Month: December 2019

There was a certain sound that was very familiar to the residents of Cobh, and the surrounding areas, from the sixties up to 1984. It was the sound of the siren in Verolme Cork Dockyard. It was impossible to avoid because it was loud enough to wake the dead and it wailed several times a day.

It went off at specific times and you could set your watch by it. Many did I suspect. It sounded at 10am every morning to let the workers know it was time for a tea break.

The canteen staff made large urns of tea that were collected by a tractor and delivered to the various departments in the yard for the morning cuppa. The siren went off again ten minutes later to tell them to get back to work.

At 1pm, the siren announced that it was time for the lunch break and at 1.30pm it chased them back to the grindstone. The final siren of the day was at 4.30pm to let everyone know it was time to go home.

The size of the workforce varied from between 800 and 1000 and I can remember, as a youngster in the seventies, hordes of men spilling out of shipyard at finishing time like a crowd coming out of a stadium after a football match.

Rushbrooke train station was directly across the road from the entrance to Verolme and many employees used the train to get to the city.

There were many sub-contractors too who benefitted from Verolme including the people who supplied materials to the site such as steel, timber, paint and food for the canteen. It was great for the local economy.

Cornelis Verolme owned several shipyards in Holland and when he bought the Cork Dockyard in 1960, he had big plans for it. He wanted to have the right people in place from the outset, so he sent some of his foremen to Cobh to help organise and train the workforce. He also took some of the Cork workers to Holland to train them there.

Adrie Verwey was one of the Dutchmen who came here as a foreman joiner on 31^st January 1961. He reckons there were about thirty of his countrymen working here in total.

When Adrie first arrived in Cobh, he stayed in a house near Whitepoint, not far from the dockyard. Verolme bought this large house to accommodate the Dutch workforce and employed people to cook and clean for them. Later on, the company built a scheme of houses nearby and rented them to the foremen.

The estate is known locally as Dutch Villas or Dutch Village.

Adrie had always been interested in joinery but his dad advised him to stay away from the building industry because it was too fickle and full of ups and downs. He told him to concentrate on ship building and he took his father’s advice.

He served his apprenticeship in Holland and while working there, he saw a poster on a notice board looking for foremen to work in Ireland and Brazil. He decided he wanted to travel but he was unsure which country to opt for.

He was staying in digs at the time with a chef who had spent a lot of time at sea and he was familiar with Cork. He told Adrie that Cork was a nice place and it was also closer to Holland than Brazil, which would make it easier to return home for visits.

That made sense to Adrie and as he had some basic English and no Spanish or Portuguese, he decided Ireland was the better choice. They were given a few English lessons before they left Holland and off they went.

Adrie travelled with another guy and because there were no direct flights to Ireland, they flew from Schiphol to London. While trying to board the flight to Ireland they were stopped by Immigration Officers who told them they couldn’t continue their journey because they had no work permits.

A KLM pilot was passing by and overheard their discussion and realised that the lads didn’t have a great command of the English language, so he stopped to help. It took some time, but the problem was eventually resolved but by then they had missed their flight so, they ended up on the last flight to Dublin and then got the last train from Dublin to Cork.

They eventually arrived in their new accommodation in Cobh in the early hours of the morning after overcoming their first challenge.

Another immediate challenges he faced was working with the Imperial measurement of feet and inches. He was used to the metric system and he found the three- foot measuring stick a bit unusual.

He was initially sent here on a five-year contract, but it ran on a bit longer that he imagined and he’s still here, nearly sixty years later. His extended stay is due to another contract he entered into after meeting his wife, Gretta. They met while she was working in the canteen in Verolme.

Gretta is a Cobh native and she was a manager in the canteen in those days. Feeding that amount of men every day was no easy task, but she said there was a great buzz around the place and the men were all very nice.

I asked Adrie what he missed most about working away from home in the early days and without hesitation he told me it was the ice-cream. Ice-cream parlours were common in Holland, and he said the taste here just wasn’t the same.

His craving for sweetness was sorted though, when he met Gretta. They’ve been together for 55 years and both enjoy good health and I noticed with amusement that after all these years, Adrie still hasn’t lost his Dutch accent.

