Month: February 2020

I’m sure you’ve heard by now that the whole country is going to have access to super-duper wifi. That’s great news because the Internet plays a huge part in a lot of what we do, and life is more difficult without it.

It isn’t available to everyone as of now and those of us who have it, know it’s far from perfect but hopefully that’s about to change as 1.1 million people in 540,000 homes are set to benefit from high-speed broadband.

It’s taken a while to get here and there’s a long way to go yet, but it’s a start. The full roll-out of the fibre optic cables will take between five to seven years at an estimated cost of somewhere between €3 billion and €5 billion.

Before you get too carried away though, it’s not going to happen overnight. They say it’s going to take seven years to finish but most homes should be connected within the first three years. Call me cynical, but I have my doubts.

As sure as night follows day, there will be a few hiccups along the way. A rare beetle living in a laneway in Carrigtwohill or telegraph poles riddled with a unique type of woodworm could hold things up. Those habitats would have to be protected to avoid upsetting Eamon Ryan and his green pals.

If my own experience is anything to go by, we have a long road ahead.

Back in 2016, I heard that fibre optic broadband was coming to my area. I was excited at the prospect of having access to the Internet that would actually work. Internet that would be there when I wanted it and would allow me to do stuff.

In October that year, a lovely young lady called to my door from Eir. They used to be called Eircom but changed the name to Eir because, well I don’t really know why. I’m pretty sure it’s the same service and the same people. Anyway, the lovely young lady was happy to announce that the new top of the range broadband would be available within a few weeks.

I was excited, but I had been disappointed before, so I forced myself to relax.

She told me to ring Eir to order it, so I did, and went through the usual routine. Thank you for calling, pick one of the four options, press the hash sign, pick one of the next four options, press the star sign, pick the option that most suits your needs and wait for an eternity before finally talking to a human.

I told the voice about my meeting with the nice young lady and I advised her that I was now ready to sign up for the broadband.

Well, that was great news for the lady in Eir and she was very happy to assist me except that I had to wait for ten days. I explained that I would be out of the country by then so if she could just make a little note on my account that I wanted it set up, I would be very grateful.

Unfortunately, that wouldn’t be possible because I would have to ring up personally on day ten to book the broadband. As I wasn’t going to be around on day ten, I would have to leave it until I got back home.

As soon as I returned, I made another call to Eircom, now called Eir, and went through the familiar routine of choosing options, pressing hash keys and waiting patiently. I eventually spoke to a lady, told her my story and she went off to make sure the service was still available, and it was.

Just as I was about to sign up, she told me that as soon as I placed the order, my Internet would be disconnected until the new broadband was hooked up which would take a minimum of five working days excluding weekends.

As we were heading into a Bank Holiday weekend, that disconnection period would be longer so, I decided to postpone it until after the long weekend.

When I got back onto Eircom, now called Eir, I got through to a very pleasant young man and he listened patiently as I told my tale once more.

He checked that the broadband was available in my area and thankfully, it was, and it should be connected in less than the five days. But there was a new problem. The portal in my area was now full and there was no room for any new customers, so he told me to try again in a week.

A week later I called back, and I spoke to a nice young lady. I repeated the entire story once more and I told her that I was ready to go if there was some room in the portal for me. I didn’t want much, I wasn’t going to be greedy, I just needed a tiny bit.

Well, good news, there was room, but because of a huge demand for the new service, I would have to wait for two weeks and I would be without the Internet for that period. So the nice lady suggested that I should wait until the New Year when the demand would be reduced, and I would be able to get the service quicker.

So, that’s what I did. I waited for the new year and eventually got connected. But that wasn’t the end of the story. Things got so complicated after that, that I had to get the Communications Regulator involved before the matter was finally resolved.

That’s why I’m a bit sceptical about the finish dates for this project. If it’s that complicated to connect little old me, what’s it going to be like connecting the entire country?

We have a small room downstairs in our house that’s multifunctional. There’s a desk, some drawers and a printer in there so when I’m using it, I call it the office. Sounds posh. My wife is more practical, and she calls it the junk room.

