Trevor Laffan

Things happen from time to time to remind us that times are changing. Like when friends of mine told me recently that they were going to Dublin to see Cliff Richard and their daughter, who is in her twenties, asked them who he was.

I thought that was hilarious and I was telling my son about it, he’s also in his twenties, and he looked at me in a way that made it obvious that he didn’t get the joke. He asked me if Cliff Richard was a black lad with a lot of hair but then he realised that he was confusing him with Lionel Richie.

I thought everyone on the Planet knew who Cliff Richard was, but it turns out that you must be of a certain vintage to be in the know.

Then there was the story about the telephone directory. An Post announced that they are going to discontinue the annual distribution of telephone books to every household in the country. That makes perfect sense given that many homes don’t even have a landline now and most of us rely solely on the mobile phone.

There was a time though, not so long ago either, when directories were essential. When I worked in An Garda Siochana, there were always a few of them knocking around the station and sometimes you would struggle to get your hands on one. They were constantly in use.

They weren’t always in one piece either and there was nothing worse than trying to find a number only to discover that the page you were looking for had been torn out. It baffled me that some people found it easier to rip out the page than write down the number.

Some young people have never even seen a phone book and there are others who wouldn’t know how to find a telephone number in one so now they are being consigned to history along with Cliff.

The mobile phone has completely changed how we communicate with each other but there are some daft aspects of this technology as well. I heard a lady called Jess Kelly on Newstalk recently and she gave five mobile phones a test run over a period of time and then rated the performance of each one.

According to Jess, the most important concerns when buying a mobile phone these days are the battery life and camera quality. The cheapest phone she reviewed was about €800 and the dearest was around €1,300. My bog-standard Samsung cost me around €80 and the battery life is fine. It also takes a good photo, allows me to use the Internet and it lets me make a call and I can’t find any justification for spending any more than that.

Another thing that has changed a lot over the years is our rail service. At least, I thought it had. Back in the early eighties, when I was stationed in Blackrock Garda Station in Dublin, I used the train on a regular basis to get up and down to Cork. Getting a ticket wasn’t complicated. You simply went to the ticket office in the railway station, bought your ticket and hopped on.

If you were lucky you got a seat but if you travelled on a Friday afternoon you’d be lucky to find space to sit on the floor. In those days, the carriages were rough and ready, and it wasn’t unusual to travel without heat or light or both and a dining car was a rare treat.

I hadn’t been on a train for a long time, but I was told that Iarnrod Eireann had gone all posh and sophisticated with new carriages that you can plug your laptop into and everything. I had to go to Dublin for surgery and I figured the journey back down on the train, after the operation, would be more comfortable than sitting in a car for three hours, so I decided to give it a whirl.

I booked online and got my single ticket for €30. I didn’t book a return because I wasn’t sure of the day or time I would be travelling back to Cork. The train was modern and comfortable, and the journey was pleasant.

I was released from hospital a few days later and I headed to Heuston Station. I wasn’t in a position to book my return ticket online, so I looked for the ticket office but of course, that’s gone the way of the phone book and now there’s just a machine.

The machine charged me €62 for a single ticket to Cork. I was feeling a bit sore and sorry for myself and walked gingerly to the carriage to get a seat. I was surprised to find that it resembled something I used back in the 80’s. It looked old and didn’t seem to be the cleanest.

I sat next to a young guy from Canada who was travelling around Ireland on a holiday and once we got going, he was looking out the window admiring the scenery. He told me he was really enjoying the countryside and I had to apologise for the fact that he could see so little of it because the windows were so dirty. They were manky.

There was no dining car either, just a trolley service and it reminded me of the old days. My wife was travelling with me, so we paid €120 for the privilege of suffering this ordeal. In hindsight, the car would have been a more comfortable option but how was I to know.

Iarnrod Eireann are planning to ban alcohol on some of their routes because of the anti-social behaviour by some passengers, but maybe they’re only trying to numb the pain of the prices and the state of the carriages.

When I was a youngster, I saw my grandmother putting a few corks into her bed one night. They were ordinary corks taken from bottles and she put them under the blankets near the foot of the bed. I thought this was odd and when I asked her what she was doing, she told me that they were to keep cramps at bay.

She apparently suffered from leg cramps and these were supposed to help. I have no idea whether they did or not, but she was the local midwife, so people tended to listen to her when it came to health issues.

She had other remedies too and she always said that if you feel that you’re getting a cold or a flu, you should have a shower, or a bath, as soon as possible, and then put on fresh clothes to separate yourself from the contamination.

I remember having a sheet of brown paper shoved down the front of my shirt one time to cure some ailment and on another occasion, I had my head over a bowl of boiling water with a towel covering myself and the bowl. Something was added to the water because the smell was revolting. The idea was to inhale the fumes and that would open the airways which would help you breathe more easily or maybe they just did it to keep me quiet.

The fact that I’m still alive proves that these remedies didn’t do any harm. Whether they did any good or not is debatable. There were lots of those beliefs and piseogs back in the day, but many have disappeared since we got all modern and scientific.

