Month: May 2022

According to medicalnewstoday.com there is a thing called the Lazarus phenomenon, when the ‘dead’ come back to life. They gave the example of a woman whose heart had stopped beating. She was no longer breathing and was declared dead. At 91 years old, she had lived a long life, but she was not about to stop living it.

Eleven hours later, she awoke in the hospital mortuary with a craving for tea and pancakes. Apparently, she is just one of many people said to have “risen from the dead.”

In 2014, a 78-year-old man from Mississippi was declared dead after a hospice nurse found him with no pulse. The next day, he woke up in a body bag at the morgue having experienced Lazarus syndrome where patients who are pronounced dead after cardiac arrest sometimes experience an impromptu return of cardiac activity.

An article in Theweek.com, listed a few more. A 65-year-old heart attack victim in Yemen had been washed and wrapped in special cloth, according to Muslim tradition. Mourners had placed him in his grave, and were preparing to cover him with dirt, when the man suddenly came to. He was not amused. “You want to kill me and bury me alive,” he shouted. After the shock wore off, mourners gave the no-longer-dead man fresh clothes and turned the funeral into a party.

A South African man in his 60s passed out after an asthma attack and thinking him dead, his grieving family called a private funeral company, instead of paramedics. After spending 21 hours in a refrigerated morgue, the man woke up surrounded by corpses and started to scream. Two workers heard the noises and panicked. They thought it was a ghost and they ran for their lives. The entire mortuary team returned together later and freed the undead man.

I don’t blame them for getting a shock. Seeing someone coming back to life can’t be easy. In fact, I know it isn’t because I’ve had that experience and I’m still not the better for it.

I wrote a story recently about my experience with a dodgy electricity transformer in Cobh back in the eighties and nineties when I lived in the countryside and how we regularly lost power.

I explained how Dick was my local ESB engineer and a regular visitor to my house in those days. Standing well over six foot tall and built like a tank with big broad shoulders and a full beard, he reminded me of the Desperate Dan character from the comic books, but like most men of that size, he was a gentle giant.

One day while I was in the middle of doing something or other, the power went as it regularly did when it was windy because the transformer was overloaded. I made the necessary phone call and bit the head off whoever answered the phone. I was running out of patience and demanded action.

Soon after, I saw my six-year-old son, standing in the hallway with his mouth wide open, staring at the front door. The hallway went dark, so I knew straightaway that Dick had arrived. His massive frame filled the doorway and blocked all the light coming into the house. My son was mesmerised.

Dick came in and I had a little rant and a moan about the constant power cuts. He didn’t say much, he just walked past me into the kitchen and reached up to the fuse board and flicked one of the circuit breakers and the power was restored.

It hadn’t been a problem with the transformer this time. I had tripped the switch myself somehow and I alone was responsible for cutting off our power supply. I was so used to dealing with the bad transformer that I just assumed it was the same old problem.

He just looked at me and smiled but I would have felt better if he had abused me for being so stupid. I felt completely ridiculous, and no amount of apologising seemed adequate. He had a cup of coffee and left the house laughing.

I finished the piece by saying I only discovered a few years ago the poor man had died, and I was so sorry to hear that. That was how the article appeared in the Echo, but I deleted the last line when I published it on social media for reasons that will become obvious.

The day after the story appeared in the Echo, I was sitting at home when the doorbell went. I nearly fell in a heap when I saw who was standing there. Dick was far from dead, and he was right in front of me. He hadn’t changed a bit either except that he was a lot more alive than I had been led to believe.

He told me his phone was hopping from friends, slagging him about the tale of his demise appearing in the paper. He made some inquiries to find out where I had moved to and made his way down to see me. He wanted to see the expression on my face when I discovered he was far from the grave I had placed him in.

The reunion was complete when my son Colin arrived on the scene, twenty-five years since we all previously met in a hallway.

I was shocked but delighted to see him. I apologised for writing him off, but he just laughed as he did the last time I made a blunder. We chatted for a while and when he left, I sat down to write this piece while it was still fresh in my mind. I was grinning from ear to ear and genuinely so pleased to see him.