She has a point because there are times when I can hardly find a space to sit down. In fact, sometimes I can’t even find the desk. There is a coat stand in there that is so full of coats, there’s no room for coats so they end up on the desk and they’re joined by everything else in the house that doesn’t have a place of its own.

Every now and then I make a burst and tidy the place up and, on those occasions, I love to sit back and enjoy the space.

It was on one of those rare moments that my solitude was broken by an unusual sound. Unusual for that room anyway. It was the sound of water dripping and it didn’t take me long to find the source. It was coming from above my head.

There was a large circular damp patch on the ceiling and a drop was forming in the centre of it like a bullseye on a dartboard. Every now and then it would plop onto the timber floor. I went upstairs to investigate, and I soon established that it was coming from the shower in my son’s room.

I sent for the builder who examined the bathroom and immediately declared it a disaster area and closed it down. He sealed it off like a crime scene. Then he started banging things with his hammer and dismantling stuff and within a short period of time, the shower was removed and was lying in several pieces out in the back garden.

The full state of the damage was revealed. The shower had obviously been leaking for years because some of the timber underneath was completely rotten. This was going to be a bigger job than we had anticipated originally and a lot more expensive too, so we decided that we would involve our insurance company.

I contacted our insurer and a lady spent a few minutes telling me what I wasn’t insured for and how I would be penalised if I made a claim. She told me she would send an assessor out to view the damage.

A lady assessor arrived a few days later accompanied by a builder, and he got down to business surveying the affected area. He quickly concluded that the cause of the problem was a badly sealed shower and not an issue with the pipework. The assessor advised me that this was bad news for me.

She was very sympathetic but because the pipework wasn’t the cause, she couldn’t cover the cost of the repairs.

I wasn’t particularly concerned with how the damage was caused. I was more concerned with the state of the bathroom and the large gaping hole in the floor in front of me and how it was all going to be paid for.

The sympathetic assessor lady offered more sympathy and then drove off with her builder friend leaving me alone with my wasteland of a bathroom and my thoughts. And no money.

I questioned the value of having insurance when it wouldn’t help me in my time of need. I always seem to be paying top price and receiving nothing in return except sympathy.

I have been paying for car insurance for over forty years and I’ve never had a claim. I have a full no claims bonus for all that time but in spite of that, I paid more for my car insurance this year than ever before.

My mother’s house has been vacant since she died two years ago and there’s nothing in it. We have the heating coming on a couple of times a day to keep the dampness at bay and for the privilege of having that empty house sitting there minding its own business, I have to pay an annual premium of six hundred and sixty euro.

As far as I can make out, the house is covered for very little, but the company will pay out in the unlikely event of a plane crashing into it which is very useful.

A few years ago, I was driving to Dublin when somewhere near Cahir, I hit a brick that was sitting in the middle of the overtaking lane on the motorway and I ended up on the grass verge on the left-hand side of the road. I was lucky it wasn’t more serious, but the tyre was in bits and the alloy wheel was goosed.

It cost me over €500 to replace them so I contacted the insurance company to see what they had to say for themselves. They told me that I would have to pay the first three hundred euro myself and it would also affect my no claims bonus so they suggested it would be cheaper for me to pay for it myself. So I did.

We had a Nissan Almera as a second car a few years back until a drunk driver crashed into it and wrote it off. The insurance company deemed the car to be worth a lot less to them than it was to us, so we got buttons for it.

So, the long and the short of it is, I’ve been paying insurance all my life to cover one thing or the other and I never get any benefit from it. If I didn’t have it though, I’d be the first one to suffer the consequences.

If my mother’s house was uninsured for a single day, I guarantee you a Boeing 747 would plough straight through the bedroom window.

I’m not a fan of night-time driving anymore. My eyesight isn’t as good as it once was and even though I have glasses with anti-glare lenses, I still find it difficult driving against the lights of oncoming traffic. Especially on unlit roads when it’s raining.

