Trevor Laffan

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.

I know I’m going to sound like my grandfather, nevertheless, I have to say that the world is a different place to what it was when I was a child. Especially since the introduction of the Internet. That has been the biggest influence on modern living since the invention of electricity but unfortunately, not everyone has access to it.

When I was growing up, in the sixties, life was pretty basic by today’s standards, but we didn’t know any different. We had everything we needed, and we were grateful for that and while it couldn’t be described as a privileged upbringing, we were happy.

It was a time when phones were being introduced into our homes, street lighting was new and exciting. TV was on the way and even though broadcasting only started about 4 in the afternoon and finished at midnight with the national anthem, we were thrilled. Everything was in black and white, but that didn’t matter.

Colour was introduced gradually, and this was huge. Maire de Barra, a continuity announcer with Radio Telefis Eireann would tell us what programme was due on next and with a big smile she would say “and it’s in colour.”

We didn’t see anything wrong with the world as it was then and as a kid, I was happy with my lot. I couldn’t imagine how life could get any better. Dunlop even introduced a new timber tennis racquet, the Maxply, and surely, we couldn’t improve on that.

But of course, we did, and we have witnessed huge advancements in technology since then but access to the internet is still problematic for many.

I often wonder what our grand kids will be saying in 2060 about growing up in 2019. Will they look back at this time and wonder how they even survived the experience, or will they remember it fondly?

They’ll tell their children about how poor the Internet was and that it was only available in certain parts of the country. And how some people even had to drive a few miles to find a spot where they could get a signal to send an email. They probably won’t believe it.

By 2060, the technology may exist to plank a satellite strategically over Ireland to provide the Internet for everyone without digging up half the country but as of now, that’s what we’re planning to do at an enormous cost to the taxpayer.

There will be other changes too, especially in the way we select our candidates for public office. The system we’re currently using seems silly even now so our grandchildren will get a great kick out of hearing the stories of how people voted back in the day.

They will be told that in 2019, we closed the schools so the citizens could pile into empty classrooms across the country to vote. Voters put an X on a two-foot long piece of paper that was then hauled off to another location where hundreds more citizens spent days counting these bits of paper to find a winner.

They won’t believe we had over seven and a half metric tonnes of paper in one of the count centres in Cork after the European election. They’ll have a good chuckle at us, and they’ll be right.

When I walked into my polling station on 24^th May last, I was taken aback. I was given three pieces of paper. One for the divorce referendum which was straight forward with a choice of two boxes to tick, yes or no.

The second one was for the local elections and had a bigger choice, but it was the third one that took the biscuit.

The ballot paper for the European election was two feet long with twenty-three names on it. It was like a roll of wallpaper. By the time I got to Mick Wallace, who had the misfortune to be at the bottom, I was exhausted.

That paperwork caused huge logistical problems for the people counting the votes. They had to sub-divide the papers into separate groupings or they would never have got through the process. Then there was a recount in Cork which some predicted could last until the end of time at a cost of €1 million. Thankfully it was sorted quicker than that.

They will find all that hard to believe, but wherever they hear about it, it’s unlikely they’ll be reading it in a broadsheet or tabloid newspaper because the Internet has changed everything. Young people don’t buy papers, they get their news online but they’re not the only ones using that medium.

Many of us do our banking online, communicate with friends and relatives online, organise holidays, book flights, arrange accommodation and rent cars all online. We get our passports, drivers’ licences, motor tax and insurance through the Internet too. We have passwords that allow us to do it securely and it works fine so why can’t we vote online and save paper and man hours.

An attempt was made to introduce electronic voting in 2002 in three constituencies. It worked well as far as I can remember, and the votes were counted quickly but when it came to rolling it out across the country, we chickened out.

We couldn’t possibly trust these voting machines because there was no proper auditing and no paper trail and no tallymen, so it was decided to scrap the idea in favour of pouring back into the classrooms with our lead pencils.

A lot has changed since then and the time has come to look at this option again. Our young people live their lives online and if we expect them to engage in the democratic process, then we must meet them at their level. They are the future and the future for them is the Internet.