It was said that hiccups were caused by somebody talking about you behind your back and one of the many cures was to say the name of everyone you knew and when you landed on the name of the culprit, the hiccups would stop. I’m not sure how science could debunk something like that, it seems rock solid to me.

There were some other remedies too like drinking nine small sips of water from a pint glass, followed by one big sip. Or alternatively, drinking a pint of water from the opposite side of the glass until it was empty. Another one was to drop a cold key down the back of your neck.

It was also said that you should never rock an empty cradle and that it was bad luck to carry a cradle upside down. I suppose it would be, particularly for the child sleeping in it.

There were lots do’s and don’ts when it came to death as well. For instance, it was said that all clocks in the house should be stopped when somebody died, and the water used to wash the corpse should not be thrown out until after the funeral. Chairs and tables should be turned upside down as well as soon as a funeral left a house.

The poor old magpie has long been associated with superstition because they refused to enter Noah’s ark, and they sat out the flood perched on the roof. Perhaps they were just a little anti-social, but they’ve been under suspicion ever since. The sight of one on his own is a sign of bad luck but if you see two together you’re sorted.

Sailors and fishermen are notoriously superstitious. They have a serious respect for the sea because of the power it holds, and they know how dangerous and unpredictable it can be.

In some coastal communities it was believed that blowing out a candle was bad luck as it meant that a sailor somewhere at sea would die, so they preferred to let their candles burn down and extinguish themselves naturally.

Not all sea-fairing superstitions were about death though, some of them were a bit of fun. A friend of mine in the UK called Matt Stoves, spent some time in the British Navy and he told me about an experience he had while they were crossing the Equator.

“A long long time ago, I was on a Destroyer heading to Sydney and we had what was called a “Crossing the Line” ceremony. This was a fun thing and there was a party atmosphere on board to celebrate crossing this line. We were novices, so we were lined up in front of King Neptune and his Sea Bears, and after a bit of a ceremony we were accepted as regular ‘Mariners of Neptune’s Court.’

“The occasion was meant to end with individuals being thrown over the side of the ship. Everything was being prepared, the ship had stopped its engines, we were drifting around, and the seaman branch were preparing for the event.”

“One of the Chinese chefs went fishing and to attract fish, he threw some of the fire-fighting foam mixture over the side from one of the many cans that were positioned around the ship. This mixture had several ingredients and reputedly contained ox blood.”

“Well this one certainly contained something, because within minutes we were surrounded by big and small ‘Nobby Clark’s’ (naval slang for sharks) and loads of them. The part of the ceremony requiring men to be thrown over the side was rapidly cancelled and instead a canvas pool was hurriedly arranged on deck and filled with sea water to fulfil that part of the ceremony.”

“While that was going on, the chef caught one of the sharks and he was struggling with it, so a couple of hand grenades were thrown at it to kind of subdue it. It didn’t work quite like that. The Nobby thrashed like hell and snapped the wire and chain tracer and disappeared into the murky sea”.

With guys like Matt fishing with grenades, it’s no wonder that sailors are superstitious.

In August this year I got a bit of bad news when I was diagnosed with prostate cancer. It didn’t come as a complete surprise though, because I had been having some tests over the course of the previous months and they were all pointing in the one direction. Nevertheless, it still hit me hard when I heard the actual diagnosis.

The word ‘cancer’ has a way of unsettling the most resilient of us.

My story is not unfamiliar, and there is hardly a household in the country that hasn’t been visited by the scourge of this disease. In my own case, it has already claimed my parents and my younger sister. While it’s not always possible to win the battle with cancer, not every case is fatal either. There are steps we can take, in some circumstances, to identify the early onset of the disease and give ourselves a fighting chance.

Early detection is vital and it’s for that reason, I’m telling this story. I have discovered a few things over the last few months that I think are important and need to be highlighted but first, let’s go back to the beginning.

In January 2018 I went for a regular blood test and it showed a rise in my PSA level. This test is used as an indicator that something may be going on with the prostate gland. I have been monitoring mine for years so when my GP noticed a change, he decided to let it settle for a month or so and then repeat the test again and compare the results.

In March, the second test confirmed that the PSA level had risen so he did a DRE, a digital rectal examination, which involves physically feeling the prostate gland to feel for any abnormality. He wasn’t completely happy, so he decided to send me to a consultant.

The consultant carried out his own DRE and he felt an irregularity. He arranged to take it a step further and organised an MRI which subsequently confirmed that there was a problem. It was time to take it to the next level and he arranged for a biopsy to be carried out.

This is an uncomfortable procedure that involves taking twelve samples of the prostate which are sent for analysis. In my case, two of the twelve samples turned out to be positive for cancer and the scoring system that they use to determine the seriousness of the condition put me in the mid-level range.

Because of my age, 60, which is young in terms of the age profile of prostate cancer sufferers, the consultant decided that the best option for me was to have the prostate removed surgically.

The options I was given were, traditional surgery performed by a surgeon with a scalpel or alternatively, robotic surgery which is carried out by a machine controlled by a surgeon. Robotic surgery was a completely new concept to me, but I had time to research both options before making a final decision because there was another hurdle to overcome first.

