Month: July 2017

I spent over 35 years working as a policeman and during that time, I have encountered lots of strange and wonderful things. Because of these experiences, I think I am a broad-minded person.

I am your ‘average man in the street’ with my opinions on most issues and those of you who know me would probably agree that I am a tolerant character. My usual mantra is to live and let live, as long as you don’t interfere with me.
But even I have my limits.

My brother in law sent me an email from Scotland recently concerning an article he read in his local paper. Pat is a retired marine engineer and he has spent a large part of his life travelling around the world, working and living in many different countries. He has experienced many diverse cultures and he too has seen many strange and wonderful things. But this was too much even for him so he contacted me to see if, maybe, he was being a bit too insensitive.

The story reported that the British Medical Association had suggested that pregnant women should not be called “expectant mothers” as it could offend transgender people. Instead, they should refer to them as “pregnant people” so as not to upset intersex and transgender men.

They suggested that the majority of people that have been pregnant or have given birth identify as women but they could include intersex men and transmen who may get pregnant by saying ‘pregnant people’ instead of ‘expectant mothers’.

It seems that this has come about after someone in the UK was born a girl but now wants to become a man but that person has decided to defer surgery so they can have a baby first. This person who was once female, is now legally male and has had hormone treatment but has not yet had sex-change surgery.

It seems to me that this person wants everything and everybody else must fall into line to facilitate him/her and we must change the English language to avoid upsetting them even more.

This person has made choices. She was born a girl but decided to become a man. She decided to have surgery and then she decided to put that off because she decided to have a baby first. Then, she decided that she will have her sex -change operation.

No matter how hard I try to normalise that situation, I am struggling. I have no idea how many more people have found themselves in that specific situation but I can’t imagine the number being very high. It is not common, at least not in the piece of Planet Earth I inhabit. So, let’s stop pretending that this is run of the mill stuff and call it what it is and don’t expect the rest of us to turn cart wheels to facilitate the few.

I don’t want to deliberately cause offence to any minority group and I don’t want to insult anyone. But I’m not going to spend my life walking on egg shells for fear of unintentionally offending someone because they happen to be a little different.

So instead of the majority changing for the few, why don’t we turn this around a bit. Let’s educate the few to accept that we will speak the same way we’ve always spoken and we will act as we have always acted and there is no intention on our behalf to upset anyone and any offence given is purely accidental.

This politically correct terminology is getting very complicated and I’m sure that some issues are being raised for the sake of being controversial or getting noticed. We seem to have reached a stage where every time someone jumps up and down and screams about not being valued because they are different, the rest of us must scurry off to see what we can change to make it all better. We try to stick a politically correct plaster on the problem when maybe we should be telling them to get a grip on themselves instead.

There was a guy in the States who was in the real estate business and he was instructed to stop using the term ‘master bedroom’ because it denotes slavery and could be offensive to some people. Referring to a house or piece of property as a ‘place with a view’ is no longer acceptable since some people are visually impaired and could be offended.

Would visually impaired people really be offended or is it the case that someone is creating a problem that doesn’t actually exist?

I worked with the United Nations for a year and during that time I toiled side by side with men and women of all nationalities. They represented all religions and none, various sexual orientations and colours and despite all that, everyone got on for the simple reason that there was an underlying understanding that we respected each other. That eliminated the need to be walking around all day in fear of dropping a clanger.

I recently heard a story about a town in Germany that has stopped playing a popular children’s song about a fox who steals a goose, after receiving a complaint from a vegan. Limburg’s town spokesman, Johannes Laubach, said a local woman had asked the mayor to remove the tune from the town hall’s mechanical carillon.

He said the mayor had temporarily granted her request. The carillon, which is a series of bells, has a repertoire of 33 tunes, including 15 German children’s songs, that are played several times a day.

The Frankfurter Neue Presse newspaper reported that the woman was upset by being reminded of the song’s words — “the hunter’s going to get you with his gun,” rather than by the fox’s theft of the goose.

I rest my case.

 

For the last six months, I have been dealing with Eir, formerly Eircom, trying to resolve an issue. I can safely say, that is has been one of the most frustrating experiences of my life.

I have lost count of the number of calls my wife and I made to Eir, but it was certainly in excess of twenty. Each time we had to go through the business of pressing buttons, selecting the service, waiting to speak to a human and finally explaining the problem.