We’re all busy these days. Everyone is on the go, between getting to work, organising kids for school, collecting them again in the evening, having dinner and doing homework. It’s especially tough for those with a long commute and for them, there isn’t much time left in the day for anything else.

There are many who leave home early in the morning and don’t return until late in the evening. They’re so busy with their own lives that they have little interaction with their families let alone their neighbours and sometimes they don’t even know who their neighbours are.

That has consequences for us all and one of the casualties of this modern-day living and lack of community engagement is that we can become isolated. Self-preservation becomes the norm and looking out for each other is no longer a priority.  In many cases we have more of a relationship with our phones and laptops than we do with our neighbours. We keep to ourselves and mind our own business.

The Mayor of Galway told a story about how he came across a woman who was having difficulty with a man on the street, late at night in the city centre. He approached the guy and told him to leave the girl alone and he received a smack in the face for his trouble.

That didn’t bother him too much but what really annoyed him was the fact that there was a crowd gathering and they were more interested in filming the scene with their phones than they were in helping or contacting the gardai. That’s not something for society to be proud of but it’s the way we’ve gone.

I came across an older gentleman recently and he was telling me about how he hates the thought of the clock going back because that signals the start of the long winter evenings. I thought he was going to tell me that he hates the wind, the cold and lighting fires and so on but that wasn’t the case.

It had nothing to do with the weather. He has a fear of crime and he gets very nervous in the house because he is afraid of being broken into during the night and being assaulted.

These are ordinary decent people who have worked hard all their lives and just want to enjoy the remainder of their lives in peace but both he and his elderly wife are worried about their security and feel very vulnerable. They hear stories on the news about elderly people being victims of crime and they’re conscious that it could happen to them.

It’s hard to blame them for feeling insecure and it’s very understandable that they feel vulnerable to attack. The closure of many rural garda stations, the shortage of manpower in An Garda Siochana and the lack of visibility of its members on patrol are contributing factors.

Reports of murders and aggravated burglaries in the media also help to fuel the fear and while these types of crime are not hugely prevalent, they are usually widely reported when they do occur. Older people read about serial criminals escaping justice, even though they may have dozens of previous convictions recorded against them, and that adds to the fear.

News of a burglary in rural Ireland travels quickly and can strike fear throughout the locality. That has an effect on the wider community so it’s not only the victim that is suffering. Their sense of security is threatened and that can impact the way they live the rest of their lives, often becoming afraid to leave the house.

Macra na feirme is an organisation that is well aware of the fear being experienced by communities in rural Ireland and they encourage neighbours get to know each other and establish a support network. According to their research, keeping in contact with elderly neighbours is very important to their members and knowing their neighbour on a personal level is also important to many.

Any initiative that encourages neighbours to get to know each other better makes total sense. It doesn’t matter whether you live in a rural or urban environment, the best form of security you can have is a good neighbour.

But, for those who feel like prisoners in their own homes during the hours of darkness, it’s important to keep things in perspective. The chances of being attacked in their own home are slim. It happens of course, but not as often as you might think.

Most burglaries are committed by opportunists on the lookout for an easy target. They search for the open window, an unlocked door or an insecure garden shed. They prefer the soft options and when an opportunity presents itself, they take it.

When I was growing up, the key was always left in the front door and that door was often left open. People came and went all the time because that was the age we lived in. But times have changed, and we can’t do that anymore. Neither can we leave the key under the mat or under the flowerpot.

It might come as a surprise to some of you, but these are not great hiding places. The thickest criminal will think of looking there so you better find a better hiding spot.

There are simple steps we can all take to reduce the risk of becoming victims of crime but it’s worth repeating that the best form of security is a good neighbour. Taking notice of callers and being seen to be a little inquisitive is a great deterrent to a would be criminal.

But for that to happen we must put the phones aside and spend some time finding out who our neighbours are and get back to looking out for each other again.

In The Echo recently, Ann Murphy reported that Cork has been allocated just 138 Garda recruits since the reopening of the Garda college in 2015, compared with 1,322 recruits allocated to Dublin.

Figures supplied in answer to a parliamentary question from Fianna Fáil TD Michael McGrath showed Cork City received just seven Garda recruits this year, while five were allocated to Cork North. Cork West has not been allocated any this year.

