“Water, water, everywhere,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, everywhere,
Nor any drop to drink
I can remember getting walloped around in the CBS many years ago for not remembering the words to ‘The Ancient Mariner’, but the poem came back into my head over Christmas.
The date, December 28, the time 08.40 and I’m woken by the sound of water flowing through the pipes and into the storage tank, the sweetest sound I heard all over Christmas. We had been without water since Christmas Eve, but with all the other crises that hit the country in 2010, this seemed to be just one more misfortune to add to the long list.
My more technical neighbours suggested using a hairdryer to try and thaw the pipes, so for most of Christmas Eve the sound of overheating hairdryers was to be heard along the road, but to no avail. The frost had bitten deep and it was going to take more than a blast of hot air to get the water running again. Some of the neighbours still had running taps, so between that and a boot load of bottles of water from LIDL, we got through the five days without suffering from drought and reasonably clean.
Goodbye to 2010 and Bertie
So Ahern has joined the stampede abandoning the sinking ship and pushing women and children out of the way as they grab the last few seats in the big pension’s lifeboat. So how many is that so far? A pair of Aherns, a Cooper-Flynn, a Nolan. We’ll badly miss that lot. It’s got nothing to do, of course, with the fact that, ‘a.’ None of them have any hope of getting re-elected and,’ b.’ The pension deal is better if they go now.
Bertie Ahern heads off with €146,000, plus €160,000 as a lump sum, which, coincidentally, is the amount needed to run an organisation like the Father McGrath Centre for a year. It looks like the Fr McGrath Centre, and dozens other like it around the country, will have to close. €146,000 for the Fr McGrath Centre, or for Ahern, which would you give it to? It’s not as if he needs the money. The man has the Midas touch when it comes to gambling. Remember him telling the tribunal about all the money he won on the horses? Now I see he won €10,000 in a raffle in his local pub. Just give him a few Lotto tickets as a going away present and a voucher for Paddy Powers and he should be OK.
New Year’s resolution
My new year’s resolution was to loosen up and do a bit of dancin’. I got the perfect opportunity down in Cleeres on New Year’s day when the brilliant TV Jones and The Tomahawks took the stage and we all took the floor.
That was my new year’s resolution sorted on the first day of the year. I must tell TV and The Tomahawks to use that on their publicity: “We even got John Cleere up to dance.”
Dancing must be one way of shedding a few of the pounds put on over Christmas, but it’s definitely time for tightening the last notch in the belt this January. All the newspapers are encouraging us to drink less and eat more in the coming year. The bad news is that drinking red wine isn’t as beneficial as we were told. Flavenoids, substances that help prevent heart attacks and strokes, are the magic ingredients in wine. The problem is that you would need to drink more red wine than is good for you for them to have any effect.
All the experts agree that fresh fruit and vegetables are part of a healthy diet, but now there’s a new theory to test. It’s claimed that to avail of all the health benefits we need to eat the whole fruit and nothing but the fruit, even if it’s a banana.
Yes, a Doctor Marilyn Glenville of the Royal Society of Medicine says we should eat our bananas or kiwis, skin and all. She also says we should eat the core of a pineapple, broccoli stalks, garlic skins and orange peel. Just make sure they are well washed first. It’s a long way from South America or Africa to your fruit bowl and a good wash is advisable. That’s if there’s any water coming from your tap.
and finally...
We’re off for a short a break and hope to be back in a couple of weeks, refreshed and ready for the upcoming year, whatever it may bring. See you all soon and let’s all hang on in for another year.