Most of these calls lasted between fifteen and thirty miniutes. On several occasions, I was assured that everything was sorted, only to receive a text message or a phone call telling me that my service would be suspended if the bill wasn’t paid. My wife’s phone was cut off while we were on holidays.

On many occasions, I was promised that they would contact the accounts department and get back to me. I never heard from any of them again and in the meantime, the threatening texts, phone calls and emails continued to arrive.
Finally, at the end of my tether, I contacted ComReg, the Communications Regulator, at consumerline@comreg.ie

ComReg contacted Eir on my behalf and Eir nominated a specific person to deal with my problem and eventually the matter was resolved.

I have heard many more stories like mine. I would advise anyone having difficulties with their service provider to send an email to Com Reg at the above address. They were very effective in my case.

We have a great reputation in Ireland for looking after our dead. We may not be so good at looking after the living and we pile the sick onto trollies and leave them in hospital corridors but they shouldn’t complain. Because when they die they will be well catered for.

Irish wakes are anything but sad affairs. Like most of our activities, we apply the same principal to dealing with the dead that we apply to births, engagements, weddings, birthdays and other events worthy of recognition. We saturate ourselves in alcohol, tell some stories and sing songs.

Merrymaking is a common part of the traditional Irish wake and a major part of the grieving process. It’s what we do.

There is a yarn told about the origin of the wake. Apparently, there was a time when it was common for drinkers to suffer from the effects of lead poisoning because they drank from pewter tankards. Add to that the fact that they often drank poteen from these things and it’s easy to see how it could result in guys being in a catatonic state after a session. They were being slowly poisoned and could appear, for all the world, to be dead.

Other guys would then be nominated to take turns watching over them until they either came back to life or were in fact declared to be ready for the embalming stage.

Whatever about the truth of that story, the wake gives family and friends one last opportunity to pay their respects to the person they’ve lost. It gives them a chance to share their grief with the family of the deceased before the burial. An attempt, I suppose, to offer some comfort to the mourners in the face of their loss. It works for some and I can testify to this from personal experience.

When my father died, we brought him to the church in the traditional removal scenario. While we were in the church, some of the grandchildren didn’t like the fact that he had to stay on his own in the church for the night. They wanted to stay with him. So, with that in mind, I arranged for my father to be brought back to my place and we put the coffin in the back room.

All the grand kids gathered up some sleeping bags and duvets and set up camp around him for the night. They spent their time telling him jokes.

Now, maybe there will be some who will find that offensive or they might say that it was against the rules or whatever, but I don’t care. These kids got great comfort from what they did and to me, that’s what’s important. I’m certain too that if my father could have seen it for himself, he would have got a kick out of it. And maybe he did, who knows?

My grandmother was the district nurse back in the day and she was called upon regularly when people died in the locality and she would help to prepare the dead. There was a procedure to be followed and it was important that things were done properly.

The women came to the house and washed the body of the deceased. The body was shaved, dressed and placed in the coffin which was normally put in the sitting room. Usually a set of rosary beads would be wrapped around the hands and a cross placed around the neck depending on the religion of the deceased.

Candles would be placed at the head and foot of the coffin and they would stay lighting until the deceased left the house. Family members or close friends would stay with the deceased, taking it in turns to watch over him or her.

Clocks were stopped at the time of death too and the mirrors in the house were turned around or covered. I can remember as a youngster being told that when my grandfather died, the clock in the kitchen stopped. It was a smaller version of the old grandfather clock with the pendulum underneath the clock face. I was told that the clock stopped the moment he died and for years I believed that.

Then, I figured that it was more likely that someone had deliberately stopped it at that time because that was part of the process.

But recently, while talking to my mother, she told me that the clock stopped by itself. She said that nobody touched it but my grandfather and if anyone went near it there would be holy war. There were only three of them in the house that night and none of them touched it. She also told me that his watch stopped as well so the mystery deepened.

Another of the customs that had to be observed during the wake was that all the windows and curtains in the house had to be closed except for the one window closest to the body. This would have to be left open to allow the spirit of the deceased to leave the house.

Nobody was supposed to stand at that window or block the path to it because that might prevent the spirit from leaving and it would bring misfortune to the person who blocked the route. After two hours, the window would be closed to prevent the spirit from re-entering.