This next step was an Isotope Bone Test which is carried out to determine if the cancer has spread beyond the prostate gland into the bone. This process traces a dye as it travels around the body and can detect any irregularities in the bone which can then be scanned for signs of cancer. The good news for me was that this test showed that the cancer was contained within the prostate. Next step, surgery.

I elected to have robotic surgery and I met my surgeon on 20th September in Dublin as the procedure was set to take place in the Mater Private Hospital. He arranged for me to be admitted the following Monday, 24th September and the surgery was carried on Tuesday. I rested on Wednesday and I was released on Thursday and sent home to recover. Done and dusted.

I have had my eyes opened for me during these last few months. I had always believed that early detection is vital for a for a positive outcome when treating cancer because it’s all I ever heard. We are constantly being advised to watch out for changes in our bodies and to contact our GP if we find anything suspicious.

Prostate cancer is one of the most common forms of cancer in men over fifty years of age. We are told to watch out for the symptoms that include having difficulty in urinating, urinating frequently and having to get up during the night and being unable to empty the bladder completely. These are indicators that something might be awry. When the prostate is enlarged, it affects the flow. My GP described it to me as being a bit like putting your foot on a garden hose.

PSA or prostate-specific antigen, is a protein produced by normal, as well as malignant, cells of the prostate gland. The PSA test measures the level of PSA in a man’s blood. For this test, a blood sample is sent to a laboratory for analysis. The blood level of PSA is often elevated in men with prostate cancer. It’s not conclusive and there are other reasons why someone might have a raised PSA, but it is another indicator.

Fortunately, I have been having my PSA checked for years by my GP. I have been with this man for more than 40 years and he has never let me down, so I have great faith in him. When he said it was time to go further, that was good enough for me, but it was from that point on, that things got a little complicated.

Like everyone else, I am used to hearing stories of a crisis in the HSE but it’s not until you see it for yourself that you get a real appreciation of how seriously screwed up it is. As a layman, I’m not well versed when it comes to medical matters, but I have learned through first hand experience that our health care system is broken.

The word cancer sends a shiver up the spine of most people and as my mother, father and sister died from the disease, I had good reason to be nervous. No matter how often you hear that prostate cancer is very treatable, and you shouldn’t worry, it doesn’t do much to reassure the person who has it. As far as I was concerned, I had this thing growing inside me that had the potential to end my life and I wanted it out. The sooner the better.

I didn’t get this sense of urgency from the first consultant I dealt with. I had to wait a few weeks for the biopsy to be arranged and a further six weeks before I got the result. I was then advised that I needed an Isotope Bone scan and that appointment was set for 5th November, more than ten weeks after receiving the result of the biopsy.

This, to my mind, went against all the advice about early detection. Afterall, what was the point in finding the cancer early if you have to wait over ten weeks to discover if it has spread somewhere else? When I queried this, I was told that there were others who were in a more serious condition than I was, and they also had to wait. This was due to a huge waiting list and there was nothing they could do about it.

I wasn’t prepared to accept that, so I contacted the Bon Secours Hospital, where there is no waiting list by the way, and had the scan arranged and completed within four days and my GP was given the result two days later. The consultant on the other hand was also given the result but I would have to wait another three weeks if I opted to get the result from him.

I had enough of this messing, so I took the matter in hand and contacted a surgeon in the Mater Private Hospital in Dublin and arranged the robotic surgery. Two weeks later, I was on my way home to recover.

As of now, there are over 700,000 people on hospital waiting lists. I was one of those and I would still be part of that number if I didn’t rescue myself from the system. I have been told by those working in that health system that it is broken, but we knew that already.

There can’t be much joined up thinking going on when there are two hospitals less than 2km apart, both doing Isotope Bone Scans, but one has a two and a half month waiting and the other has none. I was told by a practitioner that the further you go up the chain of command, the less understanding they have of the reality of what it’s like at the coal face and the less they care.

Meanwhile, those who do care are blue in the face from trying to make things better for their patients and their frustration is obvious. Those who are responsible for fixing it, don’t know how to. Simon Harris strikes me as a genuine character, but he is struggling to make a difference while the gurus in the HSE are obviously out of their depth, and they can’t solve the problem either.

Meanwhile the 700,000 people who need to be treated for whatever ails them are worried about their future and so they should be. Some will have to wait up to two years for their appointments and could well depart this world before they get to see the relevant person. It’s not good enough but we already knew that too.

Now, back to the reason that I am sharing my experience. I received my diagnosis without having any of the recognised symptoms and that surprised me. I was going along, blissfully unaware that there was anything wrong with me and only for the PSA test, I would have been in serious trouble. I’m not the only one.

I have met lots of men in the last few months who received the same diagnosis as I did, and most of them had no symptoms either. I thought mine was an unusual case, but it appears that this is very common, so the message is clear. It is vital that men of a certain age, have their PSA checked regularly by their GP. They should not wait until they experience some problems with their waterworks because by then it could be too late.

