bird relieved himself on top of me. I can’t remember where I was going but it must have been somewhere special because I was dressed up for the occasion and that’s not like me.
I’m a jeans and t-shirt person but I had a suit on that day, so it was either a funeral or a wedding but either way, I was destroyed. I had a foreign substance all over my head and running down my neck which wasn’t pretty. It didn’t smell great either.
My first suspect was a bird, but I couldn’t be certain. It could just as easily have been the contents of the waste tank of a passing Boeing 747. There was a lot of it and it’s hard to believe it could have come from a living creature. Not a regular bird anyway, at the very least it was an albatross with a serious bowel complaint, but I’ll never know because I was afraid to look up.
I went back into the house to get changed, and when my wife saw the state of me, she was very amused. I got little sympathy, in fact she told me I should be grateful because it was a sign of good luck. I wasn’t convinced that being covered in bird crap was going to bring me any good fortune and I reckon I was right.
I had tickets booked with Cobalt Air for a trip to Cyprus around that time. I booked them early in the year to get the best price but before I got a chance to use them, the airline went wallop. They went out of business, and my tickets went with them.
Not long after that, I ended up in hospital for a bit of surgery so as far as I’m concerned, that bird did me no favours. How a dollop of smelly, nasty bird poo on your head could ever be considered as a moment to be cherished is beyond me.
Apparently, we can thank the Russians for it. It was they who came up with the theory that the odds of being dumped on by our feathered friends are so small, you have a better chance of winning the lottery. So, being a designated target for bird poo is a sign of good fortune.
I’m not superstitious but I know many who are and there’s nothing wrong with that as long as it isn’t taken to extremes. Some people have great faith in horoscopes, piseogs and lucky charms and so on and more power to them. I know one family who insist on having a horseshoe in their house to protect them from harm.
The origin of the lucky horseshoe goes back to Saint Dunstan who died in 988 AD. According to the legend, Dunstan, was a blacksmith and he was commanded by the devil to shoe his horse. He didn’t want to help the Devil, so he refused. That led to an argument and when things got a bit heated, he nailed a horseshoe to the devil’s foot.
The devil screamed in pain and pleaded for help, but Dunstan refused to remove it until he received a guarantee that the devil would stay away from any house with a horseshoe on the door. The Devil agreed so the nail was removed.
It’s not clear which way the horseshoe is to be hung though so there are a few interpretations. Most of the horseshoes I’ve seen here are hung with the open end facing the floor but, in some countries, they’re hung with the open end facing the ceiling to stop the luck from falling out.
In many cultures, a horseshoe is the luckiest of all symbols, especially if you find one with the open end pointing toward you. If you come across one of these good-luck charms, you’re supposed to pick it up with your right hand, spit on one end, make a wish and toss it over your left shoulder and leave it where it lands.
It would be wise to check over your shoulder first though because I suspect those instructions were issued in a time when population density was nothing like it is now and the streets were much quieter. Heavy traffic back then probably meant there were two horses on the road at the same time. Throwing a lump of metal behind you these days is not recommended.
Sometimes, luck comes to people without the benefit of bird poo or horseshoes. The story of Frane Selak is well known in Croatia and while much of it hasn’t been verified, it hasn’t been discounted either.
Mr. Selak was born in 1929 and grew up to be a music teacher in Croatia. In 1962 he was on a train that derailed and plunged into a river where seventeen passengers perished. He survived and managed to swim ashore with just a broken arm.
He was also involved in a plane crash that claimed the lives of nineteen people and three years later, he was involved in an accident on a bus that killed four people, but he was unhurt. A few years after that, he suffered burns and hair loss when a car he was driving, burst into flames after a petrol leak.
Twenty years later he was knocked down by a bus in Zagreb, while crossing the road but survived with cuts and bruises. Maybe it was that final brush with death that convinced him to buy a ticket in the Croatian Lottery and in 2003 at the age of 74, he won €600,000.
He promptly gave it away to his family and friends and returned to the simple life he enjoyed as a teacher.
As of now, the Wimbledon Tennis Championships are scheduled to go ahead on June 28th which is great news for tennis fans. There will be restrictions for players and fewer spectators than normal so it will be different to what we’re used to, but I don’t care. The French Open went ahead with smaller crowds and even though they had to vacate the complex by 8pm, it was great to hear real people cheering again.
Tennis has a large global following, but its popularity could be about to increase following the news that it might be the secret to longevity. It has been suggested that if you want to live to a ripe old age, forget about the gym, the running track, special diets, or the exercise bike; just buy a tennis racquet.