While wakes are still held in the more rural parts of Ireland, the tradition is disappearing in the larger towns and cities. And that is a pity. A wake is a support structure that brings family, friends and neighbours together to pay their respects and to comfort the bereaved.

Unfortunately, it looks as if this tradition is going the way of many more and very soon we may have to have a wake for the wake.

 

This is the opposite to Breaking News. It’s more a case of ‘It’s the same old story’ kind of news.

After receiving numerous assurances, promises etc…and after waiting for over four months, the Minutes of the Cobh-Glanmire Municipal District Meetings are still not available online.

On March 3rd, I logged onto the Cork County Council website to find the minutes of the Cobh – Glanmire Municipal District meetings. The website was impossible to navigate so I rang Cork County Council. I spoke to a lady from Corporate Affairs and she told me that they were working on a redesign which would be ready the following week. Around the middle of March for arguments sake.

That same day, 3rd March, I spoke to Mr. Paraig Lynch, Municipal District Officer, Cobh- Glanmire Municipal District. He also told me that the new website would be available shortly and the minutes of the district meetings as far back as 2014 would be included on the site.

Well, it’s now 15th July 2017, and we still can’t access them. I’ll let you know when they appear but don’t expect news any time soon.

I was on holidays earlier in the year and, like most of us in that situation, I spent a lot of time doing nothing. Funnily enough, the world didn’t stop spinning. That got me thinking about how much of what we do is really necessary and how much is done out of habit or just simply because it has become part of our routine.

We love our routines and we all have them. They provide us with a certain security and it’s comforting to know what’s going to happen next so we can prepare for it. The downside is that we can also become too dependent on routine and when something upsets it, we can be thrown into a panic.

There are people who go for a pint on a certain day, at the same time to the same pub. Some cut the grass on the same day in the week and they follow a certain pattern with the lawn mower to make sure they get same design on the grass. Others get the same daily paper every morning and sit in their favourite chair, reading it from cover to cover. I will confess to being one of those and upsetting that would be worse than inflicting a dose of piles on me.

Routine is necessary. We are introduced into a routine when we are very young for feeding and sleeping purposes. As we get older we organise ourselves in terms of getting out of bed in the morning for school and work because we need to be organised. Later, when we have kids of our own, we need to be even more organised to cope with all that is involved in caring for their needs and a routine is essential for everything to run a bit more smoothly.

That’s the way it is. If you interrupt our routine, we are very put out. When the clock changes in spring and autumn we are upset for a small while. Our routine is out of kilter because we keep thinking of the old time instead of just accepting the change and getting on with it.

For some, going abroad for a holiday is a major upset in their routine and to ease the pain they must bring certain food with them. Things like tea, sausages, rashers, butter must go in the suitcase because they would not be able to survive without them. You’d swear that no other country in the world had a supermarket or drank tea.

When they arrive, the first thing they have to find is the Irish bar. They’re happy once they locate it and then they won’t go anywhere else. They make a new routine for themselves because that’s the way they like it. Having to drink a local beer in the company of strangers speaking with a funny accent would be just too much.

Before my father died, I brought him to Krakow in Poland. He was an avid photographer all his life and his other passion was reading about WWII. He read volumes on the subject and he was fascinated with some of the photos of that time.

One in particular, was a picture of a sentry tower near the entrance to Auschwitz concentration camp that was taken by someone standing on the railway line inside the camp looking back at the tower.

I figured that we could re-create that photo and that’s what we set out to do. Sadly, while we both had cameras, I used his one to photograph him with this tower in the background but I can’t find the photograph since. But in any event, it doesn’t really matter because what’s important is that he got a huge kick out of it at the time. And that was the object of the exercise.

I was surprised by a few things on that trip but one thing really caught me off guard. I was always used to my father being a strong, confident, self- assured man but when we arrived in Cork Airport to begin our journey, I found that he seemed to be completely lost. He sat to one side and waited until I had checked us in and then he just stuck close by and did what I did.

It was the same thing when we got to Poland, he stood back and waited for me to do whatever needed to be done. This was a little strange for me and it threw me a bit. But when I thought about it, it made complete sense.

His comfort zone was getting smaller and smaller as he got older. He confined himself to driving locally and anywhere beyond his home town was foreign soil. He had a routine and he loved it and now, on this little adventure, he was completely out of it.