Men need to be proactive and have themselves checked. It’s a simple blood test that could save their lives.

RTE reported that an Irish tourist admitted to causing damage in Auschwitz, the former Nazi concentration camp recently. A local prosecutor confirmed to RTÉ that the tourist was detained by security guards at the site after scratching his name on a wall there.

The prosecutor said the tourist was taken by car to the police station and he was charged, in the presence of a translator, with breaching Article 335 of the Polish Penal Code. He immediately admitted defacing the memorial and agreed to a punishment, which will be made public after a court hearing. The use of an accelerated process means that the person, whose name was not released by the prosecutor, will not have to return for the hearing.

The Polish press agency PAP reported that the tourist is a 38-year-old Irish man who scratched his name onto a wall after he saw other names written on it. Over 1.1 million people were killed by the Nazis at Auschwitz between 1940 and 1945. They included Jews, Poles, Roma and Sinti people, Soviet prisoners of war and Jehovah’s Witnesses.

This guy is 38 years of age, so he should be well past the stage where he needs to go scratching his name on walls. Especially the walls of such a historic site that is a memorial to so many people who were murdered there during their captivity.

I was there myself a few years ago and I was so conscious of the horrors that took place in that camp that I was reluctant to touch anything or to even talk, in case I would cause offence to the memory of the dead. I walked around for the day with my mouth open, speechless, as stories of the barbarism that took place were relayed to us.

How this guy thought it was appropriate to do what he did is beyond me. At best, he was thoughtless and immature, and he should be ashamed of himself. It’s unfortunate for us that he happens to be Irish.

The camps are there for anyone to visit and to show respect. It’s a trip worth making but it’s difficult to describe the experience. It’s fascinating, horrifying and depressing all at once, but it’s an experience that everyone should go through. As time passes, there are fewer witnesses left to tell their stories, but these stories must not be forgotten.

Emerich Fuchs, 91, was 19 the day soldiers forced him into a cattle car for the three-day journey to Auschwitz. He recalls it being a place of brutality and murder from the beginning to the end. He described the air as being foul and there was a smell of burned flesh. He saw his mother and sister being forced to join a line with other women and children and they went straight to the gas chambers. He and his father performed hard labour with little food and his father died three days before the Russian army liberated the camp.

Mordechai Ronen, 82 remembers seeing Dr. Josef Mengele, the Nazis’ Angel of Death, send his mother and two sisters to the gas chambers when they arrived at the camp. Ronen made a life-saving decision when he grabbed his father’s hand and joined the line of men. He spent about two weeks at Auschwitz, where he witnessed soldiers using an infant for target practice. At night, he resorted to sleeping on piles of corpses to avoid being selected for the gas chamber.

One day, his father told Ronen he was at the end of the road and was no longer physically able to get up for work. The last time he saw his father was when the soldiers led him away.

Joseph Goebbels’ secretary, Brunhilde Pomsel, died at 106 years of age and she was one of the last surviving people to be so closely connected to the Nazi regime. As his secretary, she would have worked closely with him and would have known him well. Goebbels served as minister of propaganda and it was his job to make the Nazis look good.

Towards the end of the war, when the writing was on the wall for the Germans, Goebbels advocated for an all-out battle to the death against the Allied forces. He was a competent public speaker and he rallied the German population and he demanded the people to support a total war effort. His idea was that if Germany was destined to lose the war, the German nation should be wiped out.

When defeat was inevitable, some high-ranking Nazis made contact with the Allies to save themselves and to try and cut a deal. Goebbels on the other hand, had no intention of giving up and he remained devoted to Hitler, right to the end.

Conveniently, Brunhilde Pomsel claimed she didn’t know what Goebbels was doing and she insisted that she did nothing to harm the Jews. In fact, she claimed that the love of her life was a Jew and she had planned to run away with him.

She spent three years working for Goebbels until his death on 1 May 1945, when he and his wife poisoned their six children before killing themselves. She said that she could never forgive Goebbels for what he did to the world or for the fact that he murdered his innocent children. ‘No one believes me now, but I knew nothing,’ she said.

She was right about one thing, nobody believed her. Her job while she worked in the propaganda department was to tell lies. Lies about how many soldiers were killed on both sides and lies about how the allies were losing the war. That was what propaganda was and she told lies for a living.

It’s not acceptable for anyone involved in that regime to say that they didn’t know.

I came across a story recently about a guy called Josh Quigley, from Scotland. He posted a video of himself on the Internet explaining why he had cancelled a speaking event that he had organised. He called it off because he hadn’t sold any tickets, not a single one.

He wanted to be honest about the situation he found himself in. “I tried to put on an event and it failed big time. I learned a lot, but the event was a massive failure”, he said. So much of social media is about highlighting people’s successes and the nice moments in their lives that he wanted to share his bad experience and what he had learned from it. His talk was about mental health.

“After a dark and painful battle with depression, I lost all hope and attempted suicide by intentionally crashing my car at over 80mph. Having survived this suicide attempt and miraculously walking away with no physical injuries, I knew I’d been kept alive for a reason and had to grab hold of my second chance at life.