I’m OK in my own locality where I’m familiar with the roads but beyond that I’m a little uncomfortable. I thought it was just me, but I’ve been discussing this with some friends lately, and many of them are having the same issue.

I’m not sure how we survived back in the day when there were no road markings and head lights were like two small candles but there were fewer cars on the road then too. Everyone took their time as well, so I suppose it was easier.

When I lived in Dublin in the early eighties, it took time to get used to the way traffic kept going all night long. It never took a break while in Cork city, the traffic eased around 2am and slept until about 6am. Then the city gradually began to wake up.

But that’s changed now, and Cork is constantly on the move too. Getting around isn’t easy, especially at rush hour when driving can be a pain. Motoring for many has become a chore and nothing about driving is simple anymore.

Take taxing the car for example. I thought computerisation had made this process a lot less painful, but I was wrong.  

In the old days, we went out to the County Hall and queued up for an eternity before handing over our paperwork to a frowning clerk sitting behind a glass screen. They all frowned and scowled back then while they inspected the forms for mistakes.

This was always a tense moment because If they found one, they sent you off to fill out the form properly and then you had to join the back of the queue again.

Happy in the belief that those days were long gone, I set about taxing my car for 2020. I sat smugly in the comfort of my recliner and went online with the Department of Transport in Shannon, Co. Clare. I clicked a few buttons, filled some boxes, gave my credit card details and pressed send.

I got a receipt by email soon after, and that was that. Job done.

Then I forgot about it for two weeks until it dawned on me that I never received my tax disc. Doubting myself, I went out and checked my windscreen and, sure enough, it wasn’t there. So, I sent off an email to the Department of Transport in Shannon and told them my story and this is the reply I received;

‘To date your tax disc has not been returned to our offices in Shannon by An Post. Your tax disc may have got lost in the post, you will need to apply for a duplicate.

In some instances, it has been known to take up to 10 working days for motor tax disc to be delivered by An Post. Unfortunately, we are unable to issue a duplicate tax disc. This can only be done at your local Motor Tax Office. The procedure to get a duplicate Tax Disc is as follows:

You must complete an RF134 form. On this form you must state that you didn’t receive your Tax Disc in the post after taxing online and this must be witnessed by a Garda. Bring or post this to your local Motor Tax Office and they will issue the duplicate tax disc to you. This procedure is the same if you had taxed your vehicle by post at your local Motor Tax Office and did not receive the disc in the post.

The above procedure has to be followed in order to get duplicates for any official documents (tax disc, vehicle registration book, vehicle licensing certificate etc) that have been lost in the post.

Apologies for the inconvenience caused.’

So, I contacted my local motor tax office in Cork and queried the procedure with the lady. I couldn’t see why I had to solve the problem when I had done nothing wrong. I had kept my part of the deal. I applied online and paid my fee, but I never got what I paid for. Not my fault.

I didn’t lose anything but it was now my responsibility to go to a garda station, fill out the paperwork, get it signed by a garda, get an envelope, go to the post office, buy a stamp and post the letter back to the people who should have sent me the disc in the first place.

When I told her this, she assured me that she didn’t lose anything either and seemed annoyed that I should even be suggesting that her department might be to blame. She stuck to her guns that An Post was at fault and if I wanted my disc I would have to follow the procedure as outlined.

So, I did as I was told, but I was still wondering where the original tax disc went. Was it sitting in a computer somewhere in Shannon begging to be freed from the machinery? Or was it languishing in a sorting office pining for its new owner?

I’d be surprised if An Post lost it because I’ve never failed to receive my post. In fact, I once got a letter addressed to Trevor Laffan, Ireland so I have great faith in our postal service.

Before I could post my letter requesting a duplicate, my tax disc came through the letterbox. I don’t know when it was posted because there was no date on the envelope, but it was eighteen days after I applied for it. I’m still not blaming Postman Pat though.