Ten recruits due in Cork earlier this year from the most recent graduation class from the Garda college were re-allocated to help boost numbers in Dublin and Drogheda, because of gangland crime.

It’s not unusual for gardai to be pulled from one place to fill a gap somewhere else because there just aren’t enough to go around but you wouldn’t think that if you listened to Justice Minister Charlie Flanagan who said: “This Government has not been found wanting in providing resources to An Garda Síochána”.

Deputy McGrath has addressed this issue previously; “I have been raising concerns about Garda numbers for some time. This issue must be addressed as part of a wider initiative to tackle open drug dealing in Cork. Unless the government wakes up to this incredibly serious problem and allocates the resources needed, the situation will continue to spiral out of control”.

We didn’t get here overnight though. Back in 1980, the Fianna Fail Minister for Justice, Gerry Collins, said that the Government would not be found wanting when it came to getting resources for An Garda Siochana. It’s been repeated many times since, but the problem remains.

I passed out from the Garda Training Centre in Templemore on the 8^th May 1980. There were 92 of us and like everyone else in my group, I was hoping for a posting close to home but most of us knew that was unlikely.

Crime was spiralling out of control in Dublin. Drugs were a major issue and gardai were getting injured by joy riders and criminals so there was a clamour for law and order. Dubliners wanted more gardai on the beat, so my fate was sealed.

I went to Blackrock in Dublin as a red raw member of An Garda Siochana. I had a lot to learn so I didn’t anticipate there would be too much expected of me initially but when I read one of the Dublin papers the following day, I got a fright.

According to that paper, even though we were the new kids on the block, expectations were high. We were hailed as the new crime busters, going to save the day. Those responsible for writing that story obviously had no idea who they were dealing with, because in reality, we were probably just about capable of writing a parking ticket.

The story went; ‘The garda war against centre-city crime took a major step forward yesterday with the appointment of 75 new recruits to Dublin, 18 of them to city-centre stations. The move follows top-level talks involving-Justice Minister Mr. Gerry Collins and the Garda Representative Association, whose members have been the target of joy riding youths and vandals in the city centre.’

So, 75 of us ended up in the Capital, which left 17 for the rest of the country and when you fast forward to 2019, almost forty years later, it seems that not a lot has changed.

200 new recruits left the Garda College in Templemore earlier this year and Garda Commissioner Drew Harris said that more than three quarters of the new gardaí were being allocated to stations in parts of the country worst affected by organised crime, with 182 of the 201 garda graduates being sent to Dublin where ongoing criminal feuds continue.

Commissioner Harris said that gangland murders were increasing because of turf wars between organised crime groups and that they were becoming even more vicious but gardai were determined to reassure the communities of their ongoing commitment to tackle those gangs in these areas.

The allocation of three quarters of the gardaí graduating to Dublin and Drogheda, areas currently worst affected by organised crime was “very deliberate.”

Good news for some but not so good for the rest of the country who lost out.

So, the long and the short of it is, I didn’t do a very good job of curtailing the criminal fraternity back in 1980 and it’s become even more lawless and violent since I left. Dublin has grown since then too of course and it seems it still doesn’t have enough resources despite the promises of Gerry Collins, Charlie Flanagan and all the Justice Ministers in between.

Resources for An Garda Siochana have always been an issue and certain commissioners must take some of the responsibility for that too because they often claimed to have everything they needed at a time when they clearly didn’t, presumably to avoid falling out of favour with their political masters.

Commissioner Harris, the most recent garda boss, launched a new modernisation programme back in August and he too was assured of the full backing of the Minister for Justice.

Mr. Harris must have been delighted at the time to hear that news, but the ink was hardly dry on the launch invitations when the commissioner was told to tighten the purse strings because of the high cost of the Trump/Pence visits. Those security costs came out of the garda budget and made a substantial hole in it.

So it would seem that resources are still an issue and until such time as that is resolved, those of us who live outside the Pale will have to make do with the crumbs that fall from the Garda Commissioners table.

And most of the new students in the Garda Training College can continue to prepare for a life around the M50.