I came across a story recently concerning two nuns who became pregnant during missionary trips to Africa. The African women, who are from different orders in Italy, reportedly got pregnant while on separate missions to their home country and the matter is now under investigation by the Catholic Church.

Life isn’t straight forward for the nuns and Pope Francis has acknowledged that the Roman Catholic Church has had complaints of Catholic nuns being sexually abused and he said the Church has faced a persistent problem of sexual abuse of nuns by priests and bishops.

Stories like this have been circulating for many years and finally, for the first time, a pope has publicly acknowledged that this has been going on and Pope Francis said he is determined to do more to deal with the issue and says that this work has already begun.

That’s good to hear and it’s about time too because they have a lot of work to do. Historically, the Catholic Church doesn’t appear to have had much respect for women, and it will take a huge effort to reverse that thinking. Just ask Arts Minister Josepha Madigan.

She was embroiled in controversy some time ago when it was reported in the media that she said Mass one evening in her local church in Dublin, after a no-show by the local priest. That was a bit of an exaggeration because she didn’t actually say Mass.

She was scheduled to do a reading but when she discovered that there was no priest available to say the Mass, she stepped in to say some prayers. Minister Madigan also felt the need to address the issue of women priests. I thought she should have been given a pat on the back for using her initiative but instead she incurred the wrath of Archbishop Diarmaid Martin. He wasn’t happy with Josepha.

You don’t have to be an expert in church affairs to recognise that they are in a bit of bother with a shortage of priests and lower attendance rates. Sunday mornings are a lot different to what they were thirty years ago, and traffic is much quieter at mass time these days since footfall has reduced.

The local church was once a hub of activity at Mass times and not only for religious reasons either. Large groups gathered outside the church to meet the neighbours and catch up on the events of the week. Now they get their news elsewhere and many say that they don’t find what the church has to say is relevant to them anymore.

I understand that because I’m always surprised at how little the services have changed since I was a child. It seems to me that the same prayers have been used in the same sequence for ever.

The priest leads the chants and the congregation responds. The prayers that I learned as a child are still being repeated from memory and the only difference is that there is less Latin in use now. The decades of the rosary are still being recited in unison in a monotone and maybe that’s why the young people don’t buy into it.

The numbers entering religious orders are also falling so there’s clearly a problem. The scandals that have rocked the church over the years haven’t helped and a serious overhaul is required if it is to stop the haemorrhage of church goers.

The recent acknowledgement by Pope Francis, suggests that celibacy may be a part of the problem. Maybe a happily married priest, with a home and a family and all that goes with it, would make religious life a more attractive prospect for many, and solve the problem of frustration that obviously exists for many within the priesthood.

The alternative is to do nothing and allow the churches to go the way of so many rural garda stations, becoming a safe refuge for mice and spiders. Maybe Josepha Madigan has a point about allowing women into the priesthood. They could provide a solution for the future of the Church.

Theologians offer firm opposition to women priests though and argue that in a communion service, the priest represents Jesus and as Jesus was male, only a man can represent Jesus adequately.

Specific Biblical teachings seem to be incompatible with women becoming priests too.  For example, it says that women should remain silent in church and in 1 Timothy, women are told that they may not have authority over a man. Maybe Timothy had his own reasons for trying to silence women back in the day, who knows?

One thing I do know though, is that Timothy would have a few problems if he was around today. If he tried that line with my wife, Tim would hear some choice words and may even require some medical intervention.

The Church is facing a crisis in terms of a shortage of priests and because of the low numbers entering the priesthood something needs to change. Pope Francis has acknowledged this and while he is prepared to discuss the possibility of having married priests, the idea of female priests seems to be a step too far at the moment.

The fact remains though, that the future of the Church is in doubt and it may well be up to women to save the day. A survey carried out in the Kilalla diocese in Mayo earlier this year found that nearly 70 per cent of parishioners backed women being ordained to the priesthood.

Those in favour of female ordination say that women are perfectly capable of doing the job as well as any man and it’s hard to argue with that. Men haven’t made such a great fist of it so far and let’s face it, they need all the help they can get.