By the time we went to Poland, he was in his late seventies and even though I didn’t know it at the time, he was suffering from cancer. I don’t imagine that he ever ventured beyond the UK in his lifetime so at his age, to be making this journey to a place he was familiar with only through books, must have been a big deal. More especially, given his age and that he wasn’t fully fit.

In any event, he enjoyed his trip and the experience of visiting Auschwitz meant a lot to him. It was the last outing we had together. He died not too long after that and he left us in the same way that he had lived his life, with no fuss or drama just quietly slipping away.

For some, routine is a crutch and it provides comfort. It takes away the fear of not knowing what’s going to happen next. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

 

 

 

I remember on one occasion during my previous life when I was working on a computer in the office, something strange happened to me. It was one of those days when there was a lot going on and it was very busy. I was typing away to my hearts’ content and at one point I froze. For a few seconds, I didn’t know where I was, what I was doing or what I was supposed to do next.

It was just like when your computer freezes and refuses to cooperate. I just sat there like a garden gnome with a fishing rod. Didn’t move a muscle. I can’t even say that I was confused because I wasn’t, there was actually nothing going on in my head at all. My mind was at a complete standstill.

It’s the one and only time it has ever happened to me and it only lasted for a few seconds. I assumed that my small brain had somehow got to the stage where it was getting overloaded with all the stuff I was trying to fit into it and it just took a little break to readjust itself. After the moment had passed, things went back to normal and I didn’t think anymore about it.

That was a good few years ago but more recently I have discovered that I have another issue to deal with. I forget things. In particular, I have a terrible time trying to remember peoples’ names, even the people I know well. It’s gone to the stage now that when I see people walking towards me I race through the alphabet in a panic, to try to come up with their name before we meet.
Usually, it comes to me after the person has passed. Then I get excited as I remember and I start shouting after them, scaring the kids and everyone else within earshot.

I know that I’m not alone in this and many people have a difficulty trying to remember where they left the car keys or their wallet. Some people will go into a room and then forget why they went in there in the first place. Keys and wallet were never an issue for me because I always put them in the same place when I come home. This was a habit that I got into years ago and maybe that’s the only reason I’m not struggling with those.

So, I began to wonder if there was something else wrong with me and whether I was starting to exhibit signs of early Alzheimer’s or some form of dementia. Maybe people are talking about me and I don’t even know it. It is possible that people are getting concerned about me when I’m out walking and worrying about me being out on my own.

Maybe I’ve become a complete menace behind the wheel of the car and all other drivers break out in a cold sweat when they see me coming. But just when I was starting to panic, I heard of a thing called ‘Middle aged brain’ and I began to feel a little relief.

Apparently, when we reach our middle years, around 45 or so, our brains start to decline. This what we now call middle age. Although a study did find that certain innate skills, like memory and reasoning speed, begin to slow between our forties and sixties, the news wasn’t all bad.

The study also found that the middle-aged brain performs better in other ways. Patricia Cohen was reporting on a study in the British Medical Journal that found as we age, other aspects of intelligence related to learning and experience actually improve.

People in their 40s, 50s and early 60s generally have a happier outlook than their younger counterparts. Because of their life experience, they feel more competent and more in control and feel that they can influence what happens in their lives. They are also less neurotic, more open, reflective and flexible. The theory is, that as people get older, they place more importance on maintaining a sense of well-being, even if things aren’t going particularly well.

In this case, nature and nurture may be working hand in hand. By middle age, people have had their share of bad times, so issues like a cancelled flight, an office feud, a broken ankle, a parking ticket or a lost phone aren’t enough to send them to a therapists’ couch.

These experiences are imprinted on our brains and can be retrieved as needed and this is why people in middle age are better able to handle stressful conflicts with their friends and family. A bit like the older generation who lived through the Second World War. They became more resilient and it was harder to rattle them because they had seen it all before.

There are times when we all forget things and get a little confused and we refer to those incidents as ‘senior moments’. We fear the worst and automatically assume that we might be developing something nasty but it’s not always the case. A senior moment is when you just can’t remember the name of the person walking towards you on the street. Dementia is when that person that you don’t recognise happens to be your son or your wife.

They say that maintaining your overall health will contribute to the well -being of the brain and, apparently, regular walking is enough to help to keep the brain active and in good nick.

So, there you are. If you want to be able to remember where you left the car keys or your wallet, just go for a walk. But if you don’t recognise anyone while you’re out there or you can’t find your way back home, then you may have left it too late.