I later had an epiphany that I should tell the world my story and embark on a huge challenge to raise awareness of mental health and inspire those who had also felt like I did. On 26th May 2016, the first-year anniversary of my suicide attempt, I set off from Scotland by bike attempting to cycle around the world as The Tartan Explorer.

This was the story of one boy’s journey to happiness. After pedalling and walking over 14,000 miles through 15 countries, I finally found the happiness and meaning I had so desperately been searching for. My purpose is to inspire and empower others to be happier and healthier. My journey to happiness might be over. But it’s now my job to help others take the first step”.

He was very honest. He didn’t let one failed effort stop him and he is now a successful mental health advocate.

I had a similar experience of failure and Josh’s lack of ticket sales reminded me about it. It also reminded me of how failing at something can sometimes bring about eventual success.

Back in the early nineties, myself and John O’Connor were both attached to Mayfield Garda Station. We were involved in Chernobyl related charities at the time and for a few years we were fundraising around the city and county.

We had committed to supporting a particular project and undertook to raise €20,000. We had a few ideas but were relying on one main event to raise most of the funds.

It was a football match between Cork and Kerry to be played in Mayfield. Both teams were going well at the time and the rivalry between them was always going to draw a crowd. Neither John nor myself knew too much about GAA but we got great help from the Mayfield GAA Club.

We spoke to Larry Tomkins, the Cork manager at the time, and the late Paudie O’Shea who was looking after Kerry, and both were keen to help. They were two great characters who were easy to work with, so we drove on with our plan and publicised the event far and wide.

For a couple of months, myself and John worked hard organising the project. We had our sponsors, hundreds of match day programmes, a brass band and food and all we needed now was for the crowds to turn up.

I’ll never forget the morning of the game. I hadn’t slept well the previous night because I was a little anxious and hoping that we had everything covered so that nothing could go wrong.

I drove up to Mayfield early that morning and the first thing I noticed was the thick fog. No problem, I told myself, that will lift. Then it started to rain, and not just the drizzle type of rain, this was the real thing. No problem, I said, that will ease off. Then the wind started to blow. No bother, I told myself, that’ll calm down.

Well the fog didn’t lift, the rain got heavier, and the wind only got stronger. It was probably one of the worst days we had that year. Both teams lined out for the game in atrocious conditions but there was nobody there to watch them.

Our guaranteed banker of a fundraiser turned out to be a damp squib and we made nothing. All the programmes we had printed ended up in a skip and we were totally demoralised. We were also starting to panic a little because we still had a lot of money to raise.

A few days after that, Caroline O’Doherty of the Irish Examiner contacted me to find out how the fundraiser went. I told her about the fiasco and I think she took pity on us and wrote a piece about how the weather beat us, accompanied by a photograph of two very dejected looking gardaí.

A few days later a strange thing happened. I received a letter from a retired garda with a five Euro note attached. He had read about our disaster and apologised that he couldn’t give more. I had a feeling then, that we were going to be all right.

Over the next few weeks we were inundated with offers of help. All sorts of fundraising events were organised on our behalf across the city and the money started flooding in. Not only did we reach our target of €20,000 but we actually went closer to €25,000.

So, even when things look bleak and it might seem that all hope is lost, you just need to get back on your horse and drive on because you never know what’s waiting around the next corner. Josh seems to have managed that too.

When I started driving, seat belts weren’t a big deal. In fact, many older cars didn’t even have them, and they didn’t become compulsory in new cars until 1971. It wasn’t until 1977, that the actual wearing of seat belts became compulsory, and of course, that decision was met with resistance by many who thought they were a nuisance and an inconvenience.

At that time, Ireland was one of the last countries in the EEC, now the European Union, to introduce the legislation. Even though there was a mountain of evidence to suggest that they were a good idea, motorists were slow to accept the idea and the take up was small.

That shouldn’t come as any great surprise though, because it’s what we do when we’re faced with change in this country, we resist it. Just look at the fuss we kicked up over the smoking ban.

But it shouldn’t have been contentious though, because there was a heap of international reports on the effectiveness of seat belts and they were all singing from the same hymn sheet. They all agreed that when they were worn by drivers and front seat passengers, the incidence of serious and fatal injury was nearly halved. A compelling reason for wearing them, you would have thought, but still we didn’t like the idea.

I remember being reluctant to wear one myself unless I was going on a long journey. I thought that having a belt on while driving around locally was a waste of time and I wasn’t the only one. There was no logic to that argument of course because you can crash anywhere.

Seven years after the use of car seatbelts became compulsory, a survey by the National Roads Authority revealed that almost half of Irish motorists still weren’t wearing them. It also found that men were worse than women with as many as two out three men never buckling up.

40 years later, we should be much wiser. We have bucket loads of evidence to support that the wearing of seatbelts reduces the risk of dying or getting seriously injured in a traffic accident. Even without that evidence, common sense alone tells us that if you wear a seatbelt you are less likely to whack your head off the steering wheel or fly out through the windscreen.