My five-year-old grandson, Cooper, just started primary school and it’s great to see him skipping out the door to school in the morning, happy as Larry without a care in the world. Delighted with himself.

I was minding him recently and we had a chat about his classmates, his teacher and what work they were doing in school, and he was very positive and full of enthusiasm. The most notable aspect of his account was the lack of fear. He didn’t once mention being afraid of his teacher or the environment and that’s good because school wasn’t always like that.

I am delighted for him because that’s how it should be, unlike years ago, when primary school wasn’t a wonderful experience for everyone. Corporal punishment featured prominently in my early school days and I’m sure many others of my vintage will have similar stories to tell.

The Presentation Brothers were responsible for my early education and I don’t have too many happy memories of those times. I’m thankful that Cooper and his buddies won’t have to deal with the reign of terror that was inflicted upon us by those who should have known better.

Modern schools have done away with blackboards. It’s all white boards now and electronic tablets so there’s no need for dusters anymore. That’s good, because these things were regularly used as missiles by brothers anxious to restore order in a classroom.

Dusters were made from timber and were about the size of a modern mobile phone only thicker, with material on one side to wipe the chalk off the board. If you got a slap of one of those on the head, you’d know all about it especially if you were struck by the wooden side.

We had one brother who liked to pinch the locks of hair by your ear and lift you up from the seat until you were standing on your tip toes and he would keep pulling until your eyes watered. Getting a slap on the head from a brother as he passed behind you was nothing unusual either and this behaviour went on every day.

The principal was responsible for carrying out the real punishment though. I can still picture him standing there in his black robes and it didn’t seem to bother him too much that he was hurting young children.

His favourite weapon of torture was a piece of a cane which as far as I can remember was about two feet long. He would raise it in the air, then bring it down across the palm of your hand with enthusiasm. Three of these on each hand and you would certainly feel the pain.

If you moved your hand while he was in mid-flight, the stick would catch you across the tips of the fingers and that was particularly sore. If you flinched and pulled your hand away altogether, the punishment was increased.

There was often a queue in the hallway outside his office and the noise of the stick coming in contact with the skin of the current offender, would filter back to the rest of us adding to the tension and mounting anxiety.

I remember having to face him a few times and I have no idea what my offence was, but I’d be surprised if it was anything serious because I wasn’t a bold child by any means. There was no point in complaining because it wasn’t a democratic process. There was no point in saying anything to our parents either because in those days, members of the religious orders were beyond reproach.

After receiving the punishment, we would have to make our way back to our classroom, usually with our arms folded and our hands tucked tightly into our arm pits trying desperately to make the stinging sensation go away. Then there was the shame of having to face the teacher as the newly branded terrorists we had become.

I remember being in school one day and there was a story going around the playground that one of the enforcers had been involved in an accident. It wasn’t looking too good for him and it says a lot about the kind of character he was, that this news was received with delight. When it was later announced that he had died, many of the children cheered.

The fact that children celebrated the death of an adult in such a way does help to explain the atmosphere that existed in our school at that time. We were lucky enough to have had some good lay teachers and at the end of every school year, it was always tense, waiting to see if you would be lucky enough to get one of those for the following term.

The alternative meant having to face another year of misery, and behaviour that would now be classified as assault. Happily, those days of oppression are long gone.

There is a completely different approach to educating children these days. In my time, those who couldn’t keep up were considered lazy and troublesome and were often the ones who suffered the most. Now, there is more awareness of children with specific academic needs and there are supports available to them.

I sometimes wonder how many children in primary school in the sixties were beaten and abused without having the slightest idea why they were being punished. Children with learning difficulties were never going to improve their capacity to learn by being slapped with a cane but that was the only solution our educators could come up with.

Some argue that the education system has gone too much the other way now and children are not being reprimanded which is making life difficult for teachers. Maybe so, but I know which system I want Cooper to grow up in.

Despite all the hype, Storm Lorenzo passed us by recently without too much fuss. It huffed and puffed a bit up the west coast and dropped some water on us, but by and large it was a non-event. No doubt we’ll face a few more of these in the months ahead.