Two major events happened simultaneously in Ireland in June 1984 and that caused problems for the media because they were anxious to cover both. Ronald Reagan was visiting Ballyporeen, and I was getting married. In the end, they concentrated on Ronnie.

The wedding marked the end of a couple of busy years for me and my queen. We bought a site in 1982 and built a house on it. It was all go. We moved in before it was finished so we had to improvise a bit. We managed fine and gradually developed it over the years as our finances improved.

We had no wardrobes, so we hung our clothes from lengths of timber that were nailed together to form a rough clothes horse. It looked unsightly but did the job.

We had no central heating either, so we dragged a ‘super ser’ gas heater from room to room on concrete floors until we got the heating sorted. That was a noisy job as anyone who remembers those things will testify.

A ‘super-ser’ was a tin box on wheels and every part of it rattled. It carried the gas bottle inside, and it made an awful racket rolling around the house on the bare floors. It was all we had, and it only heated the room we were in. A glass of water sat on top to absorb some of the fumes because they were a bit smelly.

We took our time doing up the house and completed it in stages. That was the way people did it back then, but things have changed. Young people these days don’t want to wait for anything. They want the fully furnished perfect home and they want it now. And that’s not all they want.

A financial planner was telling me that lots of middle-aged couples are seeking advice on how to prepare for their children’s future. They specifically want to be able to pay for their children’s wedding and provide the deposit for their house.

He said, today’s children have an expectation that mam and dad will cough up for the nuptials and provide the down payment for the house. I didn’t like the sound of that.

My daughter is getting married shortly, and we fully expect to be involved and we’re happy to do what we can. I know it’s going to cost me, so it’s all about damage limitation. I’m hoping to get away with just paying for the bouquet, but I doubt it. I have a few ideas though about where costs could be reduced.

We could use public transport to get everyone to the venue. I could take a few photos with my phone and post them on Whatsapp to save on a photographer. Everyone could bring some sandwiches to the reception and we could use the piped music in the hotel instead of a band.

Or there might be an even better way to go.

A Cypriot friend of mine was telling me that he was invited to a wedding and there were two and a half thousand guests at it. At a previous wedding, there were so many guests that they ran out of space in the hotel and had to direct some of the guests to another hotel nearby. It wasn’t a problem though.

In that part of the world, when a local girl is getting married, the whole village is invited. Nobody knows how many will turn up or how much food will be needed but it seems to work and there’s no panic.

The weather was unsettled then too so they weren’t sure on the day, what church they would use. They wanted a very small old church which meant some of the ceremony would be held outdoors but if the weather was bad, they would move to the larger venue. So, they had two churches on stand-by, and the decision wouldn’t be made until the last miniute. Imagine the state of the Irish mammy!!

Cyprus has a few different wedding traditions too. On the day of the wedding, the groom and his family and friends make their way to the bride’s house to collect her and they all depart for the church together. If the wedding is taking place in a village, they all walk.

Before entering the church, the bride’s parents give her away to the groom and they walk up the aisle together. Their parents join them and stand with them throughout the ceremony. 

Early in the festivities, the unmarried friends of the bride write their names on the soles of the bride’s shoes. At the end of the evening, the bride removes her shoes and the woman whose name remains written there will be the next to marry. 

Midway in the celebration, the couple perform the newlywed dance, offering their guests the opportunity to pin money to the couple’s clothing, to help with the wedding expenses.

When he told me there were over two thousand mouths to feed, I had a weakness until he explained it to me. You see, everyone who turns up must pay for the privilege. A brown envelope kind of thing and there can be considerable amounts of money collected to help the couple get off to a good start in life. So that gave me an idea.

I’m issuing a general invitation to the lovely, generous people of Cobh, Midleton and surrounding areas, to attend my daughter’s wedding in April. I don’t know where it’s going to take place yet, but don’t worry about that. Just stuff as much as you can into that A.4 size envelope and hand it to me.

I’ll be standing on Belvelly Bridge on the way into Cobh and you’ll easily recognise me. I’ll be the guy with the big smile on his face.