Most of us automatically buckle up the miniute we get into a car and it would feel strange not to. So, it surprised me to hear that many of our younger drivers still have a difficulty with wearing a seatbelt. One extraordinary reason given by them is that they fear they will appear less manly. That makes absolutely no sense to me.

In the aftermath of a fatal accident in Donegal, it was reported that some young drivers are going to the trouble of getting buckles from crashed cars, so they can plug them into their own belts. That stops the alarm going off and allows them to drive around unbuckled. That’s sheer lunacy.

Young people think they are invincible and I understand that. They are convinced that they are all good drivers and they will never be involved in an accident. Many of them believe that because they can drive fast, that makes them experts. We know, of course, that’s not the case but they will only discover that through experience. But they’re seriously reducing the odds of getting further life experience by not wearing a seatbelt.

There is no skill in making a car go fast. A weighted object placed on the accelerator will make a car go quickly. Just put a brick on the pedal. Driving at speed is a skill that has to be taught, practised and learned over a long number of years. Young speed merchants don’t impress anyone and are more likely to be terrifying the other occupants of the car who are probably afraid to admit that, in case they too appear less manly.

They don’t see it that way though. The message obviously isn’t getting through to them and their recklessness can have fatal consequences. Youngsters think they know best but if they don’t cop themselves on, many of them won’t reach old age.

I was listening to the radio one morning and I heard an interview with a Dr Richard Shepherd and he made a statement that Princess Diana would be alive today if she had been wearing a seat belt. I thought that was a bold statement and I hadn’t heard it before, so I dug a little deeper and discovered that his credentials are good.

Dr. Shepherd is a leading forensic pathologist in the UK and has been involved in the investigation of many high-profile deaths. He is a registered UK Home Office Forensic Pathologist with over 25 years of experience. He advised on the management of UK fatalities following 9/11, and he was the forensic pathologist expert for the Bloody Sunday Inquiry and the death of Diana, Princess of Wales.

It’s over twenty-one years since Princess Diana died in that traffic accident in Paris’ Pont de l’Alma tunnel back in August 1997. According to Dr. Shepherd, Diana was not wearing her seatbelt while sitting in the back seat of the car at the time of her death and her boyfriend, Dodi Fayed, and her driver, Henri Paul were also killed.

Her long-time bodyguard, Trevor Rees-Jones, was the only one to survive the crash and the French authorities later confirmed that he was the only one wearing a seatbelt at the time. Computer simulation technology later revealed that Diana might have suffered some broken ribs or a broken sternum but nothing life threatening if she had just put on her seatbelt.

Accidents can happen to anyone, but so many tragedies could be avoided by simply buckling up.

A few weeks ago, I went for a walk in the Five Foot Way. It was about 9.45pm and it was a mild night. As I reached the railway bridge by the garda station, I heard what sounded like splashing in the water.

At first, I thought it was a dog, but I soon discovered that it was a person. I called out, but I didn’t get any response, so I ran to get a ring buoy. The nearest one was near the bridge that is under repair, and this is what greeted me.

Health and Safety, I think most of us will agree, has gone completely over the top these days but it’s all the rage now. Those involved in the game are required to have qualifications and must be properly trained because they’re in the business of preventing accidents, death and serious injury.

So, I was a little surprised to find that someone had determined that it was good for the general safety of the public, to place the ring buoy behind a fence and out of reach. Fortunately, there was another one available further along the quayside.

Thankfully, the person was removed safely from the water by the emergency services but no thanks to the guy who signed off on locking up the ring buoy.

 

My television went on the blink not so long ago and it developed a mind of its own. It only worked when it wanted to so, I got the TV man to come and have a look at it. He told me to put in the car and take it to another man in the city, the go-to-guy for fixing tv sets.

The go-to-guy kept it for a few days and then called me to break the bad news. Even he couldn’t bring it back to life and it was time for it to be recycled. I wasn’t really surprised because that seems to be the way of the world these days. When something breaks you just throw it away and get a new one. The days of repairing stuff seem to be over.

I can remember as a young lad, wearing socks with lumps of wool stitched into the heels where they had become worn. My grandmother attacked them with needles to save them from being chucked in the bin, and each sock looked as if it had a tumour attached to it. Comfort wasn’t taken into consideration.

I had jumpers with patches stitched into the elbows and I was regularly sent to the cobbler to hand in shoes that needed new soles or heels. You didn’t get a new pair until you were almost barefoot. There was always a lady who could replace a zip in a pants or a jacket but these days nothing is repaired. As soon as it breaks, throw it out.

I have a watch that I got as a present years ago and I’m very fond of it. It’s not a Rolex or anything fancy but I like it so when it stopped working one day, I brought it to my local jeweller. He told me that it would probably cost more than the watch is worth to repair it and he suggested throwing it away.

It was like telling me to put one of my kids into an orphanage. I was shocked. He told me that there were only a few people left in the watch fixing business because most people just replaced them when they packed up. I stuck to my guns and got it repaired eventually, but it had to be sent to another planet, so I had to wait awhile to get it back. It cost me a few bob too, but it was worth it to me.