Even though it didn’t amount to much, it did give us something to talk about. The weather is a favourite topic of ours and we love to chat about what it was like yesterday, what it’s doing today and predicting what tomorrow’s weather is going to bring us. We thank God for the fine days, curse the wet ones and blame the dampness for all the pains in the joints.

Many of us would struggle to make conversation in a Mediterranean country where the weather is rarely discussed. There’s not much to talk about when the sun shines every day and the only clothes you need are shorts, t-shirt and a pair of flip flops. You’d get some strange looks if you started talking about soft days and the great drying out.

We see a lot of bad weather in Ireland, so we’re delighted when we get a break from it. A few days without rain soon becomes a lengthy dry spell and if the sun shines for longer than an hour and rises above 12 degrees, it’s classified as a heat wave.

We get a lot of wind too and it regularly howls down here in Cork Harbour and on those days, we batten down the hatches, wait for it all to calm down again, then carry on as usual. At least that’s what we used do but in recent times, a strong breeze is treated as a national emergency.

There was a time, not so long ago, when we only knew a storm was coming when we heard the wind whistling through the windows. The old timber sash windows never made a proper air-tight seal like the modern windows do, because if they were tight enough to keep out the wind, they were too tight to open, so they were always draughty.

Doors were the same. They rattled too and sometimes they left in the rain as well. On those occasions, towels and cloths were placed strategically around the windows and the bottom of the doors to reduce the air flow and hold back the water. As soon as it was over, everything was gathered up again, washed, dried and put away for the next event.

There were some natural indicators that bad weather was on the way and fishermen especially had their own favourites that they swore by. A quarter moon lying on its back, red sky in the morning and seagulls flying inland, were all signs that things were going to turn nasty.

There was another sign of impending doom, but it took a bit more of an effort to get an accurate forecast from it. It was said that if a mole digs its hole 2½ feet deep, you can expect severe weather. If it’s only two feet deep, then the weather won’t be so bad and if he only digs one foot down you can expect a mild winter.

That method wasn’t very practical if you just wanted to know whether to put the washing out or not.

These days we have meteorological people and they’re a bit more scientific about predicting weather patterns but even with all the information and technology available to them, Mother Nature can still be unpredictable so it’s not an exact science. We have apps on our phones too that give us hour by hour predictions, but are they really necessary?

We got lots of warnings about Storm Lorenzo and they proved to be largely unfounded. Some comments on social media complained that it was over hyped while others complained that advising people to stay indoors was bad for business. Some even seemed almost disappointed that the storm never materialised at all.

Predicting storms is big business and it’s very dramatic when we see The National Emergency Co-ordination Group and local emergency groups on TV, meeting in their bunkers and issuing coloured warnings about power cuts, falling trees, and flooding as the storm makes landfall with violent winds and dangerous driving conditions.

For the last event, RTE showed reporters standing out in the wind and rain as they warned the rest of us to stay indoors. David McCullough did an outdoor piece to camera to promote a segment on Prime Time, but it was difficult to hear what he was saying above the noise of the wind and he looked like he could disappear up into the clouds at any moment.

Poor Theresa Mannion can’t do one of these reports without getting soaked to the skin while screaming at the rest of us to stay safe, but do we really need this drama? Surely, they could deliver their message just as easily from the comfort of a sheltered spot indoors albeit without the special effects.

Or stop doing them altogether because they’re only upsetting people. They’re damned if they issue warnings and damned if the storm doesn’t materialise.

The business community, except for the bakeries, doesn’t like it when people are told to stay indoors because their tills are too silent. Insurance companies don’t want to hear about storms because they have to work round the clock to get the words ‘An act of God’ into as many sentences as possible.

So, maybe we’d all be better off if we went back to the old way of doing things, relying on the seagulls, the moles and the red sky. At least that way, we can’t blame anyone for the bad weather and when it comes, just get the towels and ride it out.

My grandmother died when I was a youngster, and she was laid to rest in the local cemetery. She was in her eighties when she died and had worked all her life, only retiring when she hit her mid- seventies.

She was a mid-wife and spent her early years living on Spike Island which meant she had to get a launch to Cobh whenever she was needed, often in bad weather, at all hours of the day and night. She delivered more than two thousand babies in her time, so she was well known.