I had a drop of Jameson to steady the nerves and to toast his return.

Please don’t judge me, but in a moment of weakness recently, I watched an episode of Britain’s Got Talent. In my defence, there was some drink involved and as this excuse is regularly accepted as an explanation for wrongdoing in the courts, it should be good enough for me. I can only promise to do better in future.

Anyway, they had a guy on the show who was hoping to gain entry into the Guinness World Records. It was previously known as the Guinness Book of Records but changed its name in 1999 to Guinness World Records (GWR). He stood there with a serious expression on his face, a female assistant by his side, and an official from GWR to oversee the attempt and to make sure it was all above board. Exciting stuff in prospect then, as he told us what he was going to do.

He announced to the hushed audience that he was going to smash one hundred coconuts with his hand in one miniute. Tension was mounting as he prepared himself and as soon as he got the go-ahead, he started pounding the coconuts with his fist.

He flattened some, missed others and sent bits of fruit flying in all directions. It seemed like a daft idea from the outset, and that’s exactly what it turned out to be. When the time was up, his attempt was deemed a failure. No surprise there.

He wasn’t even close because he barely made it half-way through the line of coconuts. He did succeed in creating an almighty mess on the stage though which confirmed that the whole thing was completely pointless. I couldn’t understand how he even came up with this madcap idea, but I’ve since discovered he’s not alone. Strange record attempts like this are taking place all the time.

The website, TheClever.com listed some odd Guinness World Records that have been attempted. For instance, take this guy Josef Tödtling from Austria. He set an extreme Guinness World Record for being pulled by a horse while his body was on fire. He was dragged for 500 metres, and during the act, there was a car travelling beside him with someone pouring oil over his body to make sure the fire didn’t go out.

That was in 2015 and after setting that world record, Josef tried the same act with a quad bike and set another record. This time, he was pulled for 582 metres, and entered the record books again for being the person pulled by a vehicle for the longest distance while on fire.

We have all used drinking straws at one point, and I would bet, most of us never wondered how many of them we could fit in our mouths at the same time, but one person did. A record for the most drinking straws stuffed into the mouth was set by a guy from the UK who managed to squeeze 400 straws between his teeth. He held them there for 10 seconds and is the only person in the record books who achieved this.

I regularly have peas with my dinner but whenever one falls off the plate, it never enters my mind to see how far I could blow it across the table. I’m obviously lacking imagination because I never thought of pea blowing being worthy of note, but Germany’s Andre Ortolf did. He puffed the pea to a distance of 24 ft 7.66 inches and created a new world record.

If you want to beat that, just find a plain, smooth surface and a standard-sized pea and using the same technique used to blow out birthday candles, blow the pea away as far as you can. And if this kind of thing floats your boat, I feel sorry you.

Another guy set a world record for completing the most rotations while hanging from a power drill in a minute. The drill was anchored to the ceiling and the German held onto the handle of the drill while his feet were off the ground. He achieved 148 rotations on the set of ‘Guinness World Records’ in December 2003.

The sport of weightlifting has been around for many years, but this world record took the activity to a whole new level. In 2008, Thomas Blackthorne from the UK managed to lift an impressive 12.5kg (27 lb 9 oz) using only his tongue. The weight alone was impressive, but he attached the weight to a hook and pierced it through his tongue to achieve the record. My head hurts just thinking about that.

There is another record I imagine Joey Tribbiani from Friends would be proud of and it’s held by an Irishman. The Irish Examiner reported in 2013, that a Corkman entered the record books for the most bras unhooked in one minute.

As a fundraiser for a breast cancer charity, Sean Murray from Skibbereen turned his talents to the kind of challenge most men can only dream of — unclasping as many bras as possible in one minute. To practise for the world record attempt, Sean enlisted the help of a couple of female staff members and nine mannequins. The shop was closed for a spell most mornings to facilitate “staff training.”

“We lined up the nine mannequins and some of the female staff stripped down to their bras and I practised on them, with one of the male staff doing the time- keeping. It was a good team-building exercise,” Sean said, tongue in cheek.