It can be a difficult journey at times as we try to navigate our way through the daily stresses and strains of modern living. Just surviving is tough enough, so we shouldn’t be trying to make things more complicated than they already are.

But that’s exactly what we do sometimes. We let small stuff get under our skin and spend too much time getting stressed out about insignificant issues, like what other people are thinking or saying about us.

There’s no shortage of people who are completely intolerant and love to blow things out of proportion because they’ve been offended. Offended to the point of becoming completely outraged.

 Just trying to make a point on social media these days can get you into all kinds of bother. You can easily end up in a war of words with complete strangers, suffering the most horrendous and abusive comments that often descend into pure vulgarity. Trolls appear at the drop of a hat to attack and spread their venom and it doesn’t take much to get them going.

I heard a discussion on the radio in the lead up to Christmas. There was a panel involved and they were talking about how ‘Are you all set for Christmas?’ is one of the most often asked questions at this time of the year. Fair enough, it probably is.

A lady on the panel became very animated on the subject and said she gets very annoyed when people ask her if she’s all set for Christmas? She said her husband makes the dinner and that this particular question might be more appropriate for him. She was offended, and she was deadly serious.

I reckon I have often asked people that question myself and I have been asked it thousands of times too, but I have never taken any notice of it. It’s just like saying hello or passing a comment on the weather.

We often say these things to start a conversation or as a greeting. If I ask you if you are all set for Christmas, it’s not because I really care whether you are or not. I don’t expect you to give me a blow by blow account of how your Christmas preparations are coming along. I don’t want to hear about it because I couldn’t care less. I’m just trying to be polite.

I don’t understand what is so offensive about the question though. There is no hidden meaning in it. I’m not secretly accusing you of being a bad parent, a lousy cook or a bad organiser. I’m not taking notes to compare you with others and I’m not making a list of the ‘World’s worst people who are not all set for Christmas.’

But they’re not alone. There are others who have a problem with the greeting, “Merry Christmas” or “Happy Easter” and would prefer us to say, “Happy Holidays” instead. Quite when, where or why that became a problem and started offending our sensitive nature I’m not sure, but Donald Trump is taking credit for tackling the issue.

President Trump took to Twitter to inform us that he has led the charge for people to say the words “Merry Christmas” again, and he’s taking credit for its revival. “People are proud to be saying Merry Christmas again. I am proud to have led the charge against the assault of our cherished and beautiful phrase. MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!!”

I wasn’t aware that we had stopped saying “Happy Christmas” or that it had fallen out of favour. I hear it being used everywhere during this festive season, so maybe it’s just that the “Let’s ban Merry Christmas” campaign hasn’t reached this side of the Atlantic just yet.

We were a lot more tolerant of opposing views and beliefs one time, but those days would appear to be gone. I was abused online about a piece I had posted on the Internet and the guy wasn’t just unhappy with me, or merely annoyed, he was outraged.

I could sense his anger and I suspect that if he knew where I was living, I might have found the head of a dead horse in my bed.

Another reader challenged him and told him that his comment didn’t make any sense. Then he admitted that he hadn’t read the article but made his mind up based on the headline only. So, even though he had no idea what he was talking about, it didn’t stop him blowing his top.

That’s the kind of nonsense we’re up against and it’s why we shouldn’t take too much notice of it. But a lot of people do take this stuff to heart and in some cases, it can push them over the edge. Youngsters, particularly, take it personally and find it difficult to deal with.

There will always be those who like to get noticed. They’ll moan for the sake of it or because they just want to get some attention. It can be done easily now through Twitter, Facebook, Instagram etc. or they can just phone Joe.

In the old days the outraged would have had to approach you in person to say their piece and it’s a bit more difficult to have-a-go when you’re looking someone in the eye. In the pre-Internet era, they’d have to write a letter, buy a stamp and go to a post box and by the time they had all that done, they’d have forgotten what the problem was.

So maybe the reason for the outrage is simply because we have the means to express it instantly with little effort. I saw a comment somewhere recently that said it was worth keeping in mind that most of the comments about you are made by people sitting on the toilet.

That kind of says it all really.

I woke early the other morning and for some reason, the word ‘undertaker’ was on my mind. At first, I thought that maybe my body was trying to send me a message; Time to poke out the best suit and prepare to be laid out.