I have played this sport since my early teens, not very well, but well enough to get me out in the fresh air and running around a bit. I found my own standard many years ago and never had any interest in advancing beyond that. I played for fun and that suited me fine because I’m not much of a competitor. In fact, I don’t have a competitive bone in my body, so I found some like-minded souls and stuck with them.
It has given me a lot of pleasure over the years, so I was delighted to read that it’s not only good exercise, but it can extend your life by as much as ten years. The International Tennis Federation (ITF) reported that tennis could increase life expectancy by a decade.
The Copenhagen City Heart Study suggested that the type of exercise you get in tennis – short bursts of activity rather than slow, steady plodding exercise – might be better for you. The authors of the study noted that short, repeated intervals of higher intensity exercise appear to be superior to continuous moderate intensity physical activity for improving health outcomes.
The cardiovascular study examined people over a 25-year period and evaluated improvements in life expectancy through participation in various sports and leisure-time activities. In total, 8577 participants were examined for all-cause mortality between 10 October 1991 and 16 September 1994 until 22 March 2017, with various sports found to improve and increase life expectancy.
Tennis topped the charts for potential life expectancy gains by some considerable distance, with results suggesting as many as 9.7 years could be added to an individual’s existence. More than other sporting activities like badminton, football, swimming, jogging, and calisthenics.
Tennis: 9.7 years
Badminton: 6.2 years
Soccer: 4.7 years
Cycling: 3.7 years
Swimming: 3.4 years
Jogging: 3.2 years
Calisthenics: 3.1 years
Health Club Activities: 1.5 years
A further conclusion of the study suggests that leisure-time sports which involve greater levels of social interaction are associated with the higher levels of longevity. That’s common sense when you think about it because if you mix with friends for a game of tennis and have a laugh while getting some exercise, that must be good for you. The bottom line is that regular exercise is better than sitting around all day and will help you live longer.
That explains a lot to me because my club, Rushbrooke Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club, (RLTCC) is one of the oldest in the country. It was founded in 1870 and I think some of the original members are still playing. That’s an exaggeration but there are lots of lads in their seventies and eighties who continue to hit a good ball.
I often play with these guys and even though I’m a lot younger, I struggle to keep up which proves that tennis is good for the muscles, heart, lungs, and mind. The social side has its benefits too.
Many people feel tennis is an elitist sport and it’s not for them which was certainly the case at one time. RLTCC was originally a croquet club where military officers and professional gentlemen from the locality could relax and enjoy the leafy surroundings in the company of the gentry. It was no place for mere peasants like me.
Back in the 1970’s, as members of a much smaller club, Mount Crozier, we often looked over the hedges at the grass courts of Rushbrooke with envy knowing that our genealogy wouldn’t support our application process, so we stuck with our concrete courts. Thankfully, those times are long gone and RLTCC is a very welcoming club today.
Other things have changed too. We’ve become more health conscious, more knowledgeable, and better served by modern medicine which helps us enjoy ourselves for longer. People like my grandfather would have benefitted from a bit of tennis back in the day. Health and wellbeing weren’t serious considerations back then and in 1964, he died at the age of 74 when I was about six. According to his death certificate, his heart was in bad shape, but he probably didn’t even know it.
I remember him as a small old man who sat around the house, listening to the radio in his retirement which wasn’t uncommon because anyone over seventy thought they were washed up. The average life expectancy of a male was around sixty-five in those days, so retirement signalled the end for many. They passed their time waiting for the grim reaper to give them a knock. There wasn’t much emphasis on having an active, healthy retirement because statistically they weren’t likely to be around for much longer anyway.
There’s a lesson there for the rest of us. It’s up to us all to give ourselves the best chance we can by staying fit and healthy. Moving is a big part of that and it’s great to discover that tennis is one of the best all round exercise activities. It’s also relaxing, even if you play badly like me.
Tony Mulcahy, Buddy Stoat, Brian Espy, Joe Keane, George Wallace, Billy Leahy
What’s the connection between a Cork tugboat, Britain’s worst environmental disaster and a daring helicopter rescue at sea? Read on to find out.
Back in February 1996, an oil tanker ran aground off the Welsh coast and spilled 72,000 tons of crude oil along the Pembrokeshire Coastline. It’s difficult to visualise that amount of oil but it would go down in history as one of Britain’s worst environmental disasters ever. The Sea Empress was a super-tanker, loaded with more than 130,000 tonnes of crude oil when it hit rocks in the middle of the channel.