The practise paid off and Sean succeeded in unclasping 91 double hooked bras with one hand, breaking the previous world record of opening 69 bras in 60 seconds. To assist him, 56 volunteers took part, mostly women.

After the event, he said, “I would like to thank Playtex for their support, quite literally.”

I saw a video some time ago where two young lads were given an old telephone. The black type we all had at one time, with the receiver on top and the circular dial on the front. They were told to make a call, but they hadn’t an absolute clue how to operate it.

They tried dialling with the handset still in place, then tried speaking into the handset without doing anything else and then examined it as if it was an alien. It was hilarious. It’s only a short time since these were in use in every home, but telecommunication has changed so much, and so quickly, that they’ve become unrecognisable to a new generation.

We all depended on house phones once upon a time, but not anymore. They’re old hat now. We’ve given up using ours because the only people calling it were scammers looking for our money but these pests don’t have it all their own way either because getting someone to answer a landline is difficult these days.

I wonder when Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone, if he had any idea of how it would evolve? I doubt it because his first words over his new invention were “Mr. Watson, come here – I want to see you.” He wasn’t surprised when Watson answered his call immediately and he probably assumed it would always be like that. Little did he know.

If he were alive today, Mr. Bell would notice some changes. For a start, he would find it difficult to contact Mr. Watson’s office. After dialling the number, he would have to listen to his options, select the one most suitable to him, make several more selections before being advised that Mr. Watsons office was experiencing a large volume of calls and waiting time would be estimated in hours.

I experienced this recently when I was trying to get my Covid Booster Certificate amended. It had the incorrect date of the vaccination printed on it, and I couldn’t alter it online, so I had to use the phone number listed on the Website. I dialled the number, made the necessary selections, and then waited ninety-three minutes before speaking to a human. A human who did nothing for me in the end but that’s another story.

It’s at times like that, I think we might have been better off if Alexander Graham Bell hadn’t bothered. They say he refused to have a phone in his own study because he said it would only distract him from his work. That was at a time when I imagine getting a phone call was a rare event so he must have had an inkling of how invasive his machine would eventually become. He couldn’t possibly have predicted the extent though.

When I was a child, our telephone sat on a table in the hall. We picked it up when it rang or when we wanted to make a call and that was it. The rest of the time it just sat there and minded its own business, and I don’t ever remember anyone sitting in front of it just staring at it because that would have been pointless.

These days, we look at our phones about eighty-five times a day on average. We check the time, the weather, our emails, texts, Whatsapp messages, news updates on Twitter and whatever. That’s outside the time we spend talking on it.

I am one of the afflicted. I can’t leave home without it. In fact, I can’t move from one room to the other without tapping my pocket to make sure it’s there. My children didn’t get that much care and attention and that’s because Mr Bell couldn’t just spend his days climbing trees and kicking a football like the other kids.

He was too inquisitive for that. He said, “The inventor looks upon the world and is not contented with things as they are. He wants to improve whatever he sees and wants to benefit the world; he is haunted by an idea. The spirit of invention possesses him, seeking materialisation.”

He was certainly a determined character and made his invention work. It was worth his while too. In 1876, Bell offered to sell the patent to Western Union for $100,000. Western Union ran America’s telegraph wires at the time, but its top people believed the telephone was just a fad. They couldn’t see it being profitable, so they turned it down.

Two years later in 1878, Western Union’s opinion had altered dramatically. They knew if they could get the patent for $25 million, they would have a bargain. Unfortunately for Western Union, the Bell Telephone Company had been launched by then. They missed the boat.

According to History.com, Bell’s interest in sound technology was deep-rooted and personal, as both his wife and mother were deaf. His father was a professor of speech elocution at the University of Edinburgh and his mother, despite being deaf, was an accomplished pianist.

Bell didn’t excel academically, but he was a problem solver from an early age. At 16, he began studying the mechanics of speech and also learned Greek and Latin. While living in America, he learned the Mohawk language and put it in writing for the first time. The Mohawk people made him an Honorary Chief.

When Bell was 25, he opened a school in Boston where he taught deaf people to speak and it was while teaching, he met Mabel Hubbard, a deaf student. They married 1877 and went on to have four children, including two sons who died as infants. 