That happens to me sometimes. A word comes into my head and it won’t leave me alone and that’s how it was with ‘undertaker’. I was wondering where the term came from and what the link was between the name ‘undertaker’ and the occupation we associate with it.

I thought a more appropriate description might be the ‘body collector’, ‘the burier’ or something along those lines so I had to do a bit of digging – excuse the pun – to discover the origin.

I unearthed -sorry again- an online account by Richard Rawlinson who suggested that in medieval times, the word ‘undertaker’ was used for anyone undertaking any kind of a task.

For instance, there was a ‘building undertaker’, a ‘plumbing undertaker’ a ‘funeral undertaker’ etc but, by the 17th century, the term ‘funeral undertaker’ was abbreviated to just ‘undertaker’. This association became so widespread, that people in other trades stopped calling themselves ‘undertakers’ because it was bad for business and they wanted to distance themselves from the term.

Early undertakers often worked as builders, joiners and carpenters. Skills that translated to coffin-making at times of death in the village and this was often the case even in the early 20th century. They were important people in the community.

When a death occurred, the doctor would be called to certify the death, and then the local ‘layer out’—usually a woman—would help carry out the ‘last offices’, attending to the needs of the deceased.

They would call the parish priest to perform the Last Rites and then summon the undertaker to take measurements for a coffin. That would be made in haste from sanded and polished hardwood and sealed inside with wax and bitumen to avoid leakage.

The undertaker would later return to the house to deliver the coffin, sometimes having to remove a window as the door was often too narrow. The deceased, clothed in their best nightdress or Sunday suit, would then rest in the front parlour for three or four days until the funeral.

The typical cost of a funeral in the mid-1940s was about £20, which included the making of the coffin, providing four bearers, a hearse and a car, church fees and grave digger. The fee of half a crown was paid to the person who performed the ‘laying out’ when the average wage was only £2.75 per week.

I read somewhere that our ancestors believed in the afterlife and they thought that another world existed beneath the earth. That’s why the deceased were buried in the ground, to help them on their way.

Coffins in those days must have been difficult to shoulder too because it was the custom to fill them with whatever the deceased might need on the other side. Things like food, tools and household goods were often put in with the corpse.

That got me thinking about the word, ‘graveyard’. I prefer the word cemetery and there is a difference between the two which is something else I didn’t know. A graveyard is attached to a church while a cemetery is not. Cemeteries are usually situated on stand-alone sites, and they were designed to be a more pleasant experience for families visiting their deceased relatives than the old traditional church graveyard.

The burial process has been tried and tested and has changed very little over the years and it still works for some. It’s a familiar routine that brings a degree of comfort to friends and relatives. A final service led by a man of the cloth, followed by a procession to the graveyard where the coffin is interred.

After a suitable period of mourning, a marker or headstone is placed at the head of the grave and this becomes the final resting place for the deceased. A place where family and friends can come to visit and pay their respects. And that’s that.

Times are changing though, and cremation is gaining ground as an alternative method of disposing of human remains. The Catholic Church has become more accepting of cremation over the years but then again, they probably didn’t have much of a choice.

However, they do have a difficulty with what happens to the ashes after the event and they say that Catholics who want to be cremated cannot have their ashes scattered or kept at home. They insist they should be stored in a “sacred place” such as a cemetery or a church. “We come from the earth and we shall return to the earth.” is the Church’s stance.

Not everyone sees it that way though and it’s common for some relatives to keep the ashes in the family home. That won’t please the Church, but the fact remains, that some people get solace from seeing the urn resting in a familiar spot at home. While intending initially to keep them for a short period, they often find it difficult to make the decision to let them go, so they remain there indefinitely.

I also know an undertaker who has a room full of urns that were never claimed. He has no idea why and doesn’t know what to do with them.

But just as we were coming to terms with the cremation process, along comes another type of cremation that uses water instead of fire called aquamation. The body goes into a vat containing a potassium-hydroxide-and-water solution for four hours until all that remains is the skeleton.

Might be more awkward keeping those at home and could bring a new meaning to ‘skeletons in the closet.’