On the day of her funeral, there was, as you might expect, a large crowd of mourners at the graveside. When the coffin was lowered into the grave, an elderly man stepped forward and started speaking. I can’t remember exactly what he said, only that he was talking about my grandmother and about some of the things she had done during her lifetime. It was the first time I had heard a eulogy.

I’m not sure if it was pre-arranged or if anybody had been expecting it but it came as a complete surprise to me and at the end of it there was a round of applause. As far as I can remember, he was a retired soldier and friend of the family. It was a very nice touch.

Since then, every eulogy I have heard has been delivered inside the church, at the end of the funeral service. This has been going on for years and I have heard dozens of them during my lifetime, so I expected the same to happen when my mother-in-law died recently.

Her son was going to deliver it, but I was taken aback when I learned that he wouldn’t be allowed to deliver it in the church. He was advised he would have to do it elsewhere.

The Catholic Church does not want eulogies delivered in the church anymore and while this was news to me, it’s a decision that was taken a long time ago. The Vatican made it clear as far back as 1989 when it stated that “a brief homily based on the readings should always be given at the funeral liturgy, but never any kind of eulogy.”

Pope John Paul II repeated that in 2000 and stated: “At the Funeral Mass there should, as a rule, be a short homily, but never a eulogy of any kind.” The reason the Catholic Church doesn’t permit eulogies is because the focus of the Catholic Funeral Mass is not supposed to be about the life of the deceased, but about the saving mercy of God that brings the deceased into eternal life.

That seems to be clear enough and when you join any club, you must play by their rules. But as far as I can see, eulogies are still delivered in some places, so while they are officially ‘discouraged’, if the family insist on a eulogy, they might not be stopped.

I did some research and I came across a piece written by a Msgr. Mannion. He holds a Ph.D in sacramental theology from The Catholic University of America. He was founding president of The Society for Catholic Liturgy in 1995 and the founding editor of the Society’s journal, Antiphon and founded the Mundelein Liturgical Institute in 2000.

I think it’s safe to assume that this man knows the rules of the Church and according to him, eulogies at Catholic funerals are officially discouraged unless delivered at the graveside or at the luncheon that generally follows the funeral.

His difficulty with the eulogy is that it usually comes at the end of the Mass when people are psychologically and spiritually prepared to bring matters to a conclusion. Most people find the prayers and rituals of the funeral Mass very comforting and healing. Prolonged and emotional words spoken at the end of the Mass tend to undo all the healing that has occurred during the Mass.

I think that’s debateable but while not being able to give a eulogy at the Funeral Mass might not sit well with many people, there are other practical reasons why eulogies are discouraged.

Funeral directors and priests often operate to a tight schedule and must coordinate events because of other activities taking place in the churches and the graveyards and while they don’t want to be rushing anyone, they do need to avoid unnecessary delays too.

In Mnsr. Mannions experience, there are a number of factors that can cause problems for the schedule and he was often faced with two or more people wanting to speak at the end of the Mass and sometimes he had up to five people delivering a eulogy and speakers often went on for fifteen to thirty minutes.  

Many times, eulogies were delivered by people who became very emotional and had great difficulty in delivering their words which became very uncomfortable for the assembly and often resulted in more grief for the bereaved.

On one occasion Mnsr. Mannion had to sit through a eulogy while a child of the deceased openly proclaimed that he knew that all this “Church stuff” was important to his father, but that he didn’t believe in any of it — especially life after death!

I understand the need for a sense of decorum, and nobody wants to listen to a eulogy that is likely to upset the family or disrespect the priest but maybe that could be avoided if a script was given to the priest in advance of the funeral Mass.

My mother-in-law was 100 years and 6 months old when she died. She was a religious woman and a dedicated Mass goer all her life. Her son delivered her eulogy in the graveyard and I think it’s a pity it had to be done there.

I read recently that a man was arrested in Cork after he was found in possession of heroin worth €105,000 and €2,000 of cocaine.

It took me back to a time when I started out in Dublin in 1980, as a young member of An Garda Siochana. The illegal drug scene was well established, and heroin was in full flow and a serious problem even then.