Local tugs from Milford Haven Port Authority were sent to the scene and attempted to pull the vessel free and re-float her, but they soon realised the job was too big. Several rescue attempts were made but each time the ship broke free of the tow ropes and grounded repeatedly which caused further damage to the hull and allowed more oil to escape.
The authorities needed more help, so a full-scale emergency plan was activated. Thirteen tugs in all went to the aid of the Sea Empress and over the following few days they battled night and day to stabilise the stricken tanker. One of those tugs, the Eskgarth, skippered by Tony Mulcahy, answered the call and travelled from Cork to lend a hand.
Tony was a 56-year-old, highly qualified tug master with “Irish Tugs limited”, based in Cobh. He had 32 years sea going experience behind him and his tug, the Eskgarth, was considered the biggest harbour tug in both Britain and Ireland at the time. He remembers being at home on the morning of 16th of February 1996, watching Sky news while preparing to go to work. He heard a large tanker had run aground the previous evening, just outside the port of Milford Haven in South Wales.
When he got to work at 10am, he tuned the radio to BBC to follow developments. He had a feeling that Irish Tugs Ltd would be asked to release a Cork tug to help and if that happened, in all probability, the Eskgarth would be the vessel to go. In anticipation of the call, he headed for the jetty at the Whitegate Oil Refinery and topped up with fuel and fresh water, just in case.
At 8pm that evening he got the call he was expecting and immediately headed for Wales with his five crew mates, Joe Keane, George Wallace, Buddy Stoat, Billy Leahy and Brian Espey, all experienced seamen. 12 hours later, they entered the port, and saw the destruction for themselves as they passed close to the Sea Empress with the four Milford Haven tugs alongside her.
The Cobh tug was initially put to work unberthing and berthing ships in the port to free up the local tugs to deal with the tanker, but their orders soon changed, and they were assigned to help with the salvage of the Sea Empress. That was the beginning of what they would later describe as the most frightening experience any of them had been through previously.
There was a pilot on board the Sea Empress and he was directing operations from the tanker and communicating with all the tugs and ships in the area by VHF radio. By now, many tugs had towlines connected to the tanker at various points and Tony was requested to attach his. He reversed the tug to the bow of the tanker, which was already underwater, and the crew paddled waist deep in water to accept the towline.
With so many tugs involved, it was difficult for the pilot to remember all the names or indeed where each tug was attached to the ship, so he designated each tug a number. He called all the tugs and told them his plan was to try and pull the Sea Empress off the rocks, turn her around and take her out to sea. Tony thought that was a good idea given that the weather was due to deteriorate, he felt taking her ten miles out to sea would give them some room to manoeuvre if anything happened. They could also ride out the storm in safety.
The tanker was currently facing into the harbour, so they had to turn her 180 degrees to point her in the opposite direction, but they had to re-float her first. All tugs were working in unison, either pushing or pulling at maximum power to try and move the tanker and after about 2 hours, the pilot detected some movement. Shortly after, she was afloat and under command of the pilot while being controlled by the tugs.
About a mile outside the harbour, the pilot asked all tugs to stop as he was going to drop anchor. Tony wasn’t expecting that and at first thought he had misunderstood the order. The initial information from the pilot was that they were going out to sea, so he radioed the pilot to see if he had misunderstood. The pilot repeated the order and told him that he had been instructed to drop anchor and not to take the tanker further out to sea.
They now had a disabled tanker, loaded with over 130,000 tons of crude oil, in a very dodgy position. Shortly after she anchored, the rest of the tugs released their tow lines. Tony was under the impression that all tugs would be dismissed, and they would return to Milford, but the pilot called and told him they were to stay in their position for the night.
That left only two tugs still attached to the tanker and Tony was concerned because the weather was deteriorating, and the forecast was bad. He still believed that with such a bad forecast and a damaged ship perilously near the coast, this was the time to heave the anchor and head to sea to ride out the gale. But it wasn’t his call.
The storm blew and things were getting hairy on the tug. They were being battered from the wind, and the waves. The guys who were supposed to be resting suddenly appeared from their bunks. They couldn’t sleep with the noise and because the tug was rolling so heavily, it was threatening to throw them from their bunks. The heat in the accommodation area was almost unbearable as the engine was going continuously since they left Cork. It was like an oven down there.