My five-year old grandson pointed to the top of my head one day and he told me that I had no hair. He doesn’t pull any punches that guy. He wasn’t concerned about my feelings, but I couldn’t argue with him because he was spot on.

Mother Nature, Father Time and my gene pool have determined my current state of baldness and whatever way you look at it, I am bald. My hair has left the building.

I don’t know when the process began exactly but it was certainly a long time ago, probably when I was in my early thirties. I didn’t just wake up one morning to find my head on the pillow next to me, it was a gradual thing.

I have no idea where I inherited this gene from because my late father had a fine head of hair on his death bed as did his father before him. My mother wasn’t bald either so it’s a bit of a mystery.

Fortunately, it has never bothered me and on the positive side, there are some advantages. I can cut what’s left of it myself with an electric razor and it only takes a few miniutes. It doesn’t cost me anything and I can do it at home, so I don’t have to queue up in a barber shop.

On the other hand, the winters can be a bit of a challenge. Some say we lose a large amount of body heat through the top of our heads, although that has been disputed, but in any event, I compensate on those days, with a woolly hat and the problem is solved.

There are others though, who consider baldness to be almost as serious as losing a leg. I have seen grown men in complete distress at the thought of shedding their hair and the sight of a grey strand is enough to bring some to tears. What’s all the fuss is about?

Our bodies change as we get older. We get more round, our eyesight deteriorates, and we don’t hear as well as we used to. It happens, so just get over it and play the hand that is dealt to you.

Hair is an obsession for many though. Brazilian footballer, Neymar, reportedly spends about two thousand euro a month having his hair done which amounts to 24,000 euro per year. Given his sale by Barcelona for 225 million Euro, money won’t bother him too much.

The actress, Jennifer Lopez, has her own hairstylist and his fee comes to $400 a week. Jennifer Aniston, of Friends fame, forks out $600 per haircut while the singer Rihanna reportedly needs almost a week of continuous hair care at a cost of almost $2,000 a week. 

But if that sounds excessive, spare a thought for Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah who pays an average of €24,000 to his barber who is flown, first class, to wherever in the world the Sultan happens to be, whenever he feels like a trim.

That’s all very well for those who have the hair and the money to look after it but what about those who don’t have much of either? For those characters there is always the wig or the toupee. The difference between the two, apparently, is that a wig is a full set of hair while a toupee is designed to cover a specific small bald spot.

When you see the state of some of these things, you’d wonder how baldness wouldn’t be a better option. Some wigs are so bad that they draw attention to the baldness instead of disguising it.

In ancient Greece, natural hair was viewed as sacred. In fact, Greeks would often hang the hair of the dead on the door before burial, and mourners would cut their own hair and place it on the corpse as a mark of respect.

Wigs are worn for many reasons. People who have lost all or part of their own hair due to illness or natural baldness often use them to disguise the condition or maybe to help them to feel a little more confident about themselves. Others use them to alter their appearance like those in the entertainment industry.

Whatever we feel about toupees and wigs, some people just feel better about themselves when they have their heads covered. Maybe there are some really good ones that are so effective, we don’t even know that they are toupees, but the opposite is certainly true.

There must be some practical issues with wearing these things too, such as trying to keep them in place in the wind and keeping them clean. I imagine it must be like wearing a hat so presumably it gets warm indoors or in the sun.

All in all, you’d imagine that life would be easier all around if people could just concede to nature. Yul Brynner and Telly Savalas had very successful film careers and they didn’t have a strand of hair between them, so baldness obviously isn’t the end of the world.

There was a guy who worked in Cobh about forty years ago. Tommy Murphy was his name and he was from Wexford and he always had a full beard. The kind of beard you could hide things in. I remember one occasion when he came back to Cobh after being away for a few weeks, a gang of us met up and we sat around a table having some grub and chatting.

We were sitting there for a good while before somebody eventually noticed that Tommy had shaved off the beard. Up to that point none of us had spotted it.

Just goes to show that it’s the person we see rather than the hair so maybe we really shouldn’t be getting too hung up about it after all.  