Bell died in 1922, at the age of 75 in Nova Scotia, Canada and during his funeral, every phone in North America was silenced to pay tribute to the inventor. And they haven’t been quiet since.

I got a message last year from the ESB informing me that a technician would be calling around to fit a smart meter to the house. It’s part of the National Climate Action Plan, supporting Irelands transition to a low carbon future. They plan to fit twenty-four million of these things across the country.

I presume that will bring about the demise of the meter reader, but the new technology promises to bring benefits to customers, the environment, and the country. That’s great, but when I hear that kind of speak, the cynic in me breaks out and I wonder what the catch is? We’ll have to wait and see.

Anyway, I got a follow up message to say the meter fitting person would arrive at 9.30am on Thursday and sure enough, he arrived as promised. He got to work straight away, pulling bits and pieces out of his van and he told me he would be shutting off the power for a short while. I went out a few minutes later to see if he wanted a coffee while I could still boil a kettle and I got a shock. Not from the electricity but from the sight that greeted me.

I live in a cul-de-sac with only a few houses around me. The electricity box is on the wall outside and there was nobody around except the two of us and the birds. There was no chance of him being disturbed but this lad had the place set up as if he was expecting trouble. I thought maybe he had discovered a nuclear waste dump site.

He was dressed in a boiler suit, high viz jacket, and a white hard hat with a safety visor. He had a sign on the footpath telling everyone in the vicinity to keep away – me in other words – and the area around the box was cordoned off like something you’d see at a crime scene. Images of Chernobyl flashed before my eyes.

He was a very nice guy and he explained that he was just complying with health and safety requirements. He said inspectors could visit him at any time and he would be in hot water if they found any breaches.

It seemed a bit over the top to me, but he did whatever he needed to do, tidied up and headed off to the next job. It actually took him more time to set up the safety cordon system and dismantle it again, than it did to fit the meter. When he was gone, I thought of another encounter I had with an ESB engineer many years ago when I lived in a bungalow out in the country.

Rural living is different in many ways to what city dwellers would be familiar with. Cleaning out a septic tank, cattle wandering into the garden, the smell of slurry and no street lighting would not be part of normal urban living but for us country bumpkins, it was par for the course. Electricity supply wasn’t straightforward either.

There was a transformer on a pole close to our house that was constantly giving trouble because there were too many houses being fed from it and it needed to be upgraded. Whenever there was a strong wind, we were guaranteed to lose power and sometimes, even a light breeze would do it.

When that happened, I had to ring the local ESB office to let them know and an engineer would be dispatched to solve the problem, and all would be well until the next breeze.

Dick was my local ESB engineer, and he was a regular visitor to my house in those days. He was an absolute gentleman. Standing well over six foot tall and built like a tank with big broad shoulders and a full beard, he reminded me of the Desperate Dan character from the comic books, but like most men of that size, he was a gentle giant.

One day while I was in the middle of doing something or other, the power went. I wasn’t having a good day, and this was the last straw. I made the necessary phone call and bit the head off whoever answered the phone. I was running out of patience and demanded action.

Not long after that, I saw my son who was about six at the time, standing in the hallway with his mouth wide open, staring at the front door. The hallway went dark, so I knew straightaway that Dick had arrived. His massive frame filled the doorway and blocked all the light coming into the house. My son was mesmerised.

Dick came in and I had a little rant and a moan about the constant power cuts. He didn’t say much, he just walked past me into the kitchen and reached up to the fuse board to open the cover. Well, he didn’t have to reach up at all because it was almost at his eye level, so he just flicked one of the circuit breakers and the power was restored.

It hadn’t been a problem with the transformer this time. I had tripped the switch myself somehow and I alone was responsible for cutting off our power supply. I hadn’t considered that possibility. I was so used to dealing with the bad transformer that I just assumed it was the same old problem. I should have checked of course.

He just looked at me and smiled but I would have felt better if he had abused me for being so stupid. I felt completely ridiculous, and no amount of apologising seemed adequate. He had a cup of coffee and left the house laughing.