Sleep was the least of their worries now though because the tanker suddenly started to move again. Tony was worried. He didn’t think two tugs would be strong enough to hold a super tanker against the powerful waves. They were already under pressure and very close to one of the channel buoys with its flashing red lights. The tug was rolling through an arc of close to 80 degrees and Tony had to jam himself between the control consul and the side of the wheelhouse. George Wallace had control of the towing winch and he was jammed in a similar position.
Tony struggled with the controls to maintain position as best as he could, but he soon realised that the Sea Empress had dragged her anchor and had gone aground again. That presented a dangerous situation because they didn’t know exactly where the cable from the anchor was and it could seriously damage their rudder or propeller if they hit it. If that happened, the chance of any of them being rescued was slim.
They battled on through the night and at about 0430 hours Tony recalls the most astonishing statement he had ever heard in his entire sea-going career. The Pilot advised him; “This vessel we believe is about to blow-up. We have ordered helicopters to evacuate the ship, but we want you to stay here”.
While considering their options, the decision was made for them because the rope snapped. They could have left then but they agreed that as the weather was so bad, they would stay close by in case the helicopters needed assistance.
Two Sea King helicopters arrived on the scene to remove the crew from the tanker in treacherous conditions. Large waves were hitting the bow of the tanker and travelling all the way down the deck and smashing against the accommodation housing. As the waves hit the base of the structure, the force of the water rose upward towards the bridge and exploded into spray. Tony was full of praise for the skill of the helicopter crews that night and described the rescue as truly astonishing.
The tug was rising and falling and rolling as the waves hit them and he watched as the first helicopter tried to hover over the deck just clear of the waves and as close to the house of the ship as he dared to go. The second helicopter hovered above and behind the first one and they were rocking from side to side in the gale force winds and bobbing up and down like boats in a big swell.
The first helicopter lowered a winch man to the ship which was now powerless and in complete darkness, so they only had the use of the helicopter flood lights. As the water cleared the deck between waves, the man on the winch would indicate to one of the men to be rescued to run to him. He would then grab the guy and strap him to himself and lift him to safety. They repeated that process until every member of the crew was rescued.
With the tanker grounded again and the crew all safe, the Eskgarth headed back to port, and dropped anchor to get a few hours’ well-earned sleep. Later that morning, one of the Welsh tugs pulled up beside them and gave them some newspapers. It was only then they found out that the media people covering the story had been removed from the area during the night.
Every house within two miles of St. Anne’s Head had been evacuated as the authorities became aware that the ship was in danger of exploding. That explosion could have potentially wiped out a large section of the local population.
Tony and his crew were under the impression they were finished and ready to return home, so they were surprised when they got new orders. A Chinese tug had arrived to help with the salvage and was attached to the bow of the Sea Empress. It got itself into trouble and needed assistance because her towline was fouled. The storm was still raging when the Eskgarth left the harbour to return to the scene.
George Wallace told me, “We got an unmerciful battering that night and it was worse the second time when we went out to help the Chinese tug.” When they got there, everything went dark, and it wasn’t until Joe Keane opened the wheelhouse door and nearly broke his neck that they discovered the reason. The oil that was leaking from the tanker was being whipped up on the waves and had blackened the windows. The tug was completely covered in crude oil.
They eventually sorted out the Chinese tug and headed back to the safety of Milford Haven where they threw out the anchor and waited for a space to berth in the busy harbour. While they were waiting, they received radio messages congratulating and thanking them for a job well done. They were exhausted by now and at 4am they finally tied up at the dockside and went to bed, physically and mentally drained. They had been working continuously for over 50 hours since leaving Cobh.
Monday and Tuesday were idle days for the lads and on Wednesday they got orders to proceed to the Sea Empress once more. As they got near her and saw the amount of oil on top of the waves, they realised that she had lost a lot of her cargo. This was the first time since the previous Saturday afternoon that they had seen her in daylight. The task now was to get the tanker re-floated and taken to a secure berth.
Thirteen tugs in all were attached to the Sea Empress and shortly after they started towing, she moved and was brought into Milford Haven to an abandoned jetty of a defunct refinery. Their job was done but there was to be no rest. Back in Cork, a large tanker was due to berth in Whitegate Refinery at 2am the following morning and they needed to be there for that job, so they had to leave straight away.
Tony paid a special tribute to his five shipmates and said if he had to hand pick a crew, he couldn’t have picked a better bunch of lads.
In January 1999, Milford Haven Port Authority (MHPA) was fined a record £4m after pleading guilty to the offence of causing pollution under the Water Resources Act 1991. The MHPA was also required to pay a further £825,000 prosecution costs by agreement. The cost of the clean-up operation was estimated to be £60m. When the effects to the economy and environment are taken into account, the final cost is estimated to have been twice that, at £120m.