It’s the same with a cooker, a fridge or a tumble dryer or anything electrical. When something packs up the first thing you’re asked is; “How long have you had it?” You tell them that you only got it a few years ago and they look at you with pity in their eyes, shake their head and tell you; “Yeah, that’s about the life span of those. You did well, it owes you nothing.”

So, you buy a new machine that they guarantee you will last for years. “Best thing on the market by a long way. It will out live the lot of us.” Sure, see you soon.

So, it came as no surprise that my TV was destined for the crematorium, or wherever dead sets go, and I had to buy a new one. Something told me that this was not going to be straight forward and of course I was right.

When I was buying my recently deceased set, I was told that it had to be plasma. This was the best for picture quality and if I bought anything else, I would be wasting my money and I may as well just be looking at my kettle.

Then I was told that plasma is old hat and LED is the way to go. So, I went on the Internet to have a look at what was available, and this is what I was met with.
A 55’ Smart 4K Ultra HD HDR LED TV with Catch-up and 4K Streaming with web OS Picture quality: 50 Hz, Tuner: Irish Digital Ready HD Connectivity: HDMI 2.0.b x 3.

I have a reasonable command of the English language, and I’m not a complete idiot, but I have no idea what this meant. So, I decided the best thing was to go to the shop and talk to the guys who are supposed to know about these things and leave it to them.

But even the experts can be wrong and modern technology can let you down.
I have a Kindle and I recently bought three eBooks from Amazon but only one of them was delivered wirelessly to my device. The other two were wandering around somewhere in cyber space. So, I popped off an email to Amazon who invited me to an online chat. We were messaging back and forth for a bit before they told me that they were having a little technical issue, but the books would arrive in a couple of days.

When the books still hadn’t arrived a week later, I sent another email. I was invited to another online chat but I declined, because I didn’t see the point in going over the same ground again. So, I asked them to just refer to the previous conversation.

A week later I was back on to Mr. Amazon again and this time, the problem had shifted. Now they told me that the technical issue was on my side and I was advised to deregister my Kindle and then reregister it. I could see this leading to all sorts of complications so I just decided to cut my losses and forget about it. As soon as I made that decision, the books arrived in the Kindle, all by themselves.

This was good news because I was just about to throw it away.

I heard that Irish Rail are adding a new initiative to their service to make travel more comfortable for pregnant women. Maybe they’ve already done it but anyway, it’s their belief, that expectant mothers should be treated differently to other passengers, so they’re introducing a badge for pregnant women. A ‘Baby on Board’ badge.

They want to alert customers to pregnant passengers and hopefully, that will encourage others to offer up their seat for them. It would also help to avoid the awkwardness often felt by some pregnant women in having to ask for a seat. I think it’s a good idea, but it’s sad reflection on modern society that we need it in the first place.

I’m not completely surprised by this development though, because lack of manners is a huge issue these days. I have commented on this in the past and I think it’s a shame how we have left our manners slide.

The way people speak, or don’t speak, to shop assistants, waiters, bar staff and the like, leaves a lot to be desired. Nobody seems to say please or thank you anymore. Customers regularly conduct their business in complete silence and often leave without saying a single word to the assistant behind the counter. Consideration for others has also disappeared.

I went to a pharmacy recently and I saw a lady driving into one of the mother and child spaces outside. She jumped out of her car and toddled off to a supermarket nearby. She certainly didn’t have a child with her and she didn’t go into the pharmacy, so why did she park there? She did it because she felt like it.

It didn’t bother her that she might be making life more difficult for someone with children who needed to go to the chemist. It suited her and to hell with everyone else. Another guy pulled up in a small car and abandoned it. You couldn’t call it parking because the front of the car was in one space and the rear end was in another. It wasn’t much bigger than a supermarket trolley, but he still managed to take up two spaces.

I was standing at the express check-out in a supermarket and there was a woman in front of me with two large baskets of groceries. While she was unloading the contents on the counter, she remembered something else she needed and went off to get it.

I had a newspaper and a loaf of bread, so I expected her to tell me to go ahead but that didn’t happen. She had enough items to fill a small trailer, but she didn’t care. She suited herself and the rest of us waited.

At another supermarket I visit, it’s common to find cars abandoned at the fuel pumps. The drivers get their petrol and then go inside to do their shopping. This ties up the pumps for others, but they couldn’t care less. The staff regularly make announcements advising drivers to park elsewhere once they get their fuel, but they may as well be talking to the fish fingers.

This kind of behaviour is not life threatening and maybe it’s not very important to a lot of people. But it demonstrates a growing lack of consideration for others and it is an indication that some people are just totally consumed with themselves.

There was a time when it was normal to open doors for people and to give up a seat for an elderly person or a pregnant woman. They didn’t need a “Baby on Board” badge. These days, the pregnant lady could deliver the baby and raise it to maturity before being offered a chance to sit down.

In the old days, gentlemen escorted their partner on their left arm and walked on the outside of the footpath to protect her from the dust, mud and sewage that could splash up from passing horse carriages. Nowadays they’d use her as a shield.