I was happy to see that average speed zone cameras are about to be introduced on Irish roads. It will be our first mainline motorway-based system and following a period of testing and commissioning, motorists will see the equipment being deployed for the camera system. This will include the yellow poles and cameras traditionally associated with speed measurement equipment.

I first came across this system in Scotland a few years ago and I thought it was very fair. Drivers pass between two camera points positioned along the relevant roadway and their number plates are digitally recorded. If a driver reaches the second point too soon, a record of the speed violation is auto generated and sent to the gardai where it’s treated the same way as a speed van image.

The average speed zone will be clearly identified by appropriate signs and Variable Message Signs (VMS) so you will be in no doubt you’re hitting a zone and after that it’s up to you. I think that’s a much fairer system than being ambushed by a speed van in an area where there may be an unexpected change in the speed limit.

I got a letter in the post from An Garda Siochana a couple of years ago informing me that I had exceeded the speed limit in Lemybrien, Co. Waterford. I couldn’t dispute it as there was a photograph of my number plate included and they said I had been recorded doing 83kms per hour in a 60kms zone.

I was surprised because I pride myself on being a careful driver but there was nobody else using the car, so I have to put my hands up. It cost me €80 and three penalty points to atone for my indiscretion but I did have a grievance though and I’ll tell you why.

I’m not a speed merchant. All my life I have been afflicted with a hatred of being late for anything, so I always arrive ahead of time. When I’m going on a journey, I allow way more time than I need. I rarely use cruise control because I don’t particularly like it but when I do, I set it between 110kms and 113kms when the speed limit is 120kms.

I drive a 2.2 litre car which has plenty power and is well capable going faster but I prefer to take it easy. I picked up the ticket while I was driving on the main road from Wexford to Cork and somewhere near Lemybrien, the speed limit drops to 60kms. Neither my brother-in-law, who was travelling with me, nor I noticed the sign.

Maybe it’s not very obvious, but I won’t know until I’m back down that way again but 60kmph is about 40 miles per hour in old money and you wouldn’t be long gathering a crowd behind you travelling at that speed on the main Rosslare to Cork road, but, as they say, it is what it is.

There are some locations where speed checks are carried out that are a little more that handy earners for the State. For instance, there is a regular spot on the outskirts of Cobh where the speed van parks up, near the entrance to the golf club. Cars accelerate coming up the hill on the way out of town, and when they come over the brow of the hill, the speed van awaits them.

It’s really a case of shooting fish in a barrel. These vans are supposed to be located in areas where serious accidents have occurred previously. Fair enough, but I’ve been driving out there for over forty years and I can’t recall a single accident ever happening on that stretch of road but even if there were a few I’m not aware of, it certainly couldn’t be described as an accident black spot.

There is another location coming out of Dungarvan that is often used as a speed trap and that’s exactly what it is, a trap. There is a steep climb as you head towards Cork on the main road and the hill has both a slow lane and an overtaking lane. The speed limit is 100kph but for a short distance, half-way up the hill, the limit drops to 60kpm. It’s easy to miss the 60kph sign, particularly if overtaking a high sided vehicle.

My brother-in-law was caught there, and I consider him to be one of the safest drivers I know and here’s the thing. I’m not sure that fining the two of us has made the roads any safer or has achieved anything apart from generating revenue. In my opinion, placing speed vans in locations like these and hitting soft targets does little to improve road safety.

These average speed zones are a much fairer system but there is another issue that needs to be addressed if we really want to reduce accidents on our roads and that’s the poor standard of driving in this country. The kind you see around schools and built-up areas every day when children are heading home. Bad parking, reckless driving and lack of awareness are commonplace, and it will take more than speed vans to rectify that.

I regularly drive behind cars that crawl along the Fota Road at 50kph and hit the brake at every corner because they can’t handle the car properly but as soon as they reach the N25, they accelerate to the maximum speed allowed, driving beyond their capability, so when they find themselves in an emergency situation, they can’t react quickly enough.

I recently witnessed a woman creating chaos in the centre of town because she was unable to reverse her car and I know of others who plan their route in advance, so they don’t have to go backwards. That needs to be addressed too.