I have written previously about road traffic accidents in this country and it’s easy to understand why we have so many. It’s down to poor driving practices and you can see examples of it every day. The only surprise to me is that we don’t have more. The standard of driving is terrible, and it’s getting worse.

Shane Ross, the Minister for Transport, has put a lot of emphasis on tackling drink driving and he seems to be under the illusion that removing alcohol from the roads will solve all our problems. Well it won’t because it’s far more complicated than that.

Driving under the influence of drugs is becoming more prevalent according to recent reports and may eventually be on par with drunk driving. Both are serious issues and need to be tackled but they’re not the only problem and putting all the eggs into that particular basket, won’t make the roads safe.

If we introduced prohibition tomorrow and signed up every driver to the pioneer total abstinence association for life, there would still be accidents because there is no shortage of drivers who are not competent to sit behind the wheel of a car even when they are stone cold sober.

The reason we have so many accidents is because there are far too many drivers who don’t understand the basics of driving and they struggle with the normal rules of the road and this is the issue that needs to be addressed.  

Many drivers have poor observation skills. They lack concentration and are easily distracted by everything else that is going on in their lives, particularly their mobile phones. Lane discipline is an alien concept to many, while tail gaiting is on the increase and one of the most common problems is the inability to negotiate a roundabout correctly.

These are the fundamental issues that are contributing to the hundreds of minor traffic accidents that happen every day, especially at peak traffic hours. The kind of accidents that usually only cause minor damage to cars but result in huge delays and inconvenience to everyone else.

Just listen to the daily traffic reports on the radio every morning and you will discover how much of a feature these accidents have become during rush hour driving. Needless, minor incidents that cause serious disruption for many commuters.

Conor Faughnan of the Automobile Association has said in the past that there are nearly five hundred traffic accidents on the M50 in Dublin every year. Having driven on it many times, I’m surprised that number isn’t higher given what I witnessed.

I’ve been driving for over 40 years, and I’ve driven everything from cars to trucks. I had to qualify in defensive driving techniques to drive patrol cars during my time in An Garda Siochana and I have driven all over Europe and Australia in both left-hand and right-hand drive vehicles, on and off road, so I consider myself to be an experienced driver.

But every time I drive on the M50, I feel uncomfortable because of what’s going on around me. Cars driving too quickly for the conditions and jumping across lanes at inappropriate speeds. Acting like they’re the only ones using the road and behaving as if every other driver is supposed to know what they’re going to do next.

That kind of aggressive driving leaves little room for error. Many of the drivers displayed a complete lack of courtesy or manners because they were in too much of a hurry to get to where they needed to be.

The slightest tip on the M50 can cause a tail back for eight to ten kilometres and minor accidents that occur at roundabouts, junctions or in merging traffic usually only cause slight damage but the inconvenience caused to other drivers can be substantial. The knock-on effect can be considerable and that applies to all the main arteries around the country, not only the M50.

No matter how often we talk about it, the situation isn’t getting any better. If anything, it’s getting worse but maybe if we identified the regular mistakes that are being made and began highlighting them, people might learn something and avoid repeating the same errors.

Instead of just telling us where the accidents are every morning, it might be more informative if the traffic reports also identified the possible causes and maybe then we could learn something.

There is a reason for every accident. A car travelling at the correct speed in normal conditions, shouldn’t find itself on its roof. If a driver is concentrating on his or her driving and travelling within the speed limit while staying a safe distance from the car ahead, he or she shouldn’t smash into the back of it.

The Road Safety Authority records statistics on traffic accidents that result in death and serious injury, but I haven’t been able to find any information on what is causing the fender benders. The kind that only put a dent in a bonnet or a bumper but bring the country to a halt.

When I was a serving member of An Garda Siochana those statistics were collected. Forms were completed after every accident and while they were cumbersome things that most of us hated filling out, they did serve a purpose.

They contained lots of information, including weather conditions, road conditions, car details, driver details and factors that might have contributed to the crash. These details were sent to the Central Statistics Office who collated them all and identified common causes.

I don’t know if those statistics are still being collected but if not, then maybe they should be. That information could be useful to the RSA, the local authorities, driving instructors, driving testers and traffic reporters etc. to help put an end to the cycle of mayhem.