Just a couple of weeks after arriving at my first station in Blackrock, more than half a ton of cannabis, worth 2 million pounds, was seized at Dublin docks. The haul was discovered in a container at the port and gardai knew at that stage, they were dealing with highly organised gangs with sophisticated networks, who could successfully import huge quantities of drugs.

That’s almost forty years ago and since then, there has been an increase in the amount of drugs entering the country illegally and a rise in the number of people consuming them. The country is awash with cannabis, cocaine, and heroin and what is being detected represents a fraction of what is getting through the net.

Users are injecting openly in public places and the evidence is on our streets and in our parks with discarded needles and other drug paraphernalia strewn on the ground every day.

There has been a sharp rise in casual drug use in Cork and experts have warned that cocaine has infiltrated all sections of society, to the point that it is now normalised in social settings, and addiction counsellors are seeing more and more people hooked on the drug.

I don’t think that news will come as a great surprise to any of us and all the signs indicate that drug abuse in Cork these days is worse than ever, so maybe the time has come for a different approach.

Ann Murphy reported in The Echo that a former lord mayor of Cork said plans for a supervised injection centre for the city need to be advanced despite a similar plan being rejected in Dublin.

Mick Finn, an independent member of Cork City Council, also said people need to realise that heroin users are addicts who need medical help and services, including a supervised injection centre, to help them. He said the location of an injection centre in Cork is likely to result in a debate and opposition, but he stressed that it is required to provide a safe place for heroin addicts.

Senator Colette Kelleher has also called for a safe injection centre in Cork because she says the centre is needed for harm reduction and to give dignity to those battling addiction and research shows safe injection centres can help people learn about harm reduction and safe injecting.  

I knew Colette when she was head of the Cork Simon Community and she has vast experience in this area, so her opinion is worth listening to.

The Cork Local Drugs and Alcohol Task Force and the HSE also expressed an interest in developing a supervised injection centre in Cork, with public health experts describing it as a fantastic public health tool that will save lives.

The thought of it frightens a lot of people but it’s time to look at the evidence. There have been many attempts to tackle the drug problem over the years, but they have all failed to rid society of the scourge of drugs.

There’s no shame in that though because no other jurisdiction has solved the problem either although some do claim to have made a difference with the use of medically supervised injecting centres.

These are places where addicts can go to use their drugs under medical supervision in a controlled environment. Users are provided with access to clean, sterile injecting equipment with trained staff on hand to provide emergency care in the event of an overdose. Staff also provide advice on treatment and rehabilitation.

The Uniting Church has been operating a Medically Supervised Injecting Centre (MSIC) in Sydney, Australia since 2001 and they advertise it as a compassionate and practical health service. Registered nurses and counsellors and health education officers supervise episodes of drug injecting that would otherwise happen elsewhere.

They provide immediate access to emergency medical care in the event of an overdose or other health issue and the staff connect with clients and offer them referrals to a variety of services, including specialist addiction treatment. It makes sense but not everyone will like the idea.

Daniel McConnell wrote in the Irish Examiner, that there were grave concerns within Government over its plan to liberalise Ireland’s drug laws. Retired Judge Garrett Sheehan, chairman of the Government’s working group on “alternative approaches to possession of drugs for personal use” submitted a minority report to ministers.

He recommended that the Government resists calls for decriminalisation; that they restore the rule of law; that drug rehabilitation programmes be urgently audited and evaluated; that people are educated about the dangers of drug use, and that there is a greater policing of recreational drug use adding that at present, the threat of imprisonment can act as a catalyst for undergoing treatment.

In other words, let’s keep doing what we’ve been doing all along, even though it isn’t working.  

We’ve seen over the last forty years that prison, or the threat of it, won’t solve the drug problem. Drug addicts are beyond worrying about anything other than where the next fix is coming from, and habitual criminals don’t mind doing a bit of prison time because there’s too much money to be made so it’s worth the risk.

Take a seat in any courthouse and witness the number of repeat offenders appearing every day with lists of previous convictions as long as your arm. That tells the real story of the effectiveness of the threat of jail.