Women wore long dresses then and they had to use both hands to keep them off the dirty ground, so the gentlemen opened doors for them. The gentleman also pulled out a chair for a lady and always offered their seat if there were none available.

Now it’s every man and woman for themselves but some people are fighting back.

A guy went into a coffee shop in Paris one day and took a seat. He worked as an information security consultant, so he was well used to modern technology. He was sitting there, minding his own business, but there was a group of people sitting next to him and they were being loud and obnoxious.

They were annoying everyone else in the place and it was obvious that they didn’t care. They refused to quieten down even when staff asked them to. He could see that the waiters were really stressed but there wasn’t much they could do without putting their jobs on the line.

This group was discussing a new company they were starting up. When they started shouting and high-fiving themselves about the perfect name they had come up with for the business, he heard it and it gave him an idea.

While they were celebrating and congratulating each other, he went online, and he quietly bought the domain name. This meant that when they would eventually get around to registering their new company and setting up their website, they would be in for a shock. Their new name wouldn’t be available because he now owned it.

He wanted to teach them a lesson about how being rude to staff, being overly loud in public spaces and not having respect for others might have negative consequences.

I love that guy and I thank him on behalf of the rest of us.

It’s very difficult to put a value on having good neighbours and thankfully, we have been very lucky as a family in that regard. And that’s exactly what it mostly comes down to, luck.

In the early eighties we bought a site in the countryside and built a house there. Our nearest neighbours had built their house on the adjoining site and we lived side by side for 25 years. Our properties were separated by a low hedge and as far back as I can remember there was a gap in that hedge, where we could pass freely from one house to the other.

I don’t remember any conscious decision being made to create the gap, it just evolved. Later we widened it and made it big enough to get a ride-on lawn mower through and, that machine made frequent trips back and forth.

They weren’t just neighbours either, they were more like family. They were as welcome in our place as we were in theirs and we shared many happy events together over the years including the births of our children. We were also there for each other during the bad times.

We have great memories of those days including the free musical concerts we were treated to from time to time. The neighbours’ daughter, Jacinta, learned to play the violin when she was a tiny tot and she used to love to come over and dazzle us with her skill.

She would arrive into the house unannounced, bursting to play a new tune that she had just learned, and she would stand in the middle of the kitchen and give it holly. She demanded our full attention. The tune would be completely unidentifiable but as far as she was concerned, this was a performance worthy of The National Concert Hall.

The fillings in my teeth would send shock waves to my brain while she struggled to find the right note, but that didn’t matter. We all had to keep smiling and clapping and when she was finished, she would toddle off back home, delighted with herself. We were delighted too, because we secretly loved her little concerts.

She still plays, but thankfully, she’s older now and has grown into a talented musician but she still gets embarrassed when I remind her of her early efforts.

When we moved closer to the town twelve years ago, one of the most difficult aspects of the move was leaving those neighbours behind. We knew that wherever we ended up we could never hope to have the likes of them beside us again. Those relationships don’t come along every day, and we are still in regular contact with each other.

Our new location is a small estate on the edge of town and initially, it was a new experience for us to have people living in such close proximity. But again, we struck it lucky and we have a great bunch of neighbours around us once more.

I know from experience, that this is something that shouldn’t be taken for granted because it’s not always the case and not everybody has this good fortune. As a former policeman, a good deal of my time was spent dealing with disputes between neighbours, so I know how easily, disagreements can turn friends into enemies.

There is no doubt that a bad neighbour can make life miserable and as you have no say in choosing who lives beside you, it’s all a bit of a lottery. I heard a recording on local radio some time ago that was made by a person who had a difficult neighbour.

She could be heard screaming abuse over the garden fence at the top of her voice, and she was calling him all sorts of names. It didn’t sound very pleasant from a distance, so I imagine that it was much worse having to listen to it from over the garden wall.

He was frustrated with the lack of response from the local gardaí, so he took his case up with the media. He claimed that the gardaí had told him that it was a civil matter and there was nothing they could do.

In a separate incident, a friend of mine told me of a problem he had with a difficult family living near him. He lives in a large settled estate and there were no issues with the neighbours until a property close by, went up for rent and a family moved in. From what he told me, ‘The Family from Hell’ would be an accurate description.

They had to put up with constant noise, day and night. They had no refuse collected and instead they just dumped it in the front garden. They were rude and abusive towards their neighbours, many of whom were elderly, and they felt intimidated.

This family obviously had no regard for anyone else and the residents were blue in the face from complaining to the landlord, but they were getting no satisfaction from him. As far as he was concerned, he was getting his money, so he didn’t care. The locals were reaching the end of their tether and crying out for help.

There’s no simple solution to dealing with dodgy neighbours but a legal approach is better than taking the law into your own hands like Michael Lawton did in the UK.

The last straw for him came when his windows were smashed, his car tyres were deflated, and eggs were thrown at his house by his neighbours. He had enough, so he set fire to the adjoining petrol station with the intention of blowing up the entire street.

It didn’t work, but he succeeded in turning the rest of the neighbours against him. He was sentenced to two and a half years in prison.