An official report blamed pilot error for the tanker’s initial grounding, and said other factors such as bad weather, and a lack of understanding of the tidal currents were also at play.
I got a phone call recently letting me know that P.J. Coogan of 96fm and Cork City Councillor Ted Tynan were discussing anti-social behaviour in Mayfield on the radio and my name was mentioned. Apparently, some incidents had occurred over the previous weekend and Cllr. Tynan was lamenting the loss of community policing. He suggested the work John O’Connor and I were doing back in the nineties was an example of effective community policing.
It was nice to hear my name mentioned in such a positive light. As Ryan Tubridy often says, every puppy likes to have its belly tickled. I’m glad the impact we had on the community is still remembered after all this time. I left Mayfield on promotion in 2000, over twenty years ago, and I would have thought I’d be long forgotten by now. Not so apparently.
On the other hand, I was disappointed to hear of these disturbances because I spent ten years in that part of the city, and I can honestly say I loved every miniute of it. Mayfield had a reputation in those days for being a tough spot and some of that was justified. There were some seasoned criminals living there who were largely responsible for most of the negative publicity attached to the area. Hardy characters who kept us on our toes.
Joy riding, burglaries and criminal damage were rife in the late eighties and early nineties in many towns and cities and Cork was no different. It was common for cars stolen during the night to be found in the Mayfield District the following morning. Gardai on the early morning shift regularly checked the area for abandoned cars and it was unusual not to find one. Mayfield was often referred to as Beirut but that didn’t tell the whole story.
A few dodgy families in an estate can give a place a bad name which is completely unfair to the other residents. I met some of the finest people living in areas with the toughest reputations. Decent people who didn’t have it easy but worked hard and did the best they could for their families. I made lots of friends there and I’m still in contact with some of them.
We’ve seen many examples over the years of troublesome families making life miserable for their neighbours, and according to Sally Hanlon of the Support after Crime Services, it’s still happening. She said recently in this paper that people with a history of intimidating behaviour are being rehoused by Cork City Council, leaving their new neighbours to deal with the intimidation and harassment.
That was a common problem in my time and while there is no magic wand solution, empowering the community and giving the majority a voice did help. Community policing drove that philosophy with specific gardai interacting with locals through Neighbourhood Watch schemes, community and resident associations, sporting organisations and schools etc.
It took time to develop those relationships but as engagement increased, mutual trust and respect was established. Residents found the confidence to stand against criminal and anti-social behaviour and it worked but it took twenty years to get there.
Sadly, not everyone appreciated it. Governments and garda commissioners change, and priorities change with them. We were lucky in Cork in so far as community policing was generally well supported by management, but it was still a struggle. The financial crash didn’t help either and community policing was the first casualty of that. A manpower shortage required community gardai to return to regular policing duties.
Community engagement is not a part time activity. It begins with the children in primary schools and continues until they reach adulthood. It’s a continuous process and takes years and a great deal of effort to develop these relationships. That investment pays off in the long run but not everyone in garda management accepted that which is a pity because it worked. I’ll give one example.
There was an incident in Mayfield in the nineties when the staff of a local business arrived for work one Monday morning to find the property had been destroyed with graffiti over the weekend. While it covered a substantial area and was unsightly, it wasn’t crude or offensive. In fact, some of it was tastefully done with impressive artwork. There were some nicknames there too, so it wasn’t too difficult to track down the culprits.
There were five or six teenagers involved, decent youngsters who were never likely to end up as Ireland’s most wanted so I arranged for the youngsters to repair the damaged area. The company supplied the paint and the gang set to work one Saturday morning armed with their paint brushes and rollers. The company also provided the hungry labour force with Mars bars and cans of Coke and by the end of the day, the building was restored to its former glory.
The company and the gardai were satisfied with the outcome. The youngsters were happy because they avoided an early introduction into the criminal justice system while learning a valuable lesson at the same time. They had some fun too, so it was a good result all round.
I’m retired now but my former colleagues tell me that dealing with an incident in that way would be more difficult today. PULSE, the garda computer system, would generate a stack of paper demanding an appropriate outcome and would probably blow a fuse trying to recognise a common-sense solution. Health and safety would be another stumbling block.
Times have changed but we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that we’ve always had a community-based model of policing in this country. Working with the community to develop relationships and generate trust was paramount during my thirty-five years in An Garda Siochana and that should always